Angle equation solved.
Tastes like shrimp.
TWITCH AND TWIST: THE SECRET
Position the kayak where you can cast upstream and across the current, allowing the lure to bounce downstream.
you’d feel sorry for them if you weren’t laughing so hard at their awkwardness. It’s obvious they’d quickly starve to death if they relied on chasing bait in open water. Their bodies simply aren’t designed for speed or distance running—they’d burn more calories than they could ever catch. What they are flawlessly de-
Thinking like a flounder
OF THE SHRIMP D.O.A. Lures’ Mark Nichols grew up in the live shrimp business, and probably spent way too much of his youth watching them swim before constructing fishing’s first plastic shrimp over 20 years ago. He got the balance just right. I’ve been fishing since I was three, and I have yet to meet a lure that generates so many reaction strikes.
signed to do is ambush a meal that comes to them. Flounder simply park themselves amid bait concen- trations, both eyes focused upward, their adaptive camouflage rendering them virtually invisible on the bottom. When they detect the silhouette of a baitfish or crustacean passing overhead, they burst out of the sand, sink their canines into the prey and descend to the bottom to digest dinner. It ain’t pretty, but it’s efficient. Snook and trout rarely maraude over vast areas chasing food the way jacks and blue-
fish do. Instead, they emulate the lowly flounder; indeed, I catch them along the same edges using similar techniques and lures. They too wait for the food. Ambush species all face into the current, since that’s the direction the forage is com-
ing from. That’s an obvious concept, yet I watch fishermen pitch their lures downcurrent and retrieve them upstream all the time. Why make fishing hard? Feed the fish from the direction they’re expecting. Position the kayak where you can cast upstream and across the current, allowing the
lure to bounce downstream. As my lure of preference has long been a D.O.A. three- inch plastic shrimp that weighs just a quarter ounce, I also try to set up with the wind blowing over my shoulder if at all possible. That, along with very thin braided line, adds distance to a cast, a vital component in fooling the hog trout for which the Indian River Lagoon is famous. In all the years I’ve fished, I’ve never caught what I regard as a gator trout up close in shallow water; rather, the wary old girls were all hooked at the far end of my cast. The longer the cast, the less chance they’ll detect you.
JERRY MCBRIDE’S parents dragged him from the waterfront of Southeast Florida to a Nebraska ranch and fish hatchery at age five, an act bordering on child abuse. But the lessons he learned observing fish every day are still paying dividends.
There’s a learning curve to fishing the D.O.A. shrimp. Mark probably designed it to be fished slowly, but I treat it like any other twitch bait. The key is to throw it upcurrrent of your target and give it plenty of time to sink near the bottom on the initial drop before giving it a short wrist snap. The shape of the lure causes it to plane up in the water column, twist sideways (You tied it on with a loop knot, didn’t you?), suspend briefly and then swim back to the bottom. Give it time to settle again. Repeat.
Congratulations. You’ve just emulated a scenario that fish have utilized to grab an easy meal for millions of years.
As large mullet or other bottom feeders such as manatees graze, they kick up small forage species such as pinfish, shrimp and crabs. This presents a brief feeding opportunity for an attentive predator before the little guys scoot back to the bottom to hide in the grass or mud. It’s an instinctive sight reaction—fish have to respond immediately while the food is vulnerable. That’s one of the reasons I prefer the shrimp—it hangs in the water column longer than most lures, an easy, irresistable target. $2–6 per package;
www.doalures.com.
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