Spring lure poll!!

[MuskyDan]

After fishing with the IceMan last weekend I have suddenly opened myself up to a whole new concept of fishing. I was wondering how many people fish slowly in the spring or anytime for that matter and do a boatside pause with their lures. I guess I have always heard about slow rising baits, or suspending baits, but never took the time to understand the idea behind them.

So how many of you do the boatside pause, is it really boatside, ten feet away from the boat, does water clarity depend on anything, what type of baits do you pause?

I am from the old school of the In-fisherman, every video I have ever seen Al looks like he is on fast forward. I guess I always thought that was the only way to fish. One of the classic lines that Doug Stange says when explaining the figure 8 is to never stop the bait, always keep it moving or the fish is gone. I took that to heart and I think it has costed me in some cases.

So who pauses the bait at boatside, where, when, and why??

[Will Schultz]

Really... I wonder where he picked that up? :? You could have learned all about spring techniques like this at the April meeting when I talked about Spring Tactics - That Work.

Certain lures do this well and they should be neutral buoyant or at least near neutral. Some lures shouldn’t be used for obvious reasons, a bucktail paused ten feet out will NOT work. The key here is to understand that the pause is the start of your figure eight. Just like a hard rip up to the boat with a deep crank it’s a technique that will trigger some fish before you get them all the way to the boat.

[Kingfisher]

Dan , you have revealed the secret of the Little Claw. We made this lure to (BARELY FLOAT) or sink very slowly. Some will just barely float but most just barely sink. The trick is that a neutral bait will hang in the zone without rising or sinking. In the claws case this is just under the surface(6" to 2 feet) Twitch pause ,rip pause ,pull pause . The fish hit it during the pause most every time. It wobbles forward and turns sideways gliding into the pause. This was accomplished by making the lure from Oak . This killed two birds with one stone. We can use screw eyes because the oak is strong and makes the bait want to sink so we dont have to weight it. We fished slow all last year and our catch rate went up fron 23 fish in 2003 to 98 last year, Kingfisher

[Duke]

Dig the pause. Tend to do it only when on a spot that really smells musky, or on a cast when you just KNOW there has to be a fish there! It has worked. In the past used it mostly in the fall, but trying to remember to do it more especially on those lakes where the fish don't like to come all the way to the boat most times.