Thursday night, opening day for the rivers (whoohoo!) and I was looking at a snag infested hole trying to decide what to chuck in there first. I decided that I may as well use something I didn't particularly care about since I was probably going to lose it anyways, rooted through my tackle box and came up with a couple old strip on spinners. I don't even know how I have a strip on spinner, I've never fished one or even heard of anyone I know using one, these things pre-date my fishing days by so much time I don't even know how I know what they are or how to rig them!
Here's a picture of a strip on spinner, by coincidence there's a few other timeless classics in there too. It doesn't get much more basic than this. Anyways, you can take the hook off the spinner, shove the shank into the minnow at its anus and out its mouth, then put the hook back on the spinner. I started fishing them and right away I started getting bit pretty much every cast. The strip on outfished anything else I tried by a good margin.
By using the right sized rubber core sinker about 12" ahead of the spinner I could get it to run whatever depth I needed as I jumped to different holes. That spinner will work even when retrieved at a crawl, something about the ridiculously slow pace, the flash, and the minnow made this old lure dynamite. An added benefit was that when a fish I wanted to release took the hook deep (actually seems to be quite rare with this setup) I could simply detach the hook, I keep my spinner and the poor fish doesnt have to swim around with a lure in his mouth.
Heavy rains had the river swollen and muddy as heck today, I went back out at noon when the rain slowed down and things were predictably slow. I went to a hole that had been producing good last night and I couldn't buy a bite, I decided to try the strip on again just for the heck of it.... Bam! I was back into fish. I stuck my rod in the holder and let the current work the spinner while I ate my lunch, took a long time to finish cause those darn walleye wouldn't quit biting!
Besides lots of walleye I caught a couple nice Pike, in a good current they sure know how to warm up the drag! I didnt get a picture of either big pike because at that point I was unaware that I had a camera onboard. But here is a picture of a smaller one, there were plenty of these hitting.
That's a pretty good mouthful for a goldeye, but they didn't seem to care. Although I tried, today I couldn't catch a thing on anything else, I might have got maybe one fish on a spoon or a jig at some point but if I hadn't "discovered" the strip on last night it would have been a pretty slow day.
And that's about my favorite type of fishing... on a river with a bunch of different species, tossing something that just about anything will hit. Every time you feel your rod bump it might be anything from a 12" goldeye to a 40" pike... great times!
Just "discovered" strip on spinners, a few pics.
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