spring fever
Well-Known Member
Great trip to Bamfield -lots of fish so I was able to get the objective testing I wanted with a control to fish the LED hootchies against. Let me say off the bat-they won't make a poor fisherman great- but they will give a good fisherman a very useful tool to make him better. The control lures were an anchovy-61/2 ft tie-green OKI flasher -and a 4.0 green glow coyote-60 inch tie-same flasher. We established very early that either of these combinations would take fish-obtaining double headers at times-in depths from 47ft to 89 ft. Next we tried the LED hootchy against either one or the other. During the day (sunny) the LED fished at the same depths did not distinguish itself-in fact it did no better than an ordinary glow hootchy at those depths. We stepped into deeper water-fishing 140 ft and the LED was picking up fish at the rate of the control.
Evening-now we could see the LED winking very clearly on the surface before being put down-this was 1 hour before sunset and the LED was far superior to either control and always took the biggest and last fish of the evening. This scenerio played out the same in the morning This is exactly the way things worked in Mexico as well!! First and last light plus deep-below a 100 ft seems to be it's place. Mid depths in bright sunlight-there are better things to fish.
The best set-up for the hootchy is a cuttlefish in the same pattern as the hootchy you would choose and the LED closest to that colour or white.The easiest hook set-up was a single large 6/0 quality hook as shown below. Hope this helps all. Great go-to lure deep,morning, evening and low light conditions. Its weakness is mid-depths in sunny-hi light conditions-although no worse than a similiar hootchy. See the fishing report in the Bamfield thread
Evening-now we could see the LED winking very clearly on the surface before being put down-this was 1 hour before sunset and the LED was far superior to either control and always took the biggest and last fish of the evening. This scenerio played out the same in the morning This is exactly the way things worked in Mexico as well!! First and last light plus deep-below a 100 ft seems to be it's place. Mid depths in bright sunlight-there are better things to fish.
The best set-up for the hootchy is a cuttlefish in the same pattern as the hootchy you would choose and the LED closest to that colour or white.The easiest hook set-up was a single large 6/0 quality hook as shown below. Hope this helps all. Great go-to lure deep,morning, evening and low light conditions. Its weakness is mid-depths in sunny-hi light conditions-although no worse than a similiar hootchy. See the fishing report in the Bamfield thread