Float Tube Fishing in Ireland
Having a really great time fishing from the world's best floating fishing
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Spoonplugs and Spoonplugging Lures that Track
Correctly for Cast & Retrieve from a Float Tube or Boat ...
Buck Perry designed the spoonplug in order to create the perfect trolling lure. He wanted a lure that would dive, but refuse to dive significantly deeper if he speeded the boat up. He also wanted a certain ability to strike the lake bottom with the diving lip or vane, and hop off but not get hung up. A plastic vane might break off, so the vane became metal. This was before sonar units were available so Perry wanted to be able to walk the lure along shallow areas as he trolled, without hanging up, and then without using a sonar unit, he would know where the shallow areas were, and this would help locate fish.
A bonus that came from the metal body was the ability of the lure to be
cast when the boat was stopped after a fish was caught on troll. We have sonar now, why bother with spoonplugs? We don't need them for lakebed mapping nowadays, but they do something else better than any of the latest and greatest lures. One of the big problems boat anglers have is dealing with presentation at depth while moving. Unless it is anchored a boat is always moving. When trolling it moves fast. But even with the engine off it is drifting due to wind, and surface current (even in a lake). This has implications to what happens when you cast a lure and reel it back. The reason trolling is so popular is it gives a vague depth control of lure presentation. For example when an angler chooses a diving plug, then begins trolling it, after about 10 - 15 metres trolling it dives down to it's "working depth". This is the depth at which the force of water on the diving vane causing it to try and dive further, is balanced by the upwards pull of the line from the moving boat. So a plug trolls along behind the boat at a constant depth, and unless thinner line is used instead to allow it deeper it will always track roughly at that depth while trolling. Letting out more line, once a certain length is already out, will not result in a deeper troll, since the drag of the line stops the plug going deeper. A deeper troll can be got from a thinner lure, a heavier lure, adding lead up the line, thinner line, or heavier wire line. There is a variable. With a metal spoon, slowing the boat allows it to go deeper, and speeding it up makes the spoon run shallower. Unlike plugs, metal spoons have a designed running speed, and their action alters when they run at a different speed. Therefore if the boat is moved faster, then ideally the lure should be changed for a faster action spoon (a thinner or heavier thickness metal) so the action remains good. All those depth control adjustments can only be done between trolling passes, not while actually trolling. So the troll tends to go at a constant depth. This suits many anglers. But what if you could alter depth during the retrieve? That would mean you can track bottom rises and falls with no need for downriggers and heavy hardware.
Say we switch the floating diving plug for a sinking metal spoon and compare. We cast the spoon. Then we pause a while and it sinks. When we begin the retrieve the spoon is already at the desired depth. That is an advantage over the previous lure. More fish will be caught early in the retrieve as a result. Unfortunately, the spoon does not have a diving vane, so it will begin to rise upwards earlier in the retrieve than the previous lure. the spoon catches more pike at the beginning 1/3rd of the retrieve. And the plug will catch more pike than the spoon in the middle to final 1/3rd of the retrieve. Look at a spoonplug. It sinks like a spoon. It has a diving vane too. Spoonplugs have features from both lure types. The spoonplug does what ordinary spoons and floater diver plugs do together, but neither can do on their own. It is basically a fast sinking diving plug made from metal. Spoonplugs have part of the characteristics of leadhead jigs when they sink when it lands after a cast, then comes back deep during a retrieve. This suits the situation where the angler retrieving it is positioned in a boat over medium to deep water. The angler afloat wants the lure to come in just above the bottom, not rising up to the top, at least not until the last moment.
Can other sinking diving
plugs do the same? Some sinker divers come close, but generally they can't
do it so well. They have a retrieve trajectory that suits casting from
medium depth into shallow.
Occasionally an angler
describes how he caught pike in this or that place while trolling, but when he
stopped and fished it nothing bit the lure. Then he started trolling
again, and caught pike again from the place. He can't say why trolling was
they way they wanted it, it taught him trolling is the best way, he says.
Right clues, wrong conclusion.
Trolling - covering large
areas of water - float tube style You simply fin along at walking speed in your tube, casting a spoonplug first to the left, sink to depth, retrieve it. Then cast to the right and retrieve it. Finning along in your tube move along and continue making alternating casts towards each side. From above the lure is drawing a herringbone pattern on the lake. In this way, you cover a shorter linear distance than a trolling boat, but you have covered a wide band of water two casts wide, eg 120 metres wide. In comparison a boat only covers an elongated thin strip of fish striking distance either side of the lure, about 6 metres wide, assuming clear water and good visibility of the lure. The stripe of coverage will be narrower in tinted or coloured water due to fish further away not seeing the trolled lure. But your spoonplugging cast, if it misses a fish, 2 casts later will traverse the bit of water beside the fish and give it another chance to attack. This technique cancels out "ability to troll" as an advantage of high powered boats over float tubes.
There is more Buck Perry wrote a book called "Spoonplugging" . It is well worth reading no matter what species you fish for because it will change your fishing strategies for the better. The research in that book is very illuminating. You can get it, and spoonplugs if you want to try them at www.buckperry.com and a surprisingly few tackle stores. |
A spoonplug is a diving plug, or diving crankbait which has a "U" shaped
metal body instead of the more usual round cross section body which are
more common. Essentially it is a plug which has been stamped out of
metal sheet in the way that spoon lures are usually manufactured.
One person described
spoonplugs as ugly lures, like a shoehorn that has been stood on.