Hey ya’ll,

 

This’ll be a sorta just dump my thoughts onto the page. A lot of the tackle I own is plastics. My grandpa who I wished I had fished with more when I was younger told me one time that he much prefers hard baits over plastics. He has boxes of lures that look like they’ve been through absolute hell. Same with another older gentlemen who I talk with frequently now who used to fish semi-professionally. I think that is really cool. When you can pull out lures that have caught literally hundreds of fish and can tell stories about. A lure like that has stories about it and you can see it etched in with all the teeth marks and scratches. All this to say, from both a monetary standpoint and a sentimental standpoint, I wished I started using hard baits more often sooner. Fortunately, my two focus baits for 2021, the spinnerbait and the lipless crankbait, are both hard lures. I hope to have lures someday that I can show my grandchildren to help get them hooked on fishing. Alright that’s it. Do ya’ll have lures that you have stories about? If so, please share!

While not an heirloom by any stretch, I had a Sammy top water that had caught hundreds of fish and survived multiple years of trips to Michigan’s lake St Clair and it’s healthy pike and musky population.  It was my favorite topwater.  While on the Rappahonock catching striper, I made a long cast up a creek where they were schooling and heard that gut wrenching snap and the agonizing wait for the lure to come down all the while praying you can get to it.  I heard it hit in the reeds way to far up the creek to get.??

I’ve got some Abu Reflex spinners from the 60s that I caught my first smallmouth on. 

I have a custom painted “Baby Bass” DT-6 that’s been beat up so bad it’s basically a countdown now- still runs true though... I bought it in hopes of landing some big pike but it ended up being a killer big bass crankbait...

I've got a cheap 1/4 oz popper I bought at Wal-Mart almost 20 years ago. Been through several sets of hooks and split rings...lots of scratches, scrapes and hook rash all over. Not even sure what brand. That stupid thing gets bit.

I have a few Bandit 100s that caught a bunch of fish on a very rocky river I fish. I pull them out of service when I feel they earned there spot in the retired box. Most fish caught before losing one is 50, but second most is 25. The river eats cranks for lunch lol. The coolest one is a Bandit 100 that during the cast slapped a railing hard and was very cracked. I fished with it like that and caught 3-4 more fish before it was so cracked I thought it might break apart in the fishes mouth. Other than that my lake baits, a few have a bunch of fish, but I just have too many lol. Some SK Red Eye shads have caught me some nice numbers of fish though.

I have som Norman DLN crankbaits that have the bills ground down so much I can’t tune them anymore.

I have a Storm Sub-wart that still gets wet about once or twice a year.  I used to fish with it all the time before they went out of production.  That bait has caught everything from bluegill to muskie.