Spinner Baits – My First Experience and Tips

I remember like it was yesterday, but it was over 15 years ago. I was about 15 years old when my cousin pulled a strange looking fishing bait out of his tackle box that he claimed would catch more bass and pike in 1 hour than we caught in our best week. He claimed it was what all the fishing experts were using. To me it looked like a ghost on a stick, which is what I called it for several years. Its official name, however, was the Spinner Bait.

Over the next Michigan June we were successful at pulling a decent size large mouth bass or northern pike out of the water on just about every 5th cast! We even landed some true lunkers! Up until that point in time, we were lucky to catch 3 or 4 bass in a 3 hour fishing stretch. We were hooked on these crazy spinner baits!

Eventually, all these fish that we had caught ended up tearing the heck out of our spinnerbait, so we had to head back to the tackle shop to refill our supply. When we to Frank (tackle guy behind the counter) to give us about 12 more of those yellow (which were actually chartreuse) spinner baits he told us that he was all out. He then sold us a bunch of his white colored spinner baits which he did have in stock. What's the difference – white, yellow, blue, red, fish don't know colors, right? Wrong.

We went back out on the lake the very evening after purchasing our new spinnerbaits looking to land the ultimate trophy bass and/or pike. To our utmost surprise, we caught nothing! We fished for 2-3 hours and caught nothing! Just for kicks, I put on my old chartreuse spinnerbait that had been so successful the day earlier and, WHAM! I stated catching fish on after the other.

It's been over a decade and a half later and I can honestly say that I continue to be about 10x more successful in catching large mouth bass and northern pike when I use a chartreuse spinner bait instead of any other color. Maybe it's just that the fish in my area like that color… but I'm sticking to it.

If you're ever in Michigan, make sure to bring a chartreuse spinnerbait!