COLUMN
FOR THE RECORD
COLIN
MOORE
I
20
A Look at the Lure Market
n the ’70s, the late, great humorist
and illustrator Cliff Shelby also
worked as the public relations con-
tact for Bagley Baits. Once asked by a
naïve business reporter how Bagley’s
famous line of balsa crankbaits was
made, Shelby replied that the lures
were carved and painted by hand by
Seminole women working under the
shade trees of a hammock in the
Florida Everglades. Of course, Shelby
was fibbing and laughingly owned up to
it, but his answer sounded better than
the truth, which was that the lures –
most of them designed and perfected
by Lee Sisson – were turned out by the
thousands on factory lathes.
Mass production – from molds to
final paint jobs – is the source of most
of the lures used today by recreational
or tournament anglers, though it all
begins with an image of a lure in some-
one’s mind. Whether the creator knows
it or not, that image of a lure usually is
similar to a previous design that might
have been marketed 10 years or 100
years ago.
Typically, nowadays, major compa-
nies rely on their own designers or a
pro-staff to help take new lures to mar-
ket, but occasionally the latest, greatest
baits are the result of a collaboration
between a company and an avid angler
with an idea, but not the investment
money to turn his vision into reality.
How Lures Are Born
“Some lures are in development for
years, and there might be eight or 10
prototypes that are being reworked all
the time until everything is just right,”
says Texas pro Todd Castledine, him-
self a lure designer and a member of
the Strike King pro-staff. “A lure might
start out as being pretty good, but then
it gets tweaked and it’s made even bet-
ter. It’s a lot of trial and error – and per-
sonal preference – but the lures that
wind up reaching the market have got
a lot of long hours of development
behind them.”
Castledine recalls the time he was out
fishing with Phil Marks, head of Strike
King’s design team and a formidable
tournament angler himself, and the con-
versation turned to a particular type of
lure that Marks’ crew was having trouble
with. Castledine could relate, because he
had spent years trying to perfect the
same sort of plug. His ideas helped solve
some of Marks’ design problems, and the
result of their partnership became the
Strike King Popping Perch. It behaves like
a frog, but in looks resembles a bream
floundering on the surface of matted
grass. What’s important is that it catches
fish, the primary prerequisite for any lure
development.
“There’s the bait-design business, the
bait-manufacturing business and the bait-
selling business,” says Castledine. “To a
fisherman, it doesn’t really matter if a lure
design was first whittled out of wood or
developed by computer software. It does-
n’t matter too much to him how the baits
are packaged and sold, as long as he can
get one when he wants it. The most
important thing is that a lure will catch fish
for him under the right circumstances
wherever he’s fishing, whether it’s Sam
Rayburn or Table Rock or Champlain.”
More Art Than Science
A typical bass lure might do a lot of
things. It can sputter, pop, hop, dart,
zigzag, wiggle or perform any number
of other actions, singly or in combina-
tion. Getting to the point where its size,
shape and action draw a strike isn’t
easy to achieve, and being able to
duplicate the magic over and over in
mass production is another obstacle.
What is it about a lure that compels
a bass to grab it anyway? A specific
color or color pattern sometimes mat-
ters, except when it really doesn’t. A
particular action or sound might be
irresistible to bass, but some strikes
come when a lure is idle. The size is
important, we tell ourselves, except on
those days when it’s not and bass can
be caught on anything from a 2-inch
Ned rig to a 10-inch swimbait.
The Yamamoto Senko, Livetarget Frog
Hollow Body, Megabass Vision Oneten,
Alabama Rig, Z-Man ChatterBait, Bill
Lewis StutterStep, Basstrix swimbaits,
oodles of scent-enhanced soft plastics
from Berkley – some of the hottest bass
lures introduced in the last 20 years or so
don’t necessarily look anything like each
other, don’t behave the same in the
water and vary from each other in size
and shape. Yet they’ve all become best-
sellers because they catch fish.
What is it about a lure that compels
a bass to grab it? The answer isn’t so
simple: lots of things, but, then again,
sometimes not much at all.
Variations on a Theme
Having a creative brainstorm and
interesting a manufacturer in the idea
for a new lure are two different things. If
an angler’s homemade plug helps him
win major tournaments, it’s virtually
FLWFISHING.COM I APRIL 2018