Andrey Starkov: general data
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Andrey Starkov fishing biography
Andrei Starkov is a traveler fisherman from Volgograd who needs no introduction in fishing circles.
Andrey Starkov in social networks
- Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/andrey__starkov/?hl=ru
- YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Ky-VvQ4H6cfXgISzZjy3A
- Bloghttp://xn--80aaxhbc3brr.xn--p1ai/blogs/starkov/
Interview with Andrey Starkov
Andrey Starkov: Don’t let anyone impose their vision of how and what you should fish with
Interview from September 16, 2021
Andrey Starkov, an angler-traveler from Volgograd, who needs no introduction in fishing circles, posted on his Instagram a short, clear and very capacious moral about an individual approach to fishing. ” Don’t let anyone impose their vision of how and what you should fish on.
Drive away other people’s ideas that “look at it the way it should be” and “this is nonsense, it should be like this”. Immediately and without hesitation, send everything that puts pressure on you. It limits and limits. Shape your style. It is formed by itself, through a sun-burned nose and contemplation. Your own world will appear around you, you’ll see. Keep it away from muddy topics, gear and people. Watch, enjoy, love. Don’t fuss.”
Andrey Starkov, TWITCHING
People who twitch for perch do it for two reasons – from desperation in terms of fishing and for fun. By itself, such fishing is aesthetic, technically quite complex and gives a lot of pleasure to the fisherman,
A conversation between two people catching twitching will be built from a set of separate terms, the names of mainly Japanese wobblers, some incomprehensible expressions like “Jerk” and “Small shake”. I won’t describe what twitching is, now you can read about it in every magazine or on the Internet. Muscovites are the trendsetters in perch fishing, and in its twitching in particular.
Due to the fact that the capital is not rich in fish, and athletes live there in large numbers, Muscovites are very good at catching perch. This can be seen from the reports from the competitions, and from publications, and from notes on forums on the Internet.
For us, spoiled by the abundance of fish in the rivers, it is difficult to understand people who purposefully catch not very large perches, using expensive gear, sophisticated fishing techniques and unusual lures. It would seem that it would be easier, I took a small turntable, came to the floodplain and started catching minke whales. It is not caught on a turntable – a twister which I put on a light jighead. He won’t go anywhere.
Everything would be so, but twitch fishing is more interesting and productive. Of course, in the presence of suitable gear and supplied equipment. Whether you need it or not is up to you to decide. In this article, I will describe my path to twitch and what it led to.
TWITCHING IS 90% WOBBLER CATCHING
I started catching wobblers consciously in 1999, I practiced ultralight fishing. There were almost no small wobblers then, and I caught them using uniform wiring or stop and go. I remember I had Rapalovskie pieces of wood, Polish dorado and some strange wobblers. And all this regularly brought pike and perch.
In the year 2000, at the beginning of April, we were fishing on one shallow floodplain lake, and the fish did not react to all my tricks with wobblers. I changed one wobbler for another, led them slowly and quickly, and with stops – there was no sense. I installed a RAPALA HuskyJerk with a six-wheeled suspension wobbler. He almost did not play on even wiring, but when twitching, he somehow briskly darted from side to side. Surprisingly, he began to collect minke whales. This was, perhaps, the very first experience of my perch “twitching”. I experimented with jerks all day until the pike bit off my charm. This was followed by purchases of wobblers similar in type from StrikePRO, Duel, Salmo, Chinese unknown manufacturers. Each of them was an individual, each required their own approach to the game. If it was possible to pick up the key to the wobbler, he pleased with “minke whales”. But there were also models that lay in a box for several years, and I could not achieve intelligible results with them. I bought different models, tried them, changed the wiring technique, caught and caught.
SPINNING: TEST AND BUILD
Now I have my own view on gear for this type of fishing, on lures and equipment. My first spinning for perch fishing was somewhat far from ideal, because I started fishing with wobblers, using mainly uniform wiring. Spinning was of medium action, test up to 10 g. Then there was a passion for ultralight fishing, and the spinning test dropped to 5 grams. Now I’m again looking for spinning grams to 10-12. It seems to me that for catching perch with twitching, the most suitable rod will be no more than 2 m long, with a test of up to 10-12 grams, a fairly fast action. Despite the fact that we mainly use wobblers weighing up to 5 g, the upper test margin is needed for the correct animation of the wobbler and for a certain “rate of fire” of catching. I did not have the opportunity to fish with expensive rods, so almost all of my perch rods cost around 1000 rubles. I think the price in this case is not a determining factor. Of course, now there are many models on the market specially designed for twitching, but even among very inexpensive rods you can pick up something suitable for twitching perch. Aesthetics will suffer a little, the weight of the rod will be a little more than we would like, the rings. but you can find it. The main thing in spinning is the system. Spinning should allow you to make short sharp jerks, and this is possible only when using a sufficiently “fast” spinning or not very fast, but having a test margin that compensates for the lack of rigidity. There is an opinion that a fast action is not quite ideal for twitching, that a softer rod allows you to expand the techniques. But I do not agree with him – you need serious experience to fish with medium action rods. It’s easier to start with a “fast” spinning, which allows you to move the wobbler with the slightest movement of the brush.
TWITCH STRAP
Until last year I was twitching with a regular monoline. Of course, from the point of view of venerable tweeters, this is fundamentally wrong. And I agreed with them, the first time I tried the cord in action. Wobbler wiring has become more predictable, it has become possible to make it fractional, aggressive, consisting of very short jerks. The lace needs the thinnest. For example, FireLine Cristal 0.04 or PE laces from Japanese manufacturers with a tensile strength of up to 2.5 kg. A leash is a must – during jerks, the wobbler turns around and, with an active twitch, can cling to the fishing line with hooks. The leash adds rigidity and avoids this. Naturally, the leash is by no means purchased for six rubles with a carabiner and a shackle. We will make it ourselves from a guitar string of the first number or a vole cable. No leash materials are needed, as well as carabiners and clasps. The leash is about the length of a wobbler, I have two types of them: three and five centimeters long. At the ends are the usual short twists. It is very important to choose a knot with which you will tie a thin braid to a leash – it can gobble up up to half the strength of the lace.
LURES.
We need different ones. Resist the temptation to buy all kinds of pinocchio in the hope that they will all work. It is better to spend this money on the purchase of proven models. They are not cheap – the average cost of a good twitching perch wobbler is from 300 to 500 rubles. But, believe me, it is better to have two reliable proven expensive wobblers than a dozen cheap ones for the same money. Among inexpensive wobblers, there are also quite working ones: DaMIKI Pirami, River2sea Bayu Min, Strike PRO JL, Duel Aile minnow. These have been field tested. Among the expensive “workers” can be called minnow from MasuMasters, Smith, Jackall, Bassday, Jakson. I don’t name specific models, almost everything works. But, as I said, wobblers have an individuality, and it will depend only on you whether this particular wobbler will work for you or not. The difference in catches can be very, very significant.
You will need not only floating wobblers – they are good for summer. Suspenders work great in autumn and spring, in my opinion, the most versatile wobblers. In winter and in cold water, sinking wobblers can pleasantly surprise you. In cold water, the perch is passive, and often it does not rise even after the suspender, which goes a meter from the surface. A sinking wobbler can be driven much deeper. In addition, minnow wobblers are classics in perch twitching, you can also use wobblers with “shed”, “fet” geometry, small oscillators, plastic lures that do not have their own game for this kind of wiring.
The most important thing in this kind of fishing is not what you catch, and not what. and how do you do it. At every opportunity, train your technique, this is very important. The main wiring of such wobblers is short regular jerks. If the rod allows, you make jerks with it. If not, then you control the sagging fishing line, forcing it to sway with a certain frequency, and it transmits the impulse of movement to the wobbler. The easiest way is to put on polarized glasses and practice somewhere in shallow water, watching the bait. The wobbler should shudder and move towards you with regular jumps, without breaking into its own game. This is my basic wiring. But the field for experiments is huge, and only the striped ones will show whether you are moving in the right direction.
