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<img align="right" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/tips/Rockit/pike.jpg"><b>This guy, Pavel (a.k.a. Rockit on Hawk Talk), sent me an email back in January. Right away I noticed a distinct accent in his writing. He wanted a linkinov to his Russian fishing site from Fish-Hawkilov. No sweatski, I saidski...unfortunately his site seems to be no longer.
A few more emails between us and the next thing I know I had the makings of a tip for catching Russian pike and other species...</b>
<img align="left" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/tips/Rockit/porolon1.jpg">As to jigging, many Russian fishermen prefer self-made lures crafted of porolon or other lighter-than-water materials (e.g. PVC) to factory made silicon ones which came to Russian market along with the term "jig" as such 5-7 years ago. Now there are a lot of types of such lures including, for example, simply cigar-like ones to fish in quick streams where is no special need to make a lure copying a real fish, or even 2-piece jointed "models". Obvoiusly, the size, shape, construction and colour are limited by fisherman's imagination and experience only. And by this reason, it's completely impossible to describe all the range of such lures you can see in the tacklebox of an average Russian "fish hunter". But basically the lure consists of 3 elements (see the picture):
<img align="right" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/tips/Rockit/porolon1.gif">1) BODY It's the most discussable part of the lure. Somebody prefer to paint it to reach the most likeness with gudgeon, bleak etc., others paint the lures in vivid, unnatural colours or even leave the body unpainted and make it just cigar-like (as was metioned above) - without fins and tail limitations.
2) HOOK In the most cases, a lure of the type utilizes one double hook but there are constructions with two hooks or utilizing triple or single hooks (the last variant is rare) To place the hook, the body of a lure is usually being cut along for between 1/2 and 2/3 of its length and, after the hook is placed, it's "restored" with the help of water-resistant glue.
3) WEIGHT As well as to body shapes, the range of weight shapes used with the lures is wide but the most common one is spheroid. The only "must": the weight should have two asymmetrically placed "ears", one to attach the hook and another - to tighten the lure to the main line or barrel swivel.
<img src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/tips/Rockit/ide.jpg">
<b><i>Pavel's girlfriend with an ide. </i></b>
<b>Thanks to Pavel for sending us this tip. This kind of stuff always gets my imagination going with new ways to rig stuff up. I think I'll head out to my garage right now...</b>