There are two important aspects to presenting your lure: on the one hand you
are trying to make your lure move in an enticing manner to make a fish strike,
on the other hand you want to present the lure, where the fish can easily notice
it and access. This is why I would like to split the lure presentation in two
parts:
1. Macro presentation meaning the path the lure describes in the water from the
moment it hits the surface after the cast until it leaves the water again.
2. Micro presentation meaning the art of imparting irregularities to the
movement of your lure to make it more attractive to the fish.
Macro Presentation
Usually the lure will not move in a straight line from where it
landed to the rod tip, but will be deflected by several forces: gravity,
current, its own form (especially of course if it has a diving lip). Directly
after the lure lands or rather waters the first question for all sinking lures is:
instant retrieval or let it sink? The question is of course answered by the
holding places of the fish: if they are biting exclusively near the bottom you
want your lure to be close to the bottom as much as possible and you let it sink.
Do the fish bite near the surface or if the water is shallow you begin the
retrieve instantly. If you are fishing snag infested places you don't want the
lure to actually touch the ground. Of course to keep control you have to have an
idea of the depth of your water and the sinking rate of your lures.
The next question is, what speed to retrieve the lure. We are now solely
concerned with running depth. If the trout are, as often, fixed on feeding very
close to the bottom, the lure has to be retrieved slowly to run deep enough.
There are also cases, where you assume the fish to be in a special place and you
want the lure to pass it. A fish might be holding behind a stone in the current
and you want the lure to pass as closely as possible. Or you think there might
be some perch in middle depth by a post standing in the water and have to cast
well past it with a floating plug to make it reach the desired depth by the
post. In these cases the lure has to hit the water in the right place, to be
able to swim past the fishes holding place. If a current is part of the game you
will see that the lure swims in a bow which has to be taken into account. It's
really all about bringing the lure to a zone where it will be attacked by the
fish and I want to put big emphasis on the fact, that just a few centimetres
closer to the ground (or some structure) or even ground contact can be the key
to success. More rarely you have to present a lure on the surface and there it
is also often the contact with the surface resulting in gurgling or splashing
noises which trigger the strike.
Micro Presentation
The simplest presentation is without doubt the straight retrieve. But
even then variations in speed can be important. We've already talked about
slowing down to keep contact with the ground. But sometimes fish will want a
faster lure which has to be deep anyway. Now you need a heavier model which is
faster at the same depth or a plug which still runs deep, even if at higher
speeds. But often enough a steady retrieve just won't do to make a fish bite. We
have to vary the retrieve to rouse the fish. Often enough the fish will take our
lure, if we just pass it close enough but by retrieving it in an irregular
pattern we will get some followers to bite and attract fish from farther away. A
simple variation is to just stop retrieving. It's routine with soft baits but
also works with spoons and spinners, The lures sinking to the ground seem to
provoke an attack probably because the predator wants to prevent the lure from
"hiding". The acceleration of the lure, which make sense with sinking
lures as they near the shore, is also seen as a flight and is often answered by
an attack. But I have to say that I have more success with stopping or sudden
changes of direction than with acceleration. For even stronger irregularities we
use the rod giving it sharp jerks or twitches which are passed on to the lure.
There are uncountable variations of this depending on how often how strong and
how long the movement of the rod are. Quite a lot of lures practically have to
fished with movements of the rod tip, this is often the case with soft baits and
surface lures and of course jerk baits. But Soft baits which create there own
action, like twisters (grubs) or shads do not have to be fished with jerks of
the rod tip (like some people seem to think). They can very well be retrieved
regularly with a pause once in a while and sometimes this can be the better
thing to do. But with poppers, jerkbaits and even normal plugs the success of
jerking is usually much higher. It is important not to be too monotonous in your
jerks. On the surface a rule of thumb is to pause 1-3 seconds after every 1-3
jerks and mix it good to make it erratic, e.g. jerk - pause(3 seconds) - jerk -
jerk - pause(1s) - jerk etc. Especially with perch or black bass I have often
witnessed, that there had to be a certain erratic quality to the movement of the
lure, a rhythmic movement ( twitch-pause-twitch-pause or
short-short-long-short-short-long) could not tempt them. Also with these jerking
retrieves, the overall speed can be important. You can do this quite fast and
aggressive like a panicking fish trying to escape. On the other hand you can do
it very slow with light twitches imitating a dying fish, which works very good
with suspending lures or unweighted soft baits. The worms used for black bass or
also often retrieved very slowly. Irregularity in the course of your lure will
also be achieved when it hits the bottom or structure elements. If you do this deliberately
it is called "bouncing the lure". the deeper diving a plug is, the
stronger it will be put off course by a bounce, because it usually gets caught
with the diving lip an loses its dive.
