Finesse-Fishing.com has closed and has nothing left to sell, other than a few used books. I have decided to leave the website up as a resource for people interested in fishing with light rods, light lines and light lures - true finesse fishing.

Decoding the Forest Marshall River (Kei) Spoon

by Craig T
(Iowa)

Just a preface - I am not a pro, just enjoy trying to learn as much as I can and figure out where each spoon shape and design fits in my box. These are all my opinions based on my experiences.

So I have been playing with the Forest Marshall River spoon for about a month now. I purchased this spoon under the assumption that being a very narrow spoon it would sink and stay super low in the water column. Boy was I wrong, I have played with this spoon on many trips trying to find where this would fit into my arsenal.

Getting seemingly more discouraged with each trip trying and not getting results I had put it away for a couple of trips. It has a pretty aggressive bend and when testing it in waters I thought it should shine I was highly disappointed with the action. In deep pools with both fast and slow currents it has a very wide wobble that was like a propeller at times. Casting into pools where you could see the trout they would run the other way as it came through the pools.

Today, I decided to put the Marshall River back on and find where it shines. I found it, and boy once I found its niche spot it was a producer. Fish after fish there were no short bites but straight on fish smashing the spoon. I found this really produced where the stream would have slight gradients with riffles and shallow runs. With slow retrieves back up stream the action was enough to keep from hanging against the rocks it really looked like a trout swimming up through the shallows. Targeting the slow edge of the riffle would also bring the fish out of the shadows and up into the riffles for a chase. The ideal run was 6-18” deep running though the rocks with a small shallow area off to one side and moderate flow.

Attached are pictures of a couple fish brought to hand and examples of the areas fish were brought out of.