The Slow Pitch Jerk, Kansai no Tsuri, Salt Water Series vol.24

Out of our slow pitch jigging bible, I’d like to share some interesting articles by Sato Sensei about fish sensory system.

Auditory Sense

Fish has the auditory sensor system all along their body. They are indeed “all ears.” It’s considered that fish hunt mainly by the sound waves.
Human audible range is from 20Hz to 20,000Hz, while fish is about from 20Hz to 2000Hz. It’s limited to low-pitched sound.

What we need to consider about the sound is the line. Jiggers actively move the line to fish and it must be creating a lot of sound waves in the water. The heavier line is stronger. And lighter line gets more contacts. This is a fact that we all face. When I used to do jigging with a heavy leader, Sato Sensei pointed out to me that it is like fishing with a 5 meter jig.

Fish is probably not hearing the metal clicking at the rings and the hooks.

On the other hand, it’s considered to be very effective to knock the bottom to make a sound. Making a little commotion of something feeding on something always attract other fish-eaters.

From my experience as a free diver, I totally agree that fish live in the world of sound. Sound travels in the water much faster and further than in the air, while light doesn’t travel well in the water. There’s no reason for fish to depend on eye sight like we human depend 90% on it. That’s exactly the reason why dolphins, once eye-sight dependent land animal, have developed the highly sophisticated auditory sensory system called echo-location to adapt to the underwater environment.

When they see your jig, yur target fish should be at the verge of one way to predation and the other way to cautiousness. Which way it rolls to? It may be like a roll of a dice. But we sure want to present our jig with as little caution factors as possible.

Sudden impact to the line moves the line to slash through the water and make sound waves. So I’m convinced that it’s so important to pick up the jig softly after each falls and connect every actions to flow. Slow pitch jigging is so effective because it gives so much time to the jig to swim on its own.

Visual Sense

Fish has very poor eye-sight. They don’t see the shape well, but they are very keen to movements. For them, time to eat and time to be eaten happen at the same time.
Sato Sensei points out fish avoid anything moves toward them. Like we do. We back off to a tiny fly if it moves toward us. Also they chase after anything runs away from them.
Sato Sensei also points out that when they attack a school of fish, they target ones that are not swimming well or swimming differently.

Our focus is on funny but natural movements. That is why we want to let the jig swim on its own and try to have that hangtime as long and as many as possible.

Anatomy shows that off-shore fish has more vision sensors for contrast, while some coastal fish has more vision sensors for colors. For jigging targets, contrast is more important, and the movement is far more important because movements make sounds that the fish is keen to.

Conception of time

The kind of movements fish are looking for in their bait fish are:
A. Disoriented or crippled, twirling motions
B. Tore away from the school, panicking motions
C. Knocked unconscious, suspending motions

C is the most favorable baits of all. I think this is the main focus Sato Sensei created this method on, to get continuous small horizontal movements, rather than rapid vertical movements.

It is considered that fish conception of time is 55 times faster than humans. Meaning that they see everything in slow motion x55. 1 second of flash movement for us is like a 1-minute slow motion. This is how they perceive the fast moving object precisely.

On the other hand, a slow moving object should look like it’s suspending in the water. Slow pitch jigging takes advantage of fish conception conversely.

This was a big break through for me. Every movements are slow motions to fish!!! Wow… I don’t know how I can take this knowledge into my tactics, but it’s good to know. Maybe I should perform the change of pace more drastically.

Hope the information helps you! Good luck!