Casting for gold – give slow a go by Marc Ainsworth

Casting for golden perch is often about finding the right snags and the right lures, but it's also about the right retrieval speed.

An autumn trip to the Murray River reminded me how important it is to consider the retrieval speed of floating hardbodied lures. We'd cast for several days with lackluster results; a few good Murray cod and several taps from what we suspected were golden perch. But the overall catch rate was poor and we were regretting not fishing earlier in the season.

The February floods had put a stop to that!

I reflected on a few of the casts that had drawn hits and concluded I might have been retrieving the lure, in this case a No. 2 StumpJumper, a bit slower. With a concentrated effort one afternoon, a slower retrieve resulted in more hits. Importantly, lots of those hits turned into landed golden perch.

I shared my thoughts with companions in the boat and over the four remaining days of the trip we all enjoyed far better fishing including one crackerjack morning session of 11 encounters between three of us. Four of these encounters were hits, two were follows and five were landed golden perch, the best of which measured 50cm. A big improvement!

There was something to these slower retrieves.

CAMPFIRE REFLECTIONS

Around the fire that night, we got talking more about slow retrieve speeds for native fish. I was reminded of another May trip to the same part of the Murray several years earlier, when Brad Sissins and I enjoyed some terrific golden perch fishing down deep on very slowly retrieved lipless crankbaits. So slow was the retrieve that I couldn't feel the lure's action.

It took all my effort not to lift the rod and check the lure was still swimming properly. But sure enough, it was the slow retrieve that got their interest when nothing else seemed to work.

Similarly with single bladed spinnerbaits, which are a favourite of mine; a super slow retrieve is often a winner. Again, so slow that you wonder if the blades are spinning as they should.

IT'S NOT NEW

Further post-trip reflections with another fishing pal, Stephen Booth, reminded me that slow retrieve golden tactics have actually been around for ages. Take Lake Windamere in NSW for instance. Shore-based casting of Deceptions was one of the most deadly ways to fish the lake, and probably still is. We used it to great effect more recently at Lake Eildon too, when in the spring of 2009 the goldens were close in and anglers from all over northern Victoria were at Eildon for the hot shore bite.

A cast Deception, or any slightly buoyant hardbodied lure, could be cast out from the shore, wound down to running depth, and then slowly retrieved to the bank. The goldens often followed it right in then whacked it several feet from your rod tip. But the retrieve was slow, often with pauses. And the guys casting lipless crankbaits from boats weren't doing too much different.

Let the lure get down a bit and then commence a slow retrieve.

OLD LESSONS

So alas, I'm re-learning lessons of yesteryear all over again. Strange how we forget, or fail to apply