Matching the Hatch

[fishingtx]

What's your opinion?

[Catt]

Which hatch? 😉

[casts_by_fly]

my opinion doesn't matter, just the fish's. 

[einscodek]

If I could vote both I would.  It really depends on condition and factors sorry but I say that alot I guess.

[Fallser]

That's something I associate with fly fishing, particularly for trout.  Since I fly fish most of the time for bass, the closest I come to "matching the hatch"  would be with my frog patterns.  With the rest of my flies, I'm just trying to convince the bass or the trout the fly is something edible.  With lures, if the lake has small bait, minnows,  I probably go with a narrow body lure.  If shad are the main forage, then I might go with a wide body lure.  

  I would go with both.  Until you start casting you have know idea which one is going to work.

[GRiver]

That is a hard question to answer, I was catching fish on a “match the hatch” kinda bait, boot tail that looked like a shiner. A friend was tossing a Christie Critter, from the other end of the boat. It was completely different color and size and caught just as many fish as I did.

I haven’t got it figured yet, but I’m having fun trying.

[greentrout]

My home lake has shad, craws, bluegill and crappie as the main forage. I'll ask the folks in the main office what the bass are hitting and use fishing forecasts. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes that's useless. Try to keep my presentations with that in mind. 

[Cgolf]

For my river smallmouth fishing, matching the hatch absolutely matters. Over the years I have used the 2.75" yum crawbug with both claws on the bait and it still continually gets bit. Since it is a small system, you start to recognize fish that have taken the same bait before. It appears that this bait matches the real thing enough that the fish aren't conditioned to it, and I have fished this system for over 15 years now.

 

Interestingly if one of the claws are bitten off, that bait will no longer get hit, if I use the 3.5" size the bites plummet. It seems the smaller crawbug better matches the size of the craws that are available to the fish.

 

Fishing largemouth on clear water lakes, I do vary the colors I use depending on light penetration below the surface. Smoke and natural colors when bright below the surface and water red when dimmer below the surface, either due to wave action or overcast skies. There I think about color and not the shape of the bait.

[FishTank]

Yes and no. Some lakes I fish are full of gizzard shad and a gizzard shad crankbait works there but it needs to be reflective. Another lake, any thing chartreuse and blue works. I won't get a bite on that gizzard shad lure at that lake but the unnatural chartreuse and blue will be killer. 

 

Sunlight and water clarity can be a factor as well as the size, sound and the motion the bait makes.

 

When you get into softplastic, I start with something dark and work my way down from there. So black and blue,  green pumpkin, and then maybe something gray and white. 

[garroyo130]

100% try to match the blue worms bass love to eat 

[Pat Brown]

I think there's times when both play.  And it's not even predictable based on conditions necessarily.  It's fairly dependent on pressure and lure conditioning and also the mood of the fish you're fishing for and any of those variables are subject to change.

 

It's pretty much best to expect to experiment but to experiment intentionally and pay attention to what the fish tell you.

[FrnkNsteen]

34 minutes ago, Pat Brown said:

I think there's times when both play.  And it's not even predictable based on conditions necessarily.  It's fairly dependent on pressure and lure conditioning and also the mood of the fish you're fishing for and any of those variables are subject to change.

 

It's pretty much best to expect to experiment but to experiment intentionally and pay attention to what the fish tell you.

Agreed,,...

 

I think if the fish are schooling and feeding on something particular, then it's important to match that hatch. If the fish are scattered, I think you need to give them something different that gets a reaction.

 

For instance,... We were fishing down a shoreline up in Ontario for smallies and not having much luck getting a lot of bites. We came upon a series of points that opened up behind them into a grassy bay.

 

We started to notice small fry skipping on the surface, but didn't know what they were or what might be spooking them, ... Until we saw one floating on the surface. They were 2.5 - 3" Northern Pike fry. We looked through what we had and found some 3.5" Mizmo Green Pumpkin Fizz tubes. Green pumpkin body with a smoky tail and blue & purple glitter.

 

Starting flipping those tubes weightless around the rocks let them slowly settle down. You had to pay attention because they were just sucking them up. You would just feel a little weight on it and set the hook. The smallies went NUTs!! We were literally catching smallies on every cast. I counted 9 straight casts at one point.

 

Seemed like the smallies were laying by the rocks ambushing the northern fry as they came out of that grassy bay. We just kept working all the rocky edges and continued to slam them for an hour or so until the bite just finally died off and quit.

 

 

[WRB]

If you are a trout fly fisherman matching hatch is critical.

If you are a bass fisherman using fast moving bright noisy lures you are not matching anything in nature. A soft plastic slow presentation you are using lures that look like something living and editable to the bass. Jig fisherman for bass you are imitating crawdad and some prey the bass are feeding on, not match but close enough to get a bass to strike.

If you are a swimbait fisherman your success is more matching the hatch then other presentations. For example bass feeding on rainbow trout a rainbow trout color and swimming movements often generate a strike.

What hatch needs to be known.

Tom