Spoons, Tailspinners, Blades

Although anglers reportedly crimped lead onto their lines ahead of Dardevles and vertically jigged them as early as the 1920s, the standard jigging spoon didn’t penetrate the bass market until the 70s, when saltwater anglers started using them for stripers in reservoirs. “Our baits were originally intended for striper fishing in saltwater, but they became popular in South Carolina’s Santee Cooper lakes—Marion and Moultrie—and from there caught on with bass anglers,” says Robbie Roberts, a lure designer for Virginia’s Hopkins Fishing Lures for nearly 40 years.

Also gaining popularity among the growing legions of deep-water savvy bass anglers were the Cordell CC Spoon and Mann’s Mann-O-Lure. Indeed, the proliferation of electronic depthfinders that revealed the exact location of structure, cover, and bass, further increased the effectiveness and popularity of vertically jigging spoons, a pinpoint technique. “The beauty of a jigging spoon, the key to its effectiveness, is that you can put it exactly where you want it and keep it there,” says tournament veteran and noted spoon expert Mike Wurm.

“Spoons often are considered cold weather and hot weather baits, when bass typically are on or near the bottom over deep structure and have a small strike zone. The spoon allows precise placement, and you can keep it in the strike zone as long as you need to,” says the Arkansas pro.

Because of their weight, spoons also excel for schooling bass, Wurm adds. “You can really zing a spoon out there. To get a slower fall, insert a spoon into a tube lure,” he notes. In fact, Wurm says that sheathing spoons in soft plastic tubes also can entice strikes when fishing vertically. “It gives the lure a different look, action, and texture,” he says.

Tailspinners

Designed by Tom Mann in 1960, the Mann’s Little George still ranks as the world’s best known and top-selling tailspinner. Mann, then working as a conservation officer in Alabama, developed the hybrid spoon-spinner for fishing bass in deep holes in his home state’s Pea River. “I designed it to look like a small shad. Lead made it castable and heavy enough for bottom fishing. The spinner blade on the tail balanced the lure and produced sound waves and vibration,” Mann says.

Despite the bait’s diminutive stature, it proved deadly on bass of all sizes. “I also was fishing it on Lake Eufaula, Alabama, out on river ledges, regularly catching stringers of giant bass,” Mann says. “That’s when the bait really took off.” Indeed, the lure maker had his Little George—named after then governor George Wallace—on the market in a month. In the nearly 40 years since, tens of millions of Little Georges have been sold, and many other manufacturers have added similar lures to their inventories.

Like spoons, tailspinners have changed little since Tom Mann’s creation. Most are made of weighty metals such as lead, feature a baitfishlike profile, a Colorado style blade attached to the tail, and a treble hook dangling from the belly. Advances in finish technology have yielded more attractive lures in recent years, at least to the human eye, but guides and tournament anglers generally stick with tried and true blue-white and black-white patterns.