How to Fish With Artificial Bait
Successful fishing with artificial bait marks the difference between an amateur and a seasoned angler. While almost anyone can throw a worm on a hook into water and retrieve a fish, there is greater sport in catching your quarry with a piece of plastic or wood with dangling hooks. You manipulate the artificial bait with skill and finesse to fool the fish into thinking he's about to chomp into a meal. Instead, the fish will be sitting on your dinner table.
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Instructions
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Match the lure or artificial bait you are trying to catch. For example, largemouth bass are predators that devour baitfish. You'll want to cast surface or diving plugs and crankbaits that resemble the baitfish found in the waters you'll be fishing. Striper bass devour fingerling shad, so silver-colored artificial baits will be a good addition to your tacklebox.
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Stock assorted colors and sizes in your tackle box. The chartreuse spinner that caught your limit of fish during the last outing may be nothing more than a sparkling trinket the next time you're on the water, so keep your options open by carrying plenty of different artificial bait styles. This applies to spinners and crankbaits as well as soft plastic baits like worms and lizards--the key is to carry different sizes and colors with plenty of hooks to rig them.
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Vary your retrieval. A stop-and-go method of cranking artificial lures might prove deadly one day, but if it doesn't work the next day, try something different. Jerk the tip of your rod to make the artificial bait twitch and shudder in the water like a wounded baitfish, then hang on for a savage strike.
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Fish such as trout and salmon, which subsist on a diet of insects, are successfully pursued with floating or sinking (wet) flies and a flyrod. This exciting method of fishing is both spectacular to watch and provides the serious angler with an educational opportunity to learn about entomology (the study of insects) and how this knowledge can help you catch more fish.
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Fish with smaller artificial baits in the spring and larger baits in the fall. Spawning fish in springtime are ravenous and opportunistic, meaning they will attack almost anything that moves past them. In the fall, when fish have had several months to grow, they will seek out bigger baits to satisfy larger appetites.
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Try bottom fishing with jigs in the hot summer months when fish retreat to deep water.
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