The Case for Big Baits

Musky Mania Jake

The design of the Double Cowgirl expands on a double-bladed, bulging-bucktail design that’s decades old but with greater blade size—a pair of #10 Indiana blades replacing more standard #6 or #8 Colorados. Meanwhile, Hoppe’s fiancée Carrie Grove, who built the first Cowgirls in 2003, chose Flashabou as body material.

Flashabou is a supple, highly reflective material. In the water, it comes alive, each strand billowing, swirling behind the churning double blades to create the appearance of surprising bulk. Cranked at moderate speed, a Cowgirl looks to have the diameter of a softball. Yet when a fish hits, there’s little to grab onto but hooks. On the cast the material collapses, allowing the lure to be rifled out, even into the wind.

Key to both lures, I believe, is the illusion of mass in place of physical bulk. Whether it’s the Bull Dawg’s swirling tail, or the Double Cowgirl’s large blades and billowing body, both appear larger in the water than they are.

Other bait styles—spinnerbaits in particular—use the illusion of mass as part of their appeal, but seldom on this scale. Meanwhile, the illusion does little to hinder performance in other areas, including castability (they’re big baits, but not so large that casting them is impractical). Hooking percentages are comparable to smaller baits of other styles.

The Cowgirl phenomenon led to experiments with alternative skirt materials like marabou and silicone, as well as subtly different blade configurations. Bait Rigs Tackle has adapted the double blade configuration to a spinnerbait frame, the new Esox Cobra Viper, allowing anglers to fish big-bladed baits through rushes and weeds, crawl them over rocks, or slow roll them down steep breaklines.

Crankbaits also have followed the trend. Giant versions of popular crankbaits like the Musky Mania Jake, Drifter Tackle Believer, and the Grandma have been available for some time, though their size limits them to trolling duty for most anglers.

Why Do They Work?

It’s tempting to explain the success of bigger lures by suggesting that they best imitate the bigger forage that big fish prefer. Mature muskies forage on a variety of fish species, from ciscoes *******ers to carp, in the 16- to 24-inch range (and larger) when they’re available.

Is there a bioenergetic advantage to selecting bigger forage? There’s scant evidence that muskies selectively forego opportunities to forage on what’s abundant, regardless of size, to seek out larger individual prey items. Even on systems with perch and panfish forage bases and few if any large ciscoes or suckers, outsized lures still catch muskies, and sometimes lots of them. It’s far more likely that large prey falls into the same category as everything else muskies eat, from turtles to seagulls to the occasional pop can—targets of opportunity for a versatile and (at times) none-too-choosey predator.

From a practical standpoint, the reason for the recent success with big lures is that they represent a key aspect of presentation that has been largely ignored. We have long exploited other presentation options, from the triggering ability of speed, sound (topwaters especially), contact with cover, and erratic action, but lure size is another key aspect of lure choice. Anglers chasing giant bass in California fish with huge swimbaits. Yet muskie lures, despite infinite variety in other fine details, mostly stayed within the 6- to 10-inch size range—scant variation for a fish that reaches mature sizes from 30 to 60 inches.