Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been writing about how one might go about increasing their fish catching opportunities. Being willing to target a variety of fish species is one way to increase your catch rate, and using a variety of equipment will also add to your numbers. Another possibility I would like to look into here, is being willing to try new techniques and new lures.

Trust me; I know how easy it is to “get stuck” using a favorite piece of equipment with a favorite lure; we stick with it because it works! I still rely heavily on a few of my go-to lures and techniques, but I have also found that it doesn’t hurt to look into something new or different once in awhile.

Case in point; I remember as a young man I like many others new to fishing relied a lot on worms floated under a bobber — I caught fish quite regularly. Then one day I heard about a company called Creme Lures that came out with an artificial rubber worm — get serious I thought. Who would be dumb enough to use an artificial worm in place of a real one? Well, if you’ve been around fishing very long, you already know that original Creme plastic worm has turned the fishing world upside down. I would dare say that for years now, I often use some type of soft, artificial lure more often than the many hard-bodied lures on the market today. I will even go to the soft plastics before live bait in most cases. I have hundreds of lures of all kinds, but if you were going to take all away but one type for a season, I would opt to keep my soft, plastic grub with a lead-head jig.

Of course, once I started using plastic worms, jigs, and creature baits (soft plastics that imitate who knows what), I learned the many different ways to rig them for the different situations we face as fishermen. I became comfortable with the various worm rigs, and then somebody introduced the “wacky worm” rig. What dummy, I thought, would rig a rubber worm with a hook right in the middle of the worm with both ends hanging down and expect it to take fish? Fortunately for me, a bass fishing friend of mine showed me the technique one day on a lake in the Poconos — it worked, and it worked well. Needless to say, I have added the technique to my ever-growing arsenal.

Many years ago, a writer friend of mine, Charlie Meck, wrote a book titled “Fishing Tandem Flies”. Basically, the book is about attaching a piece of leader to the dry fly you are fishing and adding a nymph to the attached leader to drift along under the dry fly. I’ve been an avid dry fly fisherman for years — why would you do such a thing? Because it works. Charlie and many others have had great success with this technique, and I will definitely be trying it very soon. The dry fly acts as an indicator if a fish takes the submerged fly, but often a hungry trout snatches the dry fly up. It’s different, but more importantly, it works.

I remember the first time I saw a spinnerbait — you know, the lure shaped like a giant opened safety pin. How could you possibly catch bass on such a rig? I learned to use it, and the lure has become one of my favorite lures for largemouths and smallmouth bass.

Then too, there was the soft plastic frog lure that had hooks coming up over the back and tight to the soft plastic so they wouldn’t snag on weeds and the like. The lure can be worked over lily pads and into small openings where they often bring splashing strikes — I can now take bass from the shallow lily pads at the lake’s edge.

And what about the “Swanson Rig” — a tiny, split-tail lead head jig fished below a bobber — at times it’s deadly on panfish.

Again, the point is there are new lures and new ways of fishing those lures being introduced all the time. If you want to add to your catch, don’t be afraid to try these new techniques and lures. I’ve only scratched the surface in this short piece, and I’m sure I’ll be busy adding to my arsenal to further increase my catches as well.