To spin you will need a 6 to 9ft rod, a fixed spool or multiplier reel, 8-12lb line and the most important part of any lure fisherman's kit, a lure box stuffed to the brim with plugs, spinners, traces and lures.

Spinners or spoons imitate a fish flashing past the waiting predator without noticing its deadly presence, which means the takes are fast and furious when you hit a hot spot. You should look for snags, reeds, and so on, where the cunning predator will be holed up waiting for a meal, and repeatedly cast to them.

Don't worry if you don't get a take first time. Keep at it, as the more often one of these skinny little spoons goes past a waiting fish, the more likely a take will occur.

It is the actual action of the lure repeatedly invading the space of the powerfully-jawed pike, perch, zander, trout or salmon which gets the fish to snap at it in anger rather than in hunger. Spinners are especially good for the smaller predators such as perch and trout, whose diet mainly comprises smaller fish and fry. As both the above are school fish, you can have some really good days working just a few spots repeatedly, and spinners and spoons are best for this type of angling.

Plugs and lures are usually for the big boys of the aquatic predator world. By that I mean pike or large zander, because they work in a slightly different way from the flash of a spinner. The lure has a vain at the front, which means the plug dives and jerks from side to side imitating an injured fish. To a hungry pike this is like a free lunch. It has been said the movement they create in the water is the key, even though most of them are designed to look like fish. This proves looking like a real fish is not the most important thing about a plug and there is no such thing as a free lunch.

You should choose varying shapes, colours and sizes but when fishing, work each plug thoroughly by adjusting the vain at the front minutely. You may hit on the movement and colour variation which triggers the predator's attack ritual.

One more tip with this type of angling: you nearly always get a fish following the lure to the rod tip where you unfortunately run out of line to keep the plug moving. When this happens, slowly move the tip around in the biggest figure of eight possible, keeping the plug moving at all times.

Since learning this technique, I have picked up loads of bonus fish which would have previously swum off when I lifted the lure for another cast.

These types of takes are the best, as you see the pike in its full aggressive glory attack the lure right in front of your eyes.