Fishing in the Central Valley: Don’t get lured into fiddling too much with lures
As an angler, have you ever had an idea on how to improve, or create a new fishing lure, one that you’re sure is a breakthrough and that’s never been thought of before?
My grandfather’s tackle box was full of all kinds of lure experiments. Even though that was a long time ago – the same exact path of pondering the “what if” question has always been followed by avid and inquisitive anglers everywhere.
I have a shop and a boat full of the remnants of sure-fire ideas for lures that never quite made the grade. As fishermen, it’s my observation that most all of us consider ourselves to be reasonably good inventors and innovators.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had a fishing buddy say if a lure was a little bigger, or a different color that it would be a killer. Or that a manufacturer is missing the boat by not building a diving model, so that buddy will just add some weight to it.
It’s always easy to see what’s missing and try to change it, even if you don’t know what you’re doing.
The suggestions keep coming such as: adding a plastic tail, a bigger or smaller model, a bigger or smaller lip, more action, better colors, heavier or lighter, needs red eyes and so on. These are the things that anglers have fiddled with for as long as fishing has been around.
All the new types of materials including glues, paints and terminal tackle make it easier to create offshoots of the lures you want to develop but few of these amateur changes ever see the light of day.
Just look at all the lures in the normal store, and then realize that out of all of those developed by professional lure company designers, very few are really new innovations that actually work.
The amount of creativity, imagination, skill, capital and time it takes to develop a new lure is incredible. However, no matter how daunting the odds are that we can come up with a winner, it never stops the inquisitive angler mind from going places that seldom pay off. I believe the real fun of fishing is letting your imagination run wild with all the “what if” questions and possibilities. The chance that you might just hit a gold mine idea is a strong lure ( ha ha!) for anglers to keep looking for new insights.
Since there have been other fishermen who have broken the code over the years the possibility exists it might happen for any one of us. Chances are near lottery type odds, but who’s counting.
It’s hard to get past the feeling that you’re close to a new idea, but then you think about how well the simple Senko has done, yet there are a million plastic worms on the market. I remember looking at my first Senko and thinking what in the world is different about this plastic bait?
However after catching over 10 bass on the thing, on my first outing I realized that it was a different animal. It showed that the proof is in the
pudding and that goes for all the sure fire innovations I kept trying to build that don’t taste very good.
Isn’t that the fun of it at the end of the day? I learned a lot from all my failed brainstorms and now I’m much more willing to search the internet for crazy new lures. Got a sizable investment in a bunch of them that I was positive would be the next big thing…not!
This endless quest for a new and improved lure will never end, it’s just the nature of the beast. I think it always has been and always will be part of the game.
The mantra for most of us is to boldly go where no angler has ever gone before, searching for strange new baits,...etc. etc!
That’s why we … Never give up!
Roger George: rogergeorge8@protonmail.com, Rogergeorgeguideservice on Facebook and @StriperWars.
