Miuras Mouse gets an upgrade - Drew Dearden
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year or two no doubt you’ll have heard of the fish magnet of a lure that is the Miuras Mouse. Now they’re a superb lure that works straight out of the box but there’s a few small tweaks that helps the lure, in my eyes, become perfect. The first and probably the most important for me would be altering the depth that the lure runs at. Don’t get me wrong, at the right time of the year and the right venue, the shallow depth that they run at will be perfect especially come springtime in those shallow bays, but when it comes to wintertime and fishing over 30ft of water, it’s not exactly ideal when the mouse is working its way back to you just 2ft under the surface.
The way I solve this is by using these Svartzonker buttons on the nose of the bait. They’re available in a range of weights and are quick and easy to change just by taking on and off a split ring. I mainly use the 10g version as it suits the majority of the waters I fish but I will drop down in weight if needed depending on where I’m fishing, they’ve certainly been a game changer when it comes to altering a running depth of a lure and has definitely helped me put more fish in the net.
Next up is something simple but has a great effect and that is adding another split ring to the front hook hanger, doing so gives that bit extra separation between the hook and the head of the lure which helps against the fish using the weight of the lure as leverage to throw the mouse from it’s mouth. Speaking of hooks, I also swap out the trebles from the ones supplied with the lure to bigger 3/0 BKK Fangs trebles. These trebles are INSANELY sticky sharp and are now my go too hook for all of my lures.The final thing I add is a small barbless stinger spike onto the end split ring. The reason for this is more down to personal preference, I don’t like burying the hook into the tail of the lure as it obviously masks a hook point and also causes far more damage to the soft plastic when pulling out the hook on the strike and re burying the hook than any stinger spike ever would. You could also leave the rig free but the chances of it tangling are significantly higher.
As well as all these little modifications I like to have multiple tail choices for my Miuras mouse with me just in case the pike are homed into one particular thing, be it the supplied double tail, paddle tail or a big oversized single tail. My go to paddle tail is a trimmed down 21cm eastfield wingman
My go to single curly rail is either a trimmed down 23cm eastfield curly or a svartzonker giant big tail