Put That Lure Away !

I have a few lures that will never touch the water again. I have permanently removed them from my tacklebox. What’s wrong with these unlucky lures you ask? Absolutely nothing. In fact, they are so good I put them away forever.

My father started me fishing at an early age. We would walk along the shoreline of a few Sierra Nevada lakes all day long casting lures in hopes of catching dinner. We would leapfrog each other every 20 yards as we made our way around the lake. Looking back we were a deadly fishing team. But there was one major flaw in our fishing system. We would snag the bottom and lose a lot of gear. Nowadays I fish out of a boat and if I snag up I simply turn the boat around and retrieve the lure. Sure there’s a good chance that I spook every trophy trout heading back to my lure but with the price of custom lures these days sometimes it is worth it, sometimes its not. Getting back to the reason why I retire a lure that has worked so well for me after I have caught a trophy on it. Looking back my father and I, mostly me, lost almost all of his original lures that he had collected over the years. You see, those special lures contain a lot of memories and information that you don’t want to lose.

I have saved most of the lures that I have caught my trophy fish on over the years. I save the lures for several reasons. The first reason is obvious, it’s for the memory. I get to relive the memory of the day that I caught a trophy on that lure. The second reason is because lures change over the decades and manufacturers discontinue styles and sizes. Years ago I started carving my own handmade lures. Looking at many of the discontinued lures has helped me design new ones. The last reason is for color reference. Almost all of my lures have been repainted with a custom color pattern. By saving the lures, I can recreate my favorite colors over and over again.

So I share with you some of my all-time favorites. Some of these lures and their paint jobs go back decades and others just a few years.

Large 10″ and up