Then and now...

I fished quite a bit when I was a kid and in my early youth. When I was out fishing today, my thoughts went back to those days and how different the equipment is now from then.
Of course, back then I didn't have a lot of money to buy a bunch of different gear and baits, but even if I did, the selection in the stores was very limited.

I had a couple of favorite baits back then that I fished all the time and which I bought over and over again when I lost them. For me those were Abu Garcia Hi-Lo (jointed red/white) and a spoon called Lillauren (copper color). These were/are pretty small baits, especially if you compare to what most pike anglers use today.

There are of course split opinions about what size bait catch the bigger fish. Theoretically I really believe that there is no right or wrong answer. Sometimes the big pike prefers large baits and sometimes it prefers a smaller bait. I would say that it depends on how much it has had to eat earlier... obviously! I mean, would you gobble down a large pizza right after you had a XL burger? I don't think so!
Based on my own experience alone, smaller baits have produced the biggest pikes for me. The two biggest were caught on small baits.

Anyways, I still have a couple of Hi-Lo's in my tackle box and honestly, my 2. biggest pike was caught on that lure. My biggest pike was caught on a quite small rubber shad...

Right, so fishing tackle has changed a lot since I was young. There is a wide range of more stuff to choose from in the stores, we have Internet stores now (which also opens up for shopping from foreign stores)...

Of course, having access to so much more stuff is an advantage. No question about that. We have more variety to choose from and that must be a good thing. But at the same time I think that it doesn't make a world of difference. I mean, people have been catching fish for ages and way back in the day, they didn't exactly have the most advanced gear - and yet they caught fish just like we do today.

So, the moral of all this is:
It's possible to have very successful fishing with just the basic gear and lures. But, for me at least, a big part of fishing is collecting all kinds of different lures and fiddling around with it when I'm not fishing (winter for example - to organize lures, sharpen hooks, look at the baits....). That's a big part of it actually.

All right, shit fishing!