Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
So you’ve made 20 casts and still haven’t had a bite, or maybe you’ve made 100 casts with nothing to show for it. Is it time to change your lure? How about if you’ve been trolling for an hour or even 5-hours with no bites? Should you replace all the lures you so meticulously set out and have wiggling behind the boat? When exactly is it time to make a change?
I have a friend who can’t make more than 3 to 4 fishless casts without changing his lure. In one hours time he will use every lure in his tackle box and then start asking to try some of mine. When I suggest that maybe the fish just aren’t where he’s casting, he always says, “I just haven’t shown them anything they like yet”! I have another friend who fishes with a white bucktail – period! No matter what inshore species we’re fishing for, a white bucktail is on his line, and he catches fish! Granted, sometimes he’s out-fished by myself or someone else using a different type of lure, but in most cases, if there are fish to be caught he’ll get his share more often that the other fellow who is constantly changing lures. Some day I’d like to watch the two of them on the same boat at the same time!
Patience! The very essence of fishing involves patiently waiting for something to good to happen on the end of your line. But sooner or later, even the most patient angler will likely succumb to temptation, quit waiting for something to happen and swap-out whatever it is they’re casting or pulling for something that will hopefully solicit a strike.
From the armchair it’s easy to say that if you aren’t catching fish it’s time to change your lure and try something else, and if that doesn’t work try something different again, and again until you hit it right and start getting the bites you’re looking for. But when you’re actually out there fishing, the answer to the dilemma of how long you should wait before changing your lure is not always so obvious.
Before making the decision to swap out lures anglers must first consider “why” they aren’t “getting bit” and recognize that the answer might have nothing to do with the choice of lure. It could very well be that the fish simply aren’t there! Of course, in situations where the water is clear, the fish are up on the surface or perhaps showing on the boat’s fishfinder, an angler can rule out that the fish are not there because he can see them, but for most of the fishing that’s done around Delmarva we seldom see our quarry until it’s on the line, so we just don’t know if it’s there or not until we get a bite.
Getting back to the question of when to change your lure; most anglers will probably agree that the first lure they attach to the end of their line in the morning is one that they have successfully used before. In fact, it’s probably the most “fish-catching-est” lure in their tackle box, often referred to by anglers as their “go-to” lure. Therefore, if an angler starts out with the best-of-the-best on their line, but are not getting bites, unless they know for certain that the fish are indeed “there” and seeing their lure but choosing not to bite it, it could make sense not to change the lure. Instead, fish under the assumption that the fish are not seeing the lure because they simply aren’t there. After all, you can cast every lure ever made into a pond and if there are no fish in the pond you’re still not going to get a bite!
Rather than constantly changing lures and hoping to strike upon the “silver bullet” that catches you a fish, it might be best just to keep working the same tried-and-true lure that you know the fish have responded to in the past and move around a bit hitting different patches of water until you locate the fish. Obviously, if moving to a new location is any kind of a hassle, it would be a lot easier, and make more sense, to first try changing lures, but if you’re working a general area, like maybe around the Rt. 50 Bridge and Ocean City Inlet, it could at times be a better tactic to work your go-to lure throughout the area before you abandon it. If you’re trolling an area, try spreading out a bit and covering new water before you make a major change in the spread behind your boat. Unless I know for a fact that the fish are there and just not responding to what I’m pitching at them, I’m seldom inclined to abandon what I know works and experiment with something different.
Still, there will certainly be plenty of times when the best tactic would be to switch lures. For instance, if the water depth or the strength of the current doesn’t allow the lure to get where it needs to be to get a bite, then experimenting with other lures would probably be a good idea. And by all means, if other anglers are catching fish but you’re not – it’s definitely time to try something different.
Regardless of what some manufactures might want you to believe, there’s no such thing as a single lure that will catch fish at any time, so fishermen always need to keep an arsenal of lures on hand to take advantage of changing conditions and situations. But just because you have a bunch of lures in your tackle box doesn’t mean you need to use everyone just because the action seems a little slow. Sometimes persistence and patience with your old “tried and true” will end up paying off best.
Capt. Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat, “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.