My Current Setup – Rod, Reels and Lures

If you have read about my first cast you’ll know that I’m new to lure fishing but as I own a fishing tackle shop I can get some great gear a bit cheaper than retail.

That said, I have by no means gone big with my first setup.

I have a lure fishing specialist in the shop, he has given me a bit of a head start with learning the different types of rods, reels and tackle bits.

Some ‘beginner’ tips you need to know

A couple of immediate pointers stand out to me. Things that I tried and couldn’t work out or understand why it was done that way, confused me or things that my experience in fishing led me to try.

Bait caster rods and reels are not for me

At least not at the moment, just looking at them messes with my brain and I’m not going to take that leap just yet.

There is lots to learn, but as I’m very familiar with casting the traditional way, the gears and test curves of the traditional rod and reel set ups it seemed silly to add another complication when I’m just starting out.

Along with avoiding bait casters, I’ve decided to stick to the basics of jigging, no neds, weedless rigs or anything too complicated at this stage. Don’t worry, I don’t even know what ned or weedless rigs look like yet, other than not being a super basic set up, we’ll look in to those later.

I have predominantly focused my fishing on carp over the last couple of decades, the biggest thing I learnt is having confidence in what you put out there and knowing it will do the job is 99% of the challenge. Changing too much and trying new rigs, baits and setups just adds to the confusion and drops the confidence levels.

I’ve taken that carp fishing experience in to my lure fishing.

Standard traces are way too bulky

Another thing that really weirded me out when looking at a basic jigging setup was the use of a trace.

I may have been ill-informed here but the advice I got from local anglers and people who do put decent fish on the bank was to use a fluoro trace when targeting perch and zender.

For me, the off the shelf variety are way to bulky, the clips that allow a quick-change of your lure just look so big and clunky. In some cases the clasp on the clip would be as long as the tiny lure I’d be using.

It made no sense, so the first thing I did was to ditch the trace and tie my own fluro leaders which I’d attach direct to the jig head using a palomar.

I’ve seen lots of people using a loop to still allow a quick-change, but again drawing from carp fishing, taking out any unnecessary bulk to potential for the fish to see the line was key.

I’ll probably start tying my own leaders at some point using some carp end tackle, a quick change clip from Korda is less bulky, combining that with crimps would give a decent presentation and still allow a strong trace to avoid snap ups.

For now though, a fluoro leader will do the job.

Travel as light as possible and don’t use carp waders

The vast majority of lure fishing is done using a mobile approach, keeping light but having everything you need on you is vital to catching more fish.

My whole setup was created to be super light, the biggest issue I found was the wet feet one. I wanted to make sure I had some waders so I could jump in the water where needed and explore some areas that were not accessible to others because of bank side vegetation.

The only waders I was aware of where the likes of Vass or similar, used largely to slip in to the water to land fish or take photos. Certainly not designed for staying mobile and light.

Luckily I found some lovely light Greys waders, which I’ll show you in a minute.

There are loads more tips and pointers I’ve picked up already that you might find interesting here. But now, those three are key features of choosing my setup to get started.

I’m obviously fairly new to what makes a good or bad lure rod. Once I have some more experience I’ll be able to give you some awesome technical jargon I’m sure, but for now I’m mainly going on look, feel and how it feels when playing fish alongside how that compares to the rest of the range I’ve seen in my shop.

As I’m largely targeting small canals, shallow rivers and little back waters for perch initially I’ve kept things super light.

Most of the time I’m roaming for miles at a time, looking for spots between the weedy banks so a short and light combo was needed.

The psycho perch seems to punch well above its weight, flinging out 1g lures 30-40 yards with ease. I have no doubt that it is exceptional quality for the price range.

I’ve had a few fish on this rod now, the biggest being a zander of about 4lb

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Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn’t listen.

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She packed her seven versalia, put her initial into the belt and made herself on the way. When she reached the first hills of the Italic Mountains, she had a last view back on the skyline of her hometown Bookmarksgrove, the headline of Alphabet Village and the subline of her own road, the Line Lane. Pityful a rethoric question ran over her cheek, then she continued her way. On her way she met a copy. The copy warned the Little Blind Text, that where it came from it would have been rewritten a thousand times and everything that was left from its origin would be the word “and” and the Little Blind Text should turn around and return to its own, safe country.

---

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