Spinner Bait

SPINNER BAIT

I was doing a lot of Big Mouth bass fishing all over South Jersey and one of my best bass catchers was a spinner bait. Available in all shapes and sizes it became a killer for bass and pickerel.

I found some in a catalog, I was using black blades with a black skirt. I had three different sizes. Well, the stuff was still in the box next spring where I was poppin a lot of South river and Gravelly Run. Gibsons Creek along with Stevens Creek and the whole area in Mays Landing. And as I had the eight foot six inch pram sitting in the back of my 51 Ford pickup, I was killing the perch and catching a lot of stripers on bloodworms.

My motor was being worked on so I decided to row up o the dam by Wheaton Plastics where I worked at the time. I pushed myself under the bridge and dropped anchor right under the falls. Drifting back I proceeded to put my plan into action.

The fish of choice was pickerel, which showed no mercy when they encountered one of the black spinner baits. My first few casts were fruitless, but somewhere between the fifth and tenth cast the lure stopped cold. A big swirl appeared in the proximity of the lure and the line screamed off the reel. The fish ran straight through the bridge and I wondered if my 17 pound Stren would withstand the abuse. The fish finally turned. My mind was racing. As I was about to land the world record pickerel, I led the fish into the net as my dream was smashed. A fifteen pound striper. Two more bass were in the bottom of the pram. As I had used and lost all three lures, I gave up fresh water fishing that year.

So I tried again about 15 years ago, caught a striper immediately while fishing Gibsons Creek, two bass on the bank about 24 inches. A big fish hits and breaks me off. I tried on the last spinner bait, made a lousy cast, got hooked on a stump and broke it off. If I had just wanted to have some fun, I’d like to build a couple more of these, who knows?

One thing those spinner blades do is create a lot of noise and send out shock waves, put a rattle on a swivel a couple of feet in front of the lure, and this could be a real killer around the bridges. Fish are stupid, use their sense to trick them.