Yaminomusuko's fishing in Japan

  

So we left off with a basic intro to light game soft lures.

There are several effective methods to fish light soft lures.

The most effective method for single hook jigheads is a steady slow retrieve. Start at the top and work your way down to deeper zones. The key is to have very steady straight retrieve lines. Alot can hamper this which is why its actually one of the most challenging retrieves.

Once you master this you can move on to things like slow retrieve with a shake into a tension fall. (tension fall is when you have your rod tip parallel to the ground or pointed down).

Other effective methods are a double twitch and a curve fall (curve fall is when you have your rod tip pointed more or less up. Giving the slow fall a steeper angle than a tension fall)

Curve falls and tension falls are great because you get to show the fish a slow moving falling bait which most fish find appealing. Alot of fishes main diets consist of shrimp. So imagine a small 1.5 to 2 inch worm on a 1gram jig head slowly falling after a twitch or two. I am not a fish so I dont know what it would look like but I am sure you would be mimicing a shrimp or plankton of some sort.

This is actually where my favorite type of light worm fishing comes in.

Office Maria came out with a product not too long ago called "Dart Squid" the site this links to is all in japanese so alot of you might not be able to read it.

But you can slow retrieve it but the shape and balance of this worm is made for quick left right darting. How you acheive this is by twitching your rod tip about 20~30cm up and down. The trick to this is to have a have a little bit of line slack between twitches.

Here is a great series of videos of how to twitch.

http://tinyurl.com/mojp79

Here is a great video of how Mebaru eat shrimp and zoo plankton.

http://tinyurl.com/m9eksd

I used to use a 1.5g jig head from Maria called Beak head. But now I use D-type Shaku heads from Jazz.

They have perfected this to a T.

I suggest use the 1.5 gram when the tide isnt moving fast. When the water is moving like a river or the wind is really strong I move up to the heavier ones.

Here is a Mebaru that I caught last week using this method.



Here are some that I caught a while back using the same method.




What you want to do is to fish at night, keep tight to structures in the water. Keep in mind that light can also be a "structure" of sorts.

I usually cast into or around seaweeds, underwater blocks, breaks in the breakwaters, tetrapods, bridge legs, foundation cason seams, the line between shadow and light on the water, or even rip curls in the tide.

Any place that gives cover for fish and where small baits get drifted into and cant get out are great places to start. Alot of zoo plankton tend to accumalate around light, and smaller bait fish chase the zoo plankton, and so on.

Well, I have to get ready to try out a new reel I just got, so until next time, good luck and great fishing.