Fishing In Croatia (and in the neighbourhood): September 2011

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

First Impressions of Duo lures!

This is a long and hot summer in Croatia, without or with less rain that average, so water level of rivers and lakes are extremely low. Fish are less active than normally, and have short time frame of feeding. Some species like asp are especially careful in this conditions, and successfully avoid bigger lures. This is why I love small size and shape of Grace Minnow Elena 70F and Ryuki 50S lures.

First few hours of fishing with DUO lures I was at river Sava near Zagreb, where water is faster and occasionally we are catching asp, barbel, chub, and perch on wide range of artificial lures and flies. Ryuki 50S is ideal lure for faster water, although I prefer floating, this sinking lure is great for fast searching of the river rapids. First catch was a little asp, that was hunting a little pray near the bank and couldn't resist Ryuki. Beside this one I lost one much bigger asp, probably because of the size of the hooks, or just because he missed the lure. Later, I found that Ryuki has one wonderful characteristic. Ability to fish in decay while sinking, in a pause with a little twitching. Two times a barbel attacked it, but they didn't hooked like a few perch that grabbed it before. Chub is another species that likes this little, nervous lure, and I had a few. Generally Ryuki 50S will be adored by those who practice ultra light fishing techniques, and will bring them many trout among other game fish. In my opinion it will be great for our sea bass too, and for some other sea species. The main characteristics are: heavy weight sinking lure, capable to reach long distance with nice nervous, sharp action and reflection fish can't resist.

Second day I went for bass fishing on some local ponds near Karlovac town. Again, desperately low level of water, and hot weather. Fish were lethargic, and less active than last time when we were fishing with crank baits there. This time my plan was to try Grace Minnow Elena 70F and catch some bass. But it was not easy, at the begging. I was crying for DUO crank lures, that didn't arrived now, so I had to use some other crank lures, and a few smaller bass were caught in few hours of fishing. Few hours later I had few bites on Elena, smaller fish and nothing special happened till the end of the day. Elena has been thrown in one small bay, with pull and pause, then twitch and ... bite! Decent bass around 40 cm long was up, and after short fight outside of the water, ready to be photographed under low light conditions. Few shoots, and ready to go back to the lake. At the end Elena gave me a fish of the day, and confirmed my trust that this lure is a great for bass,with his size, shape, colors and twitching abilities.

Next time I was fishing with Ryuki 50S lure at the river Sava for just few hours at the evening. Now with more confidence to this lure and I knew what I have to do. I expected some bigger asp, so I decided to replace last hook with a bigger one. This was good decision, because 7 fish were caught with much better percentage of realization than before. Chub were crazy about Ryuki, and I had 2 asp, the second one at the evening was really nice fish long around 70 cm. The main point is that I didn't retrieve Ryuki a lot, I used speed and power of river with twitching to add life to this great lure, that gave me a dozen of fish in just 2 short fishing at river Sava. Remember this is a "hot and hard to catch fish" period of late summer...

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Like a box of chocolate - Introducing DUO lures

Box of chocolates arrived at my address yesterday. Well, not the real box of the chocolates, but this sweet lures are like a real candy to me. Japanese lure manufacturing company DUO produces wide range of plastic lures, for different fishing techniques and fish species. Mostly for salt water species like sea bass, but they are great for many fresh water species like asp, chub, perch or trout. They have some great bass crank bait, and I can't wait to try to get some on it. Take a look to DUO web site to see some of their products: http://www.duo-inc.co.jp/en/

So, what was in the box? 4 types of lures.
Wonderful top water Realis Pencil 110 that will be great for bass and pike surface action.
http://www.duo-intl.jp/en/product/pencil110/#!prettyPhoto/0/
Small Sperhead Ryuki 50s is great for small stream light fishing techniques, very popular here in this region. Action can be seen on this video:

Grace Minnow Elena 70F looks like a perfect lure for Adriatic sea bass, but also for asp and many fresh water species.
http://duo-inc.co.jp/en/freshwater/grace-minnow-elena/grace-minnow-elena70f/
The last, and the smallest, but maybe the sweetest is top water popper lure Pocopoco. What to say, bass or some salt water species at Adriatic will love it ;)
http://duo-inc.co.jp/en/saltwater/tetra-works/tetra-works-pocopoco/

On this blog you can expect some DUO fishing reports in future!