Sign up today as a FREE member and get our free fishing newsletter with Tips and Tricks and we’ll send you a FREE copy of our brand new recipe ebook for anglers!
SIGNUP

Lure Types
by Mark Hutchinson of www.threeguysfishing.com

Hello all! I just wanted to put together a comprehensive list of the various types of lures available for use along with some tips and situations in which you might want to use them. It’s a bit lengthy, but there’s lot of info here!! Let’s get started!

Trolling Lures

Lure trolling is a combination of science and art. Successful anglers have extensive knowledge of structure and fish migration habits in the areas they fish. Trolling of lures can involve simple rigging of baits to complex rigs using outriggers, downriggers, and dredge systems. Dredge systems are composed of several arms which then have multiple lines attached allowing for 10 baits to be trolled in small area. This configuration gives the appearance of a small school of bait fish and triggers aggressive response from salt water species and also fresh water stripers.

 Trolling lures are configured from feathers, jigs, trailing skirts, hard plugs, and plastic bait fish imitations.

Effective trolling lures for salt water generate turbulence behind the lure leaving a stream of air bubbles. This enhances fish response.

Boat Skirt Teasers

Boat skirt teasers refer to lures that have skirts that are attached to a weighted head or jig. These lures are designed for trolling, mostly for salt water game fish species. The basic designs incorporate weighted heads, imitating a bait fish, coupled with various skirt materials and configurations. Generally these lures are from 4 inches to over 13 inches in length.
Some incorporate jig heads with chambers filled with small BBs. As the lure is trolled the jig head rotates and produces sounds from the BBs inside the jig head chambers.

Skirt materials are plastics, polymers, or feathers in bright colors.

Some boat skirt lures are used in conjunction with a jet. A jet is an airplane looking device which serves as a trolling depth control. This technique is used frequently in Alaska on King Salmon.

Skirt teasers are trolled at speeds varying from 5 knots up to 16 knots and higher. These lures are designed to produce turbulence in the water and leave large bubble trails for the purpose of attracting game fish.

Common species caught with these lures include Spanish Mackerel, Dolphin, Tuna, Ling, Sail Fish, Tarpon, and King Fish.

Bucktails

One of the most versatile and widespread lures used for many species of fish is the bucktail lure. These are also great to make yourself! I’ve gotten into making my own bucktails. This is fantastic since you can experiment and change the colours and sizes, and NOTHING beats catching a fish on your own homemade lure! These lures are time tested consistent producers of effective fish catching. Notice the key word is catching, not fishing. Bucktail lures are effective for crappie, bass, trout, and a plethora of salt water species.

 Bucktail jigs trolled in salt water are deadly for kingfish, marlin, ling, tuna, and other species.

 In fresh water a bucktail jig with a pork tail attached can catch bass when most other baits are not effective.

Plugs and Hard Baits

Plugs and hard baits are the categories that contain some of the oldest lure designs for fishing. Many of these designs have passed the test of time as evidenced by their continuing effectiveness. Examples include top water poppers, floating minnow, Rat-L-Trap, spoons, and jigs. Advances off of the basic designs have been innovative with the broken back minnow concept, suspending plugs, and rattling sound incorporated into most plug offerings.

Plugs can be fished in many ways such as on top, slow retrieve, deep, bouncing off the bottom, suspending, and hybridized such as using a Carolina rig with a suspending or floating plug. Plugs come in two basic styles, lipless and lipped.

Lipless plugs such as the Rat-L-Trap are effective in covering a lot of water fast and do not hang up in brush as easily as other plugs. Plugs with lips are good for trolling, bouncing the lip off of bottom structure, or suspending with varied retrieval speeds.

Soft Plastic Lures

Excellent manufacturers include Bass Assassin, Mister twister Lures, Old-Bayside, and Yum.

Soft plastic lures come in the form of shad bait fish, shrimp, crabs, frogs, worms, minnows, small fish, mullet, lizards, and grubs.

Some soft plastic fishing lures glow in the dark. When a flashlight is held next to the glow bait, the bait absorbs the light energy and glows for several minutes.

Fishing off the Toronto harbour piers at night can produce as many or more strikes as live bait on largemouth bass when using glowing plastic grubs. There is nothing more thrilling throwing a plastic worm next to a tree trunk on the shaded side and feel the tap tap bite of a nice size bass.

Fishing soft plastic lures are fun because they can be fished as slow sinking, along the bottom, or retrieved at various speeds, plus they catch fish of almost every species.

Fishing jigs are more flexible baits than many people realize. The reason for this flexibility is the variety of sizes, shapes, and designs available today.

Fishing jigs can be spoons which are jigged vertically when game fish are suspending in deep water. Spoons can also be cast and trolled as well as slow fished along the bottom.

Fishing Jigs

Other jigs are made with deer hair skirts and plastic skirts. The skirts are attached to lead or tungsten jig heads in a wide variety of sizes and weights.

Jigs are effective in catching all types of game fish in both fresh and salt water.

Jig heads are sold independently of attached skirts so the angler can attach the bait of choice such as plastic skirts, grubs, or artificial bait fish shapes.

Some jig heads come with built in coiled wires at the base of the jig head which allows a plastic bait to be screwed onto the jig head.

This keeps the plastic part of the lure from separating from the jig head base providing longer useful life of the bait.

Spoons

Fishing spoons are one of the oldest type lures used and still one of the most effective. Variations of spoon fishing are seen on other lure types such as spinner baits, leaded jigs with spinners attached, and plugs shaped like bait fish.

Spoons are one of the most versatile baits to have in a tackle box.

Spoons are effective on most fish species, fresh and salt water. Spoons can be fished in many ways such as ripping along the surface, trolling, slow rolling along bottom structure, and vertical jigging. These baits are excellent in any depth of water.

Spoons can be modified by adding a soft plastic trailer to the hook for slow sinking applications. Weedless spoons are great for fishing around rocks and submerged timber.

Spoon lures normally have treble hooks attached through an eyelet. Replacing the treble hook with a single pointed hook increases the swimming action of the spoon and can lead to more strikes when fishing for red fish and speckled trout.

Spoons come in variations incorporating feathers, blades, and plastic bait imitations. Besides the basic gold and silver colors, spoons are available in different colors as well as painted to mirror the appearance of bait fish.

If a person had to choose one lure for their tackle box, a spoon would be a good choice.

Spinner Baits & Worm Baits

Worms and spinner baits are two of the oldest and effective lure types for catching bass, walleye, trout, speckled trout, red drum, and other game fish species.

Worm fishing has evolved from simple shapes 4 to 6 inches long into lures that are sometimes over 9 inches long. Small plastic chambers filled with small beads are available for insertion into the worm body to provide rattling sounds.

Worms have a distinct advantage in that they are virtually Weedless and can be fished with a variety of techniques.

 The Texas rigged worm incorporates a cone shaped weight, glass bead, and hook. The weight rest on the glass bead and the glass bead rests on top of the line knot at the hook eyelet. The glass bead protects the line knot from the weight and also produces sound for fish attraction. The hook is rigged through the head of the worm with the hook point embedded in the worm body, just below the outer surface of the worm. When a fish picks up the worm the angler sets the hook which then drives the hook point through the worm and into the jaw of the fish.

Another way to rig worms is the Carolina rig. In this set up the weight is usually an oval shaped weight which also rests on top of a glass bead. In this rig the weight and glass bead are attached above a swivel. A piece of fishing line 1 to 2 feet in length is attached to the bottom of the swivel. The hook and worm are then attached to the fishing line. In this method the worm is fished weightless. The retrieve is slow along the bottom. 

Spinner baits are very effective in all conditions. They can be fished by buzzing across the surface, by a steady retrieve, and by slow rolling off of ledges and other underwater structure.

Spinner baits have one to two blades which rotate during bait retrieval. The blades cause turbulence and vibration which attract fish and enhance the fish’s ability to find the bait in stained water. For this reason spinner baits are very effective at night.

Spinner bait blades are varied in size and in color.

Some spinner baits incorporate willow shaped blades while others utilized the more rounded Colorado style spinner. Spinner baits are often made with one blade silver and one blade gold.

Anglers often attach pork rind or plastic frog legs and plastic trailers to spinner baits to imitate bait and to slow presentation of the lure.

While this doesn’t cover all lure types, it will at least give you a general overview of what’s out there. If you’re looking for information on specific lures, let us know at contact@threeguysfishing.com and we’ll be sure to post details for you!

Have fun and good luck!