In Search of the Perfect Lure

(first published by Gold Country Media, Dec, 2025)

One of the peculiarities of fishing is the trendiness of lures and baits. And I’m not talking among anglers. I’m talking among fish.

When I first started really focusing on Folsom lake’s trout and landlocked salmon back in the early 2000s, my can’t-miss presentation was a “rolled shad”, which entails an actual small shad baitfish rigged in such a way that it spins as you troll it through the water. It was money, partly because small shad are one of the 2 baitfish populations in Folsom lake. Match the hatch, right? Duh. Rolling shad was like leaving a box of donuts out for bears at Lake Tahoe. I caught many fish with that simple set-up for several seasons. Until suddenly, around  2012, it stopped working, just like that. No idea why.   

But it was OK because soon after, I began having success with a simple chrome/blue 4” trolling spoon called a Speedy Shiner. I thought I’d cracked some kind of pescatarian code because that thing, in those specific colors, was deadly. Privately, I congratulated myself, because I’d first chosen the lure after noticing the lake’s other baitfish, pond smelt, have an iridescent blue-ish lateral line. Again, match the hatch. It worked so well I briefly toyed with loading up on a decade-worth of chrome-blue Speedys and magnanimously donating the rest of my gear to the Sisters Of The Perpetual Skunk Home For Struggling Anglers. Until the chrome/blue stopped working. Again, no idea why. It just did.

Over the years, there have been other tackle to come out of nowhere and tap into some sort of underwater zeitgeist; lures and baits in styles and colors that work great for a while but then fade away like Nintendo Wii. I had an orange/white/green Gold Star spoon I started using just this past spring that I took to calling “my precious” because it was so effective…until about July, when it suddenly wasn’t, anymore. I have a friend who theorizes it’s a kind of natural selection at work: the fish pre-disposed to smack something that looks like, say, an Elton John outfit circa 1974 simply check themselves out of the gene pool when they do. It sounds like a reasonable excuse…er…theory.

Whatever the reason, it’s why anglers are like medical researchers: we, too, are constantly searching for that big next break-through drug- aka lure. It’s the same thing! Did you know Ozempic was created after researchers discovered its weight-loss properties while studying the venom of gila monsters? Who figured that out? Anglers have to have that same kind of dogged, relentless out-of-the-tackle-box thinking. 

Or gullibility. Either works. 

So that is why, when my wife and I were on vacation in Ireland recently, I had to visit funky little Rory’s Fishing Shop, located deep in the heart of Dublin’s bustling Temple Bar district. The street it’s on is literally, pub, pub, pub, Rory’s, pub, pub, pub. It has been there since 1959, long before that part of the city became the chic, glittery Celtic fever dream it is now. Rory’s stands out like a pint of Guinness on a table full of White Claws. After marveling at that weirdness for a moment, I got serious and began to browse, soon zeroing in on some interesting spoons the clerk said work great in Ireland for brown trout. I told (or, ok, possibly lied to) myself that they didn’t quite look like anything I’ve seen before, with the nose and tail curved in opposite directions and the main body of the spoon arced with a graceful wave. If I haven’t seen them before, I reasoned (or rationalized), then certainly the fish I chase haven’t either. I didn’t quite buy a decades-worth. But I did buy 10. Only time and a few fishing trips will tell if I have found my latest can’t-miss presentation…my Gila Monster Venom. 

But, if I haven’t, well, that’s just more gear I can someday donate to the Sisters Of The Perpetual Skunk Home For Struggling Anglers. Or, I can just bring it all with me when my family finally checks me in.