The Spoon with Spinner Blade
Last Saturday, I found a fast run in river to test the innovative ideas for spoon. Those spoons are made from spinner blades and modified to act as a typical spoon lure. The ideas came from the spinner blade I purchased from Cabelas’ Fishing Shop. Originally I was thinking about the possibility of making a spoon from spinner blade. I thought it is pretty much possible to reach a successful performance. But there still existed some differences between these two lures.
First, spinner blade is much lighter and thinner than typical spoon blade. The body weight required for casting to a long distance is obviously different also. For improving the cast-ability of spinner blade, it is necessary to add a split shot on rig. But the additional split shot will reduce the lure activity in motion, especially for conventional spoon lure. When it come to spinner blade, it is really difficult to cast the light rig and keep it at the right depth without any additional spilt shot.
Second, the light body of spinner blade will result in an unstable, over-active motion mode. The unstableness is a disadvantage of controlling and strolling, while an advantage of giving a much active and vivid performance to get a strike. It depends on how you think about it and the strategy you adopt.
(Figure: the combo spoons act as a realistic prey fish in water.)
Third, the light body weight of spinner blades will significantly reduce the possibility of snagging by rocks on river bottom. When I was strolling spoon lure in Hua-lien River, there were always some chances to get a snap due to losing strolling speed, especially for downstream strolling. I used a high gear-ration spinning reel to relieve this problem. For lighter spinner blades, it is less possible to sink when losing strolling speed, and much easier to keep a constant speed by low gear-ratio reel. Also, it is much easier to give spoon active and delicate motion performances without often focusing on keeping strolling speed.
I used #5 or #7 willow-leaf spinner blade as the main body of spoon. I drilled a hole at the other end of blade for connecting hook and tail blade. Gold and silver blades are good options for spinibarbus because they like to chase flashing and glittering lure. Then, add a #2 split ring on the hole and connect a #1 hook, a #2 or #3 Colorado blade as tail spinner.
I adopted two type Colorado blades as tail spinner, the flat and deep types. The motion performance is obviously more active for flat type than deep type. It is possible to adopt Indiana blade to get a more active motion mode than Colorado blades. The combo spoons seem to perform as a realistic prey fish in water. I think it is really attractive to spinibarbus and certainly get a strike. I will prove my point of view in the fishing trip this weekend.