Size Matters

[Priority1]

When the fish are actively feeding and are hungry the big lures are in order. When they are full or lethargic the little stuff is what gets them. You just finished a big steak dinner, and the waitress asks if you would like desert. Most likely you will pass on the desert. You are too full and can't eat another bite. You get to the register, to pay the bill, and you pop a couple of tiny butter mints they have in a dish. You were too full for pie, but that little treat got you. Sometimes huge fish are taken with a tiny spoon or even a jig. The small offerings are the dinner mint. The big Spoons and plugs are the steak dinner. This may be over simplifying it, and sometimes all the logical rules go out the window, but most of the time it holds true. When something isn't working, do something different, even if it seems wrong. Like always, "Find out what they want, and give em lots of it.".

[1mainiac]

Very true Frank it is why the flies work and I always go to smaller plugs and spoons as the sun comes up. A small Black Raspberry and a couple of the Nitro spoons were my go to lures as cond changed in the early morn. Big and glowing were my plan for darkness but as we approach sunup I would begin to switch out to the Nitro's and flies. As soon as I can see well enough the core program goes out usually with small spoons. And the flies go out as well. My evening program is just reversed I start with small stuff and flies and add bigger glows as it gets dark. The big dif is if I have room around me I will leave the cores out in the dark even though I can't see them very well because they will still catch fish and I would rather reel them in with a fish on them. One evening we were in 100 fow and only had 2 fish in the box when we decided to call it a night. But rather then pull lines and run in I decided to just troll in behind the Ferry so we agreed to pull lines at 60 ft and pointed to the lights picked up a nice King in 70 ft about 7 lbs and did not reset the rod as we were close to 60 ft when we neted it so I figured we had our mercy fish and began to pull lines. Three of our 4 core poles had fish on them nothing big but all legal fish 2 small Steelhead and a 3 lb King. All on small spoons from my daylight setup a few hours ago. We set lines at 7:30 it was now coming up 11 and we had 6 nice fish 2 on flies the rest on small spoons. Big spoons and plugs never took a bump the biggest fish in the box was about 8 lbs and the small Steelhead were between 2 and 3 lbs.

[2UNREEL]

Nice way to put it Frank, I coudnt of said it better. I heard of alot of guys moving away from magnum size spoons this last summer. But everthing has there time and place. As far as Jim talking about a daytime and a nightime spoon size I have not seen a difference but I will generally run a mixed bag of sizes untill I know what they like.

[1mainiac]

Well let me clear some of this up nearly all of my glow spoons are magnum spoons. Untill this year I never bought any glow spoons in smaller sizes. As such my glow program has always been big spoons plugs and flasher fly combos. This year I bought a few of the Nitro spoons and some other smaller glow spoons and they worked well. But if I am dropping lines at 4:30 am the first thing down will most likely be magnum Moonshines as my dark approach is big and bright so to speak. Next approach will be dipsey's with either glow flashers and flies or small glow spoons. Since I often fish with just my wife that is our 6 rod setup in the dark. If there are more people in the boat I have room to make changes if not as the sun comes up I pull 2 riggers and put out a core program that most of the time was 2 5 color setups targeting Steelhead and Coho since they taste better. The only times I had enough people in the boat to run the 12 rod setup was during the tournaments with 6 rod limits. So carring 18 rods is kinda overkill as I hardly ever used my copper setup or my wire divers. Except for the 19 lb king I caught and the one my wife caught all of our big fish came on magnum spoons this year. So I pretty much always have a big spoon or 2 down. The night I was talking about we had 10 rods out coming in in the dark 4 mag glows on the riggers 2 flasher fly combos on divers and 4 small spoons on the core setups we never had a fish touch the big spoons all night we got 3 fish on flies and the 3 I dragged on the core setups for a bonus. But as a general rule I think the mag glows do better in darkness maybe just cause I fish them more in the dark.

[slipknot]

Priority1, I really like the way you explained the "dinner mint". Its a much better/easier way for me to explain to people why big fish will bite little lures. I'm always hearing the "big fish - big bait" comments from rookies and its so untrue a majority of the time. Thanks to your post, I now have an easy way of explaining the use of smaller lures in the pattern.

[GLF]

I know of a 30lb king that was caught on a Stinger scorpian size spoon.

[Priority1]

Exactly, How many big salmon, browns and steelhead have been on small Cleos?

Fishon.

[Yoda]

Food for thought on this one. What are you pulling out of the bellies of your fish at the cleaning station ? 6 & 7 inch alwives, 2 to 3 inch sticklebacks or smelt ranging from 3 to 7 inches. I know for a fact that the bait that we pull out of our fish in Northern Lake Huron (Detour, St.Ignace) are small 99% of the time anymore we run Regular size spoons here, and do very well with them, it's pretty rare that we throw a Magnum spoon over the side anymore in Huron.

[salmonquest]

'I know for a fact that the bait that we pull out of our fish in Northern Lake Huron (Detour, St.Ignace) are small 99% of the time"

I can verify that I am often surprised how small some seem. It doesn't seem like the calorie input matches the out put to catch them. I do think that some of the new hollow body swimbaits seem to match up in size and color scheme. I'm going to try to find a way to run them this summer.