Double Clutch

By Mark Gercovich.

Remember the “general purpose” fishing rod? Now there’s a rod style we never see any more as tackle companies are well aware of the impossibility of making a rod that covers every fishing scenario. I do remember as a kid though a Daiwa ‘Aussie stick’ general purpose rod (who remembers those!) that; with its lightish tip, decent and spike for sticking in the sand, I used to use everywhere! If the general purpose fishing rod as an impossible dream, then the general purpose lure would be even more fictional. Lures are perhaps even a more specialised and varied than the array of rods today’s angler is confronted with. Look in the sheds, boats, tackle bags of any keen lure angler and you will see a glittering array of artificial of the like where you wonder where and how, in the world they would ever find the time, or need, to use them all. However if I was to go through my array of hardbodied lures and find one that suits more angling scenarios and situations that I fish that any other in the mix, it would have to be the Daiwa Double Clutch.

I remember the first time I laid eyes on one was in a tackle store somewhere in Brisbane in 2006 when I was there for a bass comp.  I was stuck by this lure that looked for all the world like it was a minnow straight out of a Western District lake back home stuck in a box. Sure there are plenty of hardbodied minnows around today that, suspended in a fish tank, a casual glance could easily fool you into thinking  they were a real fish. However back then this lure looked distinctly unique and I just had to get some.  Upon returning to Western Victoria they did prove to be deadly on the local trout populations both in rivers and lakes. Estuary perch in the fresh loved them too, their bigger mouths easily woofling down the 75mm lure. They’d be too big for bream though, surely? But as history shows keen bream tournament anglers began using them to great effect on the big Tasmanian bream population and they soon gathered a following as a go to big bream lure. With a resurgence in the local mulloway population in the past few seasons using a bigger lure for bream and EP also has the added attraction of appealing to a school jewie that might happen by and these mulloway  have shown a distinct liking to a trolled or cast DC.

The general purpose nature of the double clutch isn’t just that it appeals to a heap of different local galaxid eating fish, but its quality construction and design allow it to be used for heaps of different techniques for these species.  With Daiwa’s Silent Gravity Oscillation system (S-GOS), the lure contains a tungsten weight that slides to the rear of the lure along a wire to shift the weight to the tail to achieve accurate, bullet like casts. Added to this they dive deep (down to 1.5 metres on a straight crank and 3 metres when twitched), and pause well which makes them great for flats fishing for bream of casting for trout on weedlined lake or river banks. They troll well, flat lined or downrigged for both fresh water and estuary species. When trolling for lake trout I always love to have one on a long flat line out the back of the spread, shot gun style, even if it is later in the day and I’m downrigging the other rods. They swim well and can handle a wide variety of speeds, so much so that you can run one at the same speed required to get a winged lure working where normally mixing bibbed and winged trout lures in a spread is a no no.

Back in 2006 double clutches were a little hard to come by however now things have certainly changed. Check them out on the Daiwa website, 2 different sizes and a glittering array of new colors…looks like that  collection of hardbodies needs to grow some more!