INDIANANGLER

Not much happening on the forum for quite some time now!

I was in a tackle shop today in New Zealand, looking for some heavy Toby lures to use for Mahseer fishing and other species.

The maximum weight that was available in this particular make (Killwell of NZ) was 20gm, which I felt was inadequate for my purposes.

I was about to walk away when the sales assistant showed me a neat trick they use in New Zealand to make these lures heavier, so as to catch salmon in their large,fast flowing rivers.

He showed me how to double the Toby by placing one on top of the other, which is possible as they are very symmetrical. This way, one effectively gets a lure that weighs 40gms with the same action!

You of course have to remove all existing split rings and use a much larger size that will go through both holes, so as to join the lures, and then use a larger hook as well.

I thought this was a neat idea and wound up picking up a pair of these Toby lures. Now I just have to try them out on those tempting rivers!

Cheers,
Kingfish

Some quick pictures corroborating the above, I have not yet had the time to double the lures.

Some lovely DAM lures I also picked up locally, excellent for tiger fish in Africa and I am pretty confident these would be good for Mahseer.

The New Zealanders use these to catch salmon in their fast running rivers.

Kingfish

Seems like a pretty neat trick and a good selection of colors especially for the Mahseer!

Cheers

I remember in the old days some of the guys used to melt led into these Toby spoons and stick it with araldite, they seem to have worked.

Hello Bobby,

So where and for what species did they use these lures, please? Mahseer .. barra?

Kingfish

Kingfish,
Very interesting. I will give this a try sometime.

For Ravas/Threadfin and Barramundi, but I remember some of the guys who fished fresh water did so for Mahseer too, but mostly for the former salt water species given the distances they needed to cast, we needed heavy spoons.

Most of us used to make our own spoons, I had a homemade spoon that was given to me by a friend of mine that was well over 50 grams perhaps more like 70, Mild Steel; chrome plated, flat, tapered 2 cm at one end about and 1.5 - 1.7 cm at the other, about 4mm thick. It was the most effective spoon I have ever used. The bend was towards the front about a third of its length from the top. It had a more angular edges that were slightly rounded with a grinder/File. The reason I believe this spoon was so effective was the positioning of the bend. It caused the spoon to "flutter" in the water as opposed to "wag". I made several copies of brass and have a few even today. You could cast it a devil of a distance and boy did it work. Treble hooks were at both ends of the lure.

We even had guys who made heavy spoons, old timers will remember a guy in Mumbai called Ivan Wallace who made his famous Dexter and Heavy Dexter which were very popular. I still have these spoons. Some of the guys named these spoons "Dodger" because they complained they wagged too mush and the fish missed the lure, so the straightened them a bit or glued a lump of lead if the depression at the back.

Ha Ha...miss those days, when I had more fish than equipment to my name :)

" Treble hooks were at both ends of the lure" ?! How would one cast such a thing?

Bobby, it would be great if you could post some pictures of those homemade lures!

Regards,
Kingfish

Yes trebles at both ends!! and they did work, the reason these guys did so is because they believed the predatory fish hit the head of the baitfish rather than the tail as it is easy to swallow a fish head first. It is logical when you think about it.

There was also a guy called Ferrie, who had this unusual spoon he used to make himself the top of the spoon was flat and straight (it may have had a very very slight bend cant remember), however if you looked at it from the side, the front section, a third of the length from the front was much thinner and flat and the other 2/3rds (towards the end) was broad and weighted the angle where it thickened and about 120 degrees if I try to picture it from memory. The spoon was very angular and the spoon was also tapered towards the front end if you looked at it from the top. It was a real heavy spoon, and he would cast it a huge distance with his 12 foot surf casting rod, he got the longest casts and also the most hits on this spoon, again when you think about it where this angle was and where my spoons bend was was towards the front end, as opposed to the conventional spoon having the curve towards the rear end. Again this spoon had a magnificent flutter as opposed to a wag.

How well did they work with hooks at both ends? To my eye they worked fine, but then again I never did bother to compare hit ratio to a spoon with a treble at the tail end only. We all had hooks at both ends of the spoon, all the trace lines were stainless steel when we fished in salt water and we never caught anything on these lures other than Threadfin and Barramundi, I did catch Mangrove Jacks once on a slimmed down version of these spoons (the heavy one with the bend in front) and the very rare rock cod. I was the first one to take out the metal leader and switch to mono and that was only after i switched to plastics. The hit ratio more than doubled without the metal leader on spoon and plastics.

I will take a look to see if I have any of these lures here with me in Hong Kong, but I doubt it. When I go back to Mumbai I will photograph a few of these old spoons and post the pictures.

Hello Bobby,

Now we know the value of old hands on the forum!

Who else could tell us of bygone anglers and their innovative gear, especially in those days when angling gear in India was so hard to obtain!

My thanks to you Bobby for this interesting and informative vignette and sincerely hope you can post some pictures for us to see.

Regards,
Kingfish

Hi Kingfish,

Those were interesting times in India, tackle was so very dear, I was lucky I lived 3 minutes from the sea just off Carter Road, so I learnt to fish there at a very young age, during the holidays i fished on a daily basis, sometimes breaking and going home for lunch and then getting back to angling after. When i started spinning all I had was one spoon which was a home made affair. Some of the guys tell me that they actually used hand line with a spoon that they used no rod and reel, I saw this only once and it was a few years ago on a beach called Honawar at the dead of night. A lot of my trebles were actually bound singles.

Angling books were hard to come by especially for someone like me with very limited financial means and there was no internet, learning to fish was just by observation and trial and error. A lot of the old timers applied more superstition than science but yes, they also did have a wealth of knowledge but it was up to you the sieve the the wheat from the chaff.



Regards,

Bobby

In my native it is quite common to see local fisherman using lures with hand line. But 10 years back the same set of local fisherman used to crack jokes at me for using lures in the shore.

Last week I retrieved a snagged lure. It is a duplicate halco laser pro used by the local fisherman. They have used single 'J' hook and connected it to the lure using wire leader. I have the lure in my native and next week again I am going there and will post a pic of that.

Venkat,

Look forward to the pictures ... ingenuity knows no boundaries!

Kingfish

Hi All,

Was going through some of my old pictures as the wife was in one of her creative moods making a scrapbook for my daughters birthday and came across these pictures of the lures I was talking about, I am pretty sure that I have posted these images at some point on this site already, but here goes anyway:

Hello Bobby,

Thanks for posting the pictures ... as they say, necessity is the mother of all inventions!

I notice that the lovely Barra was caught with a Daiwa GS reel, is that the same reel you posted a picture of a little while ago?

Kingfish

The Diawa GS9, yes it is the same reel, my old work horse...

Here are the pictures..

Regards,
H.Venkatesan.

Nice pictures, Venkat.

Change the hooks and split rings and reuse it for barra!

Kingfish

Hi Venkat,

Can you post a close up picture of the lip of that lure, I do not think it may be a Halco after all. There was a guy in Chennai that I met some years ago who made copies of these lures that he sold commercially in the local market in India, his name was David if I remember correctly, and he made these lures under a brand called Sea Queen.

Regards,

Bobby

In the last image near the tail "Halco" is written, but this is a duplicate lure available in stores at our place.

Looks like David is still in business

Bobby,
Thats a nice barra !!Cool looking spoon that you have made !!

Thanks Binnu, we made a lot of stuff in those days..

We also had a lure that we called a pepsi, after the old ice candies you used to get in India in a plastic sheet tube. I do not know how many of the younger members would have seen that .

Anyway, I also used to buy aluminum, tubes/hollow bars the ones we used to hand the old styled curtains on, cut lengths of about 5 - 6 inches stuff one end with lead, and sometimes the other end with Styrofoam to prevent the lead from moving, other times with loose ball bearings, and flatten each end diagonally across. They worked like poppers and were a killer on Ravas (threadfin). So you see I had re-invented saltwater poppers a long time back as had I free flowing weighted lures for casting distance...wish I had patented the damn thing :)

Neat ..... do you think you could make one now and post its picture?

Kingfish

Sure Kingfish, I am off on a proper fishing trip on the 11th after a good 6 years. Will be doing the old run down the Konkan and I am sure it will bring back a lot of memories. I should be able to get you pictures of the originals, from my old cupboard.

All Home Made Lures for the days gone by, they all worked, there is the famous pepsi as well, we did not have the means both financial or logistical to get our hands on lures, so we innovated:

Bobby,

Thanks for putting up the pictures.

Amazing the lengths to which you went to make these lures. A little bit of angling history of India
in these photos!

Whatever happens, do not discard them.

Kingfish

Thanks Kingfish,

Angling History, well I would not go that far :)...besides I just turned 50 yesterday.

I most certainly will not discard those lures. The pepsi in the picture is not mine, it is a very close friends lure that somehow I have not been able to contact, he is one of these people who is averse to technology, when i had first made these pepsi lures I had given him a few, and believe it or not he continues to use them till I met him last. Those pictures are in 2012 when I met him last and we went fishing. I was surprised to see the gear he was using, still those old heavy rods and massive reels for spinning and yes the pepsi and the wooden lure in the second pic. He still used wire trace for Barra and Threadfin and I gave him about a dozen larger Yo Zuri lures. And he said, he will go back and paint all of them silver, I did my best to convince him otherwise and I am not sure if he listened or not. I just have not been able to contact him after that, he changed his phone number, does not use a mobile, no email address nothing. When I met him in 2012 it was by chance he was driving past my house and saw the door open and dropped in realizing I was in town, he had moved house and had come all the way from Malad to Bandra to cut his hair and develop film from his camera....yes he does not trust digital cameras too :))

Bobby

Happy 50th Birthday, Bobby.

You are still a young man, well behind my age!

You know, in a way I admire your friend for his stand against technology. It takes strength of character
to be able to do that .... more power to him.

All the best,
Kingfish

Thank you very much Kingfish.

Don't know about resisting technology, I believe if you don't change you get left behind. I remember when I stopped using wire traces my strike rate increased perhaps 10 times...but yes not all changes are good.

By the way that pepsi lure is not one I had made. When you had asked me to take a picture of the lure last time, when I got home it was dark and my phone was out of battery so I could not, I stayed at my sister-in-laws place which is about a 15 minute walk from my place.

Regards,

Bobby

Happy 50th Birthaday, Bobby!!

Thanks Venky