Perfect

Sometimes, if it doesn't look perfect you can bet that it'll be passed on by for something that is; purchasing, making, and then fishing with that perfect offering isn't as hard as it "might" seem.

Timothy Kusherets

This battling salmon struck the hook while drifting a size ten corkie. Look closely at the head where the leader line ends at the head; that pink thing is a perfect corkie (Lil Corky). In the sporting goods store I scrutinized every single corkie, which can take a long time but worth the effort and the payoff is inside this fish's mouth right now! It's perfect! It's easy to find offerings like this when a little care and time is taken...it definitely gets more fish on the hook!

I’ve always said “if you want to catch a fish you have to think like a fish” and the same can be said for the way fish see things. Even though this is the time of year when rivers tend to run high, they eventually taper off, level out, and fall and that’s when they’ll see things very well which is when this technique comes in very handy indeed.
As often as I can I take the time to store those lures and offerings that put fish on the bite and those that don’t. Taking them home and running them underneath a scanner allows me to see flaws that might otherwise go unnoticed. Lures that have rough spots, chips, and deformities almost always put fish off the bite and those imperfections may not be as plain to see as one might think. Fish get extremely close to the things they intend to bite and that’s especially true when they feel pressure, and when the pressures on they’re looking for something perfect.
One day, while fishing, it seemed every fisherman on the river was getting their limit while I stood around amusing myself with snags and retying. I had been using the same scent, yarn, corkie, weight, leader length, and casting to the same holds other fishermen had previously caught steelies in, but on that day I couldn’t catch a cold in a snow storm. Trying every trick in the book I was about to give up the day when my line was pounded and I’d finally gotten a great looking steelhead that weighed in at fourteen-pounds. After stringing it up I checked the leader for nicks and found abrasions the length of it so I stored the leader in my vest pocket retied another and went back to fishing. From the time I’d landed the fish to the time I was back in the water could not have been more than a few minutes, but the bite had gone off and stayed that way for an hour. Eventually a fisherman asked if he could fish the same slot and I agreed. In less than five minutes he had a fish on shore and was back in the water. He had been using a bobber-jig setup to fish a back-eddy near the slot that produced my fish but the distance between the two was only a matter of feet and his technique worked so I thought I’d give bobber fishing a try. After an hour went by the fisherman next to me had gotten his limit and bailed on out of there. Even though I’d used the exact same setup he had used I hadn’t gotten a single nibble. Abandoning bobber fishing I’d gone back to drift-fishing and got another strike just before dusk. Since the fish had been landed just before the fading light I called it a day and broke down the gear and headed for home.

All of these spinners could catch fish but only the one on the right will get hits fast. It’s perfect in every sense that matters to fish. The other two spinners have nicks from the teeth of fish, and once that happened the spinners stopped performing as well as they had when they were perfect.

After all the gear and fish had been put away it occurred to me to take a look at the two corkies that had gotten fish. I decided to look at both of them on the scanner at 1,600 times the normal size I found that they were absolutely perfect except for small nicks on the sides, which I’m sure are teeth marks. All the other drift-fishing gear I’d thrown at the darned fish such as corkies, jigs, and spinners had some kind of imperfection that ranged from scratches, deformities, to chips in the paint but were so small they looked inconsequential.
Perfect, the fish had been looking for something that was perfect and I’d only thrown two things at them the entire day that fit the bill. Then and there I decided that if that’s what they wanted then that’s what they’ll get. The very next day I set aside some time to do some serious shopping.
At the sporting goods store I headed straight for the corkies and began to look at various colors all size ten. When drift-fishing corkies are the hands-down preferred tackle and steelies will let you know it. Before that day in the store I thought I’d been very careful about my selections of corkies, but I was wrong. For every one that was perfect I had to wade through ten to fifteen to find it. Don’t misunderstand me. All of them had the potential of getting fish when the rivers rise and waters turn turbid but the particular nature of fish in clear water was not the same. To get all the gear I needed for the next day, including spinners and jigs, it took me four hours and I was driving the guys behind the counter nuts. At times I even gathered crowds wondering what I was doing looking at baits and lures so closely; but it didn’t matter. I knew the fruits of my labor would reveal themselves the next time out on the water.
A week had passed since the last fishing trip before heading out. Every corkie had been pre-tied to leaders with perfect placement of the line, yarn, and hooks and then sealed them in a plastic bag to protect them from any adherent odors. Everything I took that day had been given the same care and the fish would let me know if the work was up to muster.
At the crack of dawn there were about thirty fishermen who lined the banks all with the same intentions. From previous experiences I knew that fishing with the glut of fishermen would soon put them off the bite so I headed upriver to change things up. As soon the light hit the far side of the misty river the bite was on. Each and every time a fish hit the hook I’d change the leader whether I landed the fish or not. With the river running clear there wasn’t an option to do anything else and the fish let me know it. That day I took sixty-three tied leaders with me and every leader that didn’t get snagged on boulders, twigs, or drop-offs, produced strikes from fish, so many in fact that the fishermen who were below me soon started wading up to me to fish along side with me. When the bite went off I simply moved upriver to the next hold where fish would soon start striking again. It felt as if I had found the secret technique to keeping fish on the bite. Yes, all the offerings had to be perfect…perfectly natural.
The direction of the cast, drift, presentation, color, sent, and size had to all be in sync if fish are going to be routinely on the bite. It was too easy and that may have been why it had eluded me for so long, as it did with many other skilled fishermen. Now I’m not talking about taking great care of fishing gear and lures, I’m talking about taking perfect care. The time it takes to invest in that kind of attention is painstaking but definitely worth the trouble.
If you take all the fishermen who were out that day and combined their catches and compared them to mine they were out-fished five-to-one. The boast is real and so were the fish and it wasn’t the last time.
Paying attention to the perfectly natural lure or bait applies anything you put in the water with that vital exception. When the waters run turbid with little to no visibility all bets are off. To tell the truth, fishing turbid water is really one of the best times to fish anyway but if you’re looking for something to test your talents then this is the way to go.
Pressure does put fish off the bite, but with care, investment of time, and the willingness to go against the grain; you’ll hook into fish when others are left to scratch their heads. The funniest thing about all of this is you could actually share all your fishing information with other fishermen and withhold that one little clue and they still won’t get the same amount of fish you do. Ironically, there has been many times I’ve told fishermen right to their faces about the measures needed to keep them on the bite in clear water conditions and they still wouldn’t take the necessary steps; too bad for them but good news for you.

© Timothy Kusherets, 2005/07