New Lures for Creeks, Rivers & Ponds

Heddon Spin'n Image Jr

Late summer often delivers new lures to my tackle selection. The ICAST show takes place in mid-July, and that’s when many fishing tackle brands introduce new products for the upcoming year. Because I work in marketing for a lure company that owns multiple brands , that means I typically have new lures that I need to get photos of and gain familiarity with for writing projects.

What stands out this year is that several of the new offerings from our brands really hit home with the way I like to fish the most and are perfectly suited for the waters I fish the most. I expect at least a few of these to remain a key part of my arsenal for years.

Heddon, Bandit and Rebel Lures all released new baits this summer that are extra well suited for the creeks and small rivers I love to wade and for walking the banks of ponds. All are small in size, but my expectations are big. That sounds like marketing talk, but I’m not wearing the marketing hat when I’m writing this blog. It’s just fortunate for me that some of the lures I currently need photos of the most are really good fits for my personal fishing preferences.

I won’t detail the features of each. Again, marketing isn’t the objective here. However, I will run through the stuff I’m excited to use. In truth, I’ve been catching fish on a few of them for a few months. One nice thing in my job is that I get some stuff early for photography needs.

Heddon Lures added a couple of topwater lures I know will excel in smaller waters. The Spin’n Image Jr is a downsized version of a proven rotating-tail topwater lure. The Spook Stick is a slender profiles small-sized surface walker. There is also a Spook Stick Crawler that I know will be an excellent lure, but it fits a little different niche.

Bandit Lures, meanwhile, added the Bandit 50 and 50D, which look and act a lot like the iconic Bandit 100 and 200 but are substantially smaller. They were designed for small water and for finesse situations and match perfectly with the light travel rod and spinning reel that live in my car all the time.

Finally, Rebel Lures added a couple of great new shapes to their LIVEflex soft plastic series. One is a hellgrammite, and every stream angler knows that hellgrammites are candy to creek fish. The other is a tadpole, another important forage species in ponds and creeks that surprisingly is not often imitated with fishing lures. The LIVE Hellgrammite and Tadpole are the two I’ve already used to catch a lot of fish!

You’ll likely be hearing more from me about some of these new lures. I need to go sit at the computer this morning, bit I really just want to go fishing!

Bandit 50

Heddon Spook Stick

 

Rebel LIVEflex Tadpole

Late Bluegill Addition & More

A few taps of my jig and a snap of my wrist connected me with a solid bluegill, which had a bit of a surprise element. Catching a bluegill is seldom a surprise because they inhabit so many types of waterways and are quick to bite. Neither was catching it on a finesse bass bait.

The surprise was that it was April 1, and I was just catching my first bluegill of the year. I’m not consistent enough with keeping annual fish lists to quantify how rare that is, but I can say with confidence that I seldom catch 10 other species before adding bluegill to the list.

It was a pleasant surprise that came courtesy of a Rebel Ultra-Finesse Jig and that bit at the end of a presentation, when I was about to lift the jig out of the water and make another cast. Unfortunately, it was alone — or if it had buddies, they weren’t buying what I was selling.

Other Species Added

A little later the same morning, at a different river, I added two more species to this year’s tally: a shadow bass and a Coosa redeye bass. Both are regional species that are found in some North Georgia rivers.

The shadow bass looks and acts like a rock bass. In fact, when I caught it, I was thinking it was a rock bass. Only later did I remember that shadow bass are native to the Coosa River drainage, where I was fishing, and rock bass don’t actually live there. 

When I went back and looked at shadow bass photos online, I could see dark splotches that match my fish and that aren’t on true rock bass. Maybe they are the namesake. I’m not sure.

The Coosa redeye (also called just Coosa bass or redeye bass) is one of a handful of native upland river black bass species found in North Georgia. It’s one of the species that is part of the Georgia Bass Slam, but mine was tiny — well below then 8-inch minimum for qualifying fish. Hopefully, I’ll catch a bigger one some time this year! For now, those fish were species 12 and 13 on this year’s catch list.

Pond Bass Playing Hard to Get

The bass in our favorite ponds around home showed themselves early this spring, sunning in shallow water and seeming like they were ready to move up and get active. That was a few weeks ago, and we've had quite a bit of spring-like weather since that time. The fish have largely remained hidden and tough to catch, though.

Nathaniel, Asher and I hit two of the ponds for a couple of hours today and only managed three small bass. We tried a variety of approaches -- stuff that normally works this time of year -- mostly to no avail. All three fish we did catch took shallow crankbaits. I caught two on a Rebel Bluegill. Nathaniel caught one on an XCalibur Square Lip. Beyond not catching many, we're not really seeing them. We only saw one bass that we did not catch today, and that has been more the norm than the exception since that one sunny early-spring day when fish were cruising shallow all over the place in the same two ponds.

It's not all bad. Trying to figure them out is part of the fun, and the boys and I always enjoy just going out to the ponds and riding around in the johnboat and/or walking the banks. It's just a bit baffling.

My Old Tackle Box

While sorting stuff in my fishing basement last night, Nathaniel came across a tackle box he'd never seen before and one I hadn't opened for years. It was the first "big box" I got while I was growing up -- probably when I was around Nathaniel's age (14) or just a bit younger. With three trays on each side, my old green Plano tackle box was pretty grand and fancy seeming to me when I first got it. I'm quite certain I stocked it with every hook, weight and lure I owned the very day I got it, and I remember spending a lot of time cleaning trays and moving stuff around as I got new baits. You can't tell that today as it has been picked through and has been out of service for a couple of decades, but my tackle box was one of very few things that I tried to keep in good order as a young man.

That box sat on the bank and in boats beside me in a lot of different setting through about a decade of active use, always ready with whatever bait I  needed. The box, as it is today, is less of a true boyhood collection than I'd prefer. Over the years some slightly newer stuff has landed in it, while baits I often used have been removed. Still, when I look into the box I see a now-broken Bang O Lure that produced dozens of bass from the banks of small Florida lakes; a baby bass pattern Rebel crankbait that was one of my first lures with an extra realistic finish; a couple of packets of Culprit worms, which were my mainstays for many years. I still remember the first time I ever fished with Culprit Ribbontails because it was also the first time a friend and I ever went through a whole packet of worms in a single afternoon. We found a seriously active group of fish in a canal off Crystal River, and after that I was seriously sold on green shad 7 1/2-inch Culprits.

Nathaniel also found the old brown single-tray box that preceded the one in the picture, but it is empty now and has broken trays. Meanwhile, I came across my Grandpa's old pool-cue-like boat rod that he used to take out on deep-sea boats. It's pretty fun unearthing old treasures as we work together to gain order in the fishing basement. I wonder what else we'll discover?