Back in 2019, the folks at Wired2Fish came up with a list of lures that had the biggest impact on not only modern-day bass fishing but also lure creation. Here is that list, with full credit to Jason Sealock for the text and photos.
Before it, there were lizards, craws, worms, tubes, and grubs. After it, however, there was an explosion of soft plastics that resemble anything. And that category continues to expand in the soft-plastic fishing-lure world. But the creature creation of Ed Chambers sent soft-plastic manufacturers in new directions, realizing you could impart a lot more action and water displacement with baits that didn't have to resemble a real creature.
Therein lies the beauty of the versatile Zoom Brush Hog. It doesn't look like a single thing in or out of the water. It catches fish, however, like something that naturally swims or crawls. The bait is another one that influenced the direction of future designs and, for that reason, made this Top 25 list.
Guys found out that, by adding weight, you could make the bait sit on a bass's face in cold water and tempt them to bite when they were overly lethargic. Guys originally were weighting these with lead coil, rubber-core sinkers, lead tape, and more, along with Bomber Long A's and Rapala Original Floaters. But it was the Smithwick Rogue that kept coming up when talking about producing winning stringers.
The rattles were unique in their ability to call attention to the bait from long distances. The suspending models are still very popular, as evidenced by tournament wins on the Smithwick Rogue.
They may not have been the very first jerkbaits that suspended, but they...oddly enough...created the craze of suspending jerkbaits because of necessity and savvy anglers being handy with lead. And they have certainly stood the test of time, having won a Bassmaster Open in 2011, and who could forget VanDam's Classic win on the RB1200 version. Thus we made this our No. 24 pick.
The idea of getting a reaction bait down to fish deeper than 15 feet was no easy pill to swallow. And while the Norman DD22 may not have been the first to do it, it has done better than most for a long time and accounted for countless tournament wins at the local and national level alike.
This crankbait comes in a plethora of colors but is really simplistic in its design. It's a bait that, when it first hit the market, everyone had to have. The mark of a true influential lure is its ability to make other manufacturers want to duplicate your success but continue to be the lure that anglers go to for that application.
That's the definition of this legendary crankbait.
It came through the grass better than a spinnerbait or buzzbait. It didn't get gnarled up in sloppy, slimy bogs, it had flash, wiggle and, with a grub or worm, a soft seductive side, too. The total package for catching bass in heavy vegetation, it's effectiveness carried over to saltwater fishing in the marshes.
It's still available and still thrown by a lot of anglers in states like Florida and up north on grassy fisheries. It hasn't resonated with anglers all over the country, and that's largely due to the prominence of hollow-body frogs in the market and more fishing on highland reservoirs void of any vegetation.
I still have vivid memories of watching Tom Mann throw them with a while worm as a trailer on his TV show and catching 12-pounders on film on Florida stick marshes. It was some of the most amazing fishing footage we've seen still to this day.
For these reasons, the Johnson Silver Minnow gets our nod for No. 22 on this list.
The Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver featured a ribbed body with a creased mid-section, flapping appendages, and a spade tail that can be split. It mimics baitfish, bluegill and crawfish all in one when flipped and punched through heavy cover and hopped around under matted vegetation and thick willow bushes alike.
It is a staple fish catcher from California to Florida, and although it's not been around as long as many other creations on the list, it's another one of those baits that spawned a whole new class of baits and presentations for bass in heavy cover.
For that reason, it comes in at No. 21 on this list.
Part of the allure was the buzzing blade tearing up a trail in the water, but the other aspect anglers grew to love was the "squeal." The mouse-like chirp of the metal blade spinning on a metal wire was a very appealing draw for big bass.
The lure spurred other manufacturers to create buzzing offerings, trying to improve on the original, but the original still catches them just fine. A buzzbait is an often overlooked lure, but it still seems to win a major tournament every year and catches a lot of big bass in the post spawn and fall.
For those reasons, it came in at No. 20 on this list.
Seven years later, the Z-Man Finesse TRD is one of the top-selling soft-plastic baits nationwide and a lure that both recreational and tournament anglers rely on to get bites in the toughest conditions. It comes in at No. 19 on this list.
After some major tournaments were won with this bait, the demand went through the roof...more than the manufacturer could manage, in fact. That led to an enormous influx of imitations from other manufacturers looking to fill the void with consumers demanding these hand-poured swimbaits.
But the Basstrix Paddle Tail Swimbait also had a lasting effect, in that it brought western swimbaits to the whole country, and anglers began to incorporate swimbaits in their regular fishing arsenal. Of course, many of the purist swimbait sticks out west scoffed at the popularity of these swimbaits, as they were tossing huge Huddleston Trouts and 10-inch Ospreys on extra heavy tackle and catching monster bass.
The Basstrix, however, "bridged the gap," so to speak, between the big-bass buys and the common everyday angler who throws more realistic sizes when chasing bass with artificials. Bass will eat those bigger baits, but more bass seemed to readily scarf the 5-inch Basstrix Paddle Tail Swimbaits across the nation.
Now this size and much larger swimbaits have become a mainstay in anglers' arsenals coast to coast. It's not just a western technique anymore. Even big-bait anglers should thank Basstrix for making swimbaits more acceptable and attainable to all anglers and helping to spawn a massive growth phase in the swimbait niches.
As popular as the Roboworm itself was a pink color they created called morning dawn. That color has gone on to be arguably the best fish-catching color of all time on a drop-shot and has spawned a whole drop-shot niche, thanks to the ease of use and large volume of fish you catch on the worm.
Helping to grow a technique like the drop-shot and expand a niche of baits puts the Roboworm at No. 17 on this list.
This bait made throwing finesse crankbaits on light line and spinning tackle in vogue on the tournament trail when the water was cold, and the bass were sluggish. Most pro and weekend anglers alike still reach for a Shad Rap when fishing coldwater. It's a confidence factor for tough coldwater fishing.
The bait works in a variety of situations and works really well for a variety of species. It's a staple in the walleye world, and we'd argue that four colors account for the majority of the Shad Rap sales. Those would be silver, gold, firetiger, and crawdad.
For a time, this bait was rented out by guide houses up north, because it was so productive when it first hit the market, and the supply was so limited. The Shad Rap continues to sell extremely well year after year.
So it has stood the test of time, developed a niche in crankbait fishing, caught numerous species of fish, and sold millions of units. For those reasons, the Rapala Shad Rap is No. 16 on this list.
In our mind, there are two types of artificial lures from a fish's standpoint. There are contact baits, and there are reaction baits. Lures like plastic worms and jigs are contact baits. They are subtle, act like prey inching along the bottom, and the fish will nose up to them and study them before deciding to eat them.
Reaction baits, on the other hand, shake, rattle and roll by the bass and often don't give them enough time to weigh the pros and cons of striking. The bass just grabs the lure out of sheer instinct or anger. They react to the wild noise and action.
When the Slug-Go hit the market, it was the first plastic bait of its kind to change the way plastics were viewed. An angler could now make this plastic bait duck and dart and slow-sink like a dying shad and elicit a "reaction" impulse from the bass. When the lure hit the market in the mid-1980s, it was a little slow to catch on, and then it seemed after a few tournaments were won on it, the bait became the hottest-selling plastic on the market.
It spawned a whole class of soft jerkbaits that were eliciting a reaction up in the water column, instead of locked on the bottom or right on top floating.
Convincing the angling public of the virtues of this new style lure was not easy when the bait hit the market in 2004. In January 2006, Bryan Thrift won a Stren Series event on Lake Okeechobee, using the Chatterbait. Immediately, demand for vibrating jigs went through the roof virtually overnight, and the Chatterbait craze was born.
Since then, the Chatterbait (No. 14 on this list) has gone on to win dozens if not hundreds of bass-fishing tournaments all across the country. We consider it a finesse version of a crankbait that can be fished through grass. It excels in cold and hot water alike, can mimic baitfish or bluegill, and catch bass in a variety of water clarities and conditions.
I can remember seeing Charlie Campbell for the first time on TV, making this topwater bait zig-zag back and forth across the surface, even walking it around a stump before a big bass jumped out of the water to eat it. I was hooked from that point 'til now. I can't have enough Zara Spooks or their later imitators in the boat when the water is warm and bass chase forage.
The "walk the dog" technique became not only an effective way to catch bass but also search for bass during the warm months in tournament situations. It seemed to call bass from great distances, and a lot of times, you could get bass to show themselves without ever having to hook them by taking the hooks off the bait.
The original version had hook hangers screwed on the outside of the bait and was silent, with a handful of colors. Now there are a multitude of sizes, colors, rattle options, silent options, three-hook and two-hook varieties and more. Their popularity remains strong to this day.
It's a niche bait that spawned its own technique, gave anglers more options, and opened up topwater fishing to another dimension.
It was the first widely marketed topwater popper to hit the market sometime in the 1930s. The chugging bait was made to imitate frogs around vegetation. The shape of the body, the frog coloration, and, of course, the popping mouth were all innovative at that time, but it's another part of the lure that really made the biggest influence.
Fred Arbogast is credited with developing the "hula skirt" for giving a lifelike look and feel. This hula skirt led to the development of spinnerbaits and jigs, with these flaring rubber skirts for tempting fish to bite.
Today's poppers are streamlined, finely detailed, and beautifully painted forage imitators, with sharp hooks, weight-transfer systems, rattles, and feathers for added attraction and more. And we all have the Hula Popper to thank for the innovations and mainstream appeal of topwater chuggers, as manufacturers continually seek to improve the original mouse trap.
A Hula Popper still is a very effective topwater. But the mainstream appeal of hard-plastic poppers and rubber skirts came from this one lure and put it in the prestigious list of most influential bass-fishing lures.
The Senko's appeal is not just how well it catches bass without having to impart action, but the fact that it catches big bass equally well, especially during the spawning season.
Rumor has it that Gary Yamamoto wanted to make a Slug-Go type lure and poured a mold from a Cross pen to create a new shape. After some refinement, he figured out that jerking a soft plastic was not the biggest appeal, but rather a wiggling action on the fall. He also really pioneered weighting plastics to make them more dense and fall more readily.
The Gitzit really became a household name when Guido Hibdon drew Garland in a tournament on Lake Mead. Hibdon brought the bait back to his Ozark lakes and started tearing up the tournament trail with this new shape of plastic. It was unique in that it broke away from the worm, craw, lizard (lifelike creature) mold and hollow body with tentacles. It was a blend of many great concepts in lure-making and is what still makes a tube so effective.
Nowadays you hardly find a soft-plastic line that doesn't have some form of tubes in their line up. Their influence was massive. The tube has won numerous tournaments at the top level, and it has many variations on how it can be fished: from an insert jighead, to a Texas rig flipped in brush, to a jigging spoon pushed into their cavity.
Their effectiveness on smallmouth is something of bass-fishing lore, not to mention that all bedding bass just love this size bait. It's hard to talk bass-fishing lures and not bring up the tube. For that reason, it's No. 10 on this list.
The Jelly Worm became a household name among anglers, and although they were originally sold on cards with cellophane wrapped around them, they later were sold in bags, with more worms per package, and sort of standardized the way worms are sold today.
Jelly Worms also proved that translucent colors at times were more productive than solid-colored worms, and the aroma of the worms appealed to an angler's senses probably more than that of the bass. Yet, there was something to be said about how slick the worms were and how easily they slid through cover.
The shape, large sizes, and translucent colors all had lasting impacts on soft plastics and really helped push the soft plastics into the forefront as a mainstay in an angler's arsenal. Not only did they account for countless tournament wins, but they helped Paul Elias secure the four-day tournament-weight record in B.A.S.S. history several years ago on Falcon Lake.
For those reasons and probably a lot more we haven't mentioned, the Mann's Jelly Worm finds itself at the No. 9 spot on this list.
His hand-carved crankbaits were an immediate success and in great demand for years. He would carve and hand-paint each one. No two baits were alike. It wasn't until Cotton Cordell took over the bait that more were readily duplicated. However, it also marked the change to a plastic bait.
The original Big O set the bar for shallow balsa baits. It could walk through cover and deflect off rocks and hard bottoms like no other bait before it. So it was immediately popular with avid anglers.
Now the market is flooded with square-bills, so the Big O's influence is still seen in today's manufacturing and power-fishing patterns.
This long hybrid worm/craw plastic offering was destined to turn a lot of heads from day 1--both on the shelves and in the bushes. Anglers were immediately attracted to the shape and profile. Its size made it a great jig trailer, as well as a great Texas-rigged offering for flipping heavy cover. But the real innovation was the ability to cook salt into the plastic pours so that the salt was not just sprinkled onto the bait or in the bags (a process we find very annoying as anglers) but actually poured as part of the bait.
In fact, for a time, Gene Larew held a patent on putting salt in baits, by which companies like Zoom just paid royalties to put salt in their baits. The patent has since lapsed. This innovation, however, helped spur development of plastics and soft baits with scent and taste being added to them. This was a game-changing idea at the time and definitely helped the sales of the Salt Craw.
But make no mistake, the bait has caught some giant fish and proven itself on the biggest of stages in competitive fishing. While you don't hear as much buzz about the Salt Craw, it's still a viable option that has lasted many years in the fishing industry and to which a lot of baits owe their beginning.
Today, tackle shelves are stocked with a wide array of hollow-bodied frogs to choose from, but the Snagproof Original Frog spawned a whole niche of baits and bass-fishing technique.
The bait was a break from the norm of lipped minnow and round-shaped baits. Its profile was more like that of a natural shad, and its subtle little wiggle and rattle combination was something new to the bass.
It spurred a new category of crankbaits called lipless cranks. It was an overnight sensation on the tournament trail and still catches fish for a multitude of anglers. It spawned all sorts of applications, from ripping it through the grass, yo-yoing it deep, to burning it over flats. It's equally good around rock, as it is around grass.
For all these reasons, as well as its lasting impact on the fishing-tackle industry, the Bill Lewis Rat-L-Trap comes in at No. 5 on this list.
The long bladed arm made this spinnerbait extremely snagproof, and anglers were able to work the bait in and around cover, making a new presentation for bass fishermen that still is extremely effective today. This reaction bite over cover was impactful on anglers from coast to coast.
Sure, there were other spinnerbaits out there, but this one had Stan Sloan's name behind it, and after all, he was the one who won Ray Scott's very first bass-fishing tournament. It's still argued to be one of the baits that really started the niche of competitive angling.
The bait still is being manufactured and sells extremely well, especially with anglers around Kentucky and Tennessee. The short-arm Aggravator is those anglers' choice for night-time spinnerbait fishing.
For its lasting impacts on tournaments, fishing tackle, and promotions, as well as its uncanny ability to still catch good bass, the Stan Sloan's Zorro Baits Aggravator is No. 4 on this list.
The first Rapala Original Floater was hand-carved by Lauri Rapala in 1936. It was made of cork, wrapped in chocolate-bar wrappers that were sealed to the bait by melting photo negatives over it. His original works were reported to catch him 600 pounds of fish on good days. That reputation grew, and soon every angler was demanding Lauri's carvings.
The fact that the bait has stood the test of time for some 75 years is an obvious reason to put it in the Top 5 most influential bass-fishing lures, but it's much more than that. The hand-tuned precision and effectiveness of this lure really set the benchmark for all fishing lures after it.
Now the reputation that was built by this one lure sells 20 million products yearly for this company, and tens of millions more probably should thank this one creation for making artificial lures more mainstream.
For these reasons and all the fish we learned to catch as kids growing up fishing with this bait, the Rapala Original Floater came in at No. 3 on this list.
He saw a TV show where they were using a jig with a fiberguard. At the time, he was looking at wire guards for his jigs, but the demand for the fiberguard after that TV show aired forced his hand, and he had to figure out a way to mold a fiberguard into a leadhead. All the while, he was tweaking the shape of the head to keep it from snagging. It started like a banana head, then he shortened it and flattened and widened it to keep it level and upright, which was critical to avoiding snags.
Once he got the jig-head designed and the fiberguard correct, he began tying the first jigs with bucktail. But he saw the Gilmore Lure Company Spinnerbait had some sort of rubber bands hanging off it. He wasn't sure what it was exactly or even how to get hold of the rubber. He knew underwear had elastic in it, as did women's girdles. They actually traced the girdle's rubber back to a rubber company and got them to color some rubber for them.
The rest, as they say, is history, but the lasting effect of some simple necessity has continued for more than 50 years. A skirted snagless jig has arguably won more national tournaments than any other lure. There, for a time in the 80s, every tournament of any significance was being won on them. In the early days of the B.A.S.S. Tour, there was something like five tournaments in a row won on Carnes jigs, but they were keeping it secret.
Bo Dowden won the Classic in 1980 on a brown and orange Arkie Jig, and the boom for Carnes' snagless jig was going full steam ahead. The jig was carried in Walmart stores in the early 70s, when it still was a regional chain. And after word spread and Walmart grew, access to his Arkie Jig was much easier.
Now, just about every jig manufacturer and component shop carries the Arkie style head for flipping. It was a lasting innovation that is every bit as good today as it was 50 years ago. For this reason, the Arkie Jig is ranked No. 2 on this list.
The Creme Wiggle Worm started the entire soft-plastic sub section of the fishing-tackle industry, and its impact was immediate. The first packs were five worms to a card for $1, and they were sold by mail.
When they showed the product at the Cleveland Sportsmen's Show in 1951, the distributor sold 9,600 packs in just a few days, and the boom for soft plastics had begun.
Not only did Nick Creme give us the Wiggle Worm, but he also was one of the first to use "national field staff:" to test his worms and introduce them to other anglers.
The Creme Scoundrel became their best-selling soft plastic for a time. It originally was sold as a pre-rigged worm, and many of us learned to fish with that worm as kids. The Wiggle Worm no longer is available, but the Scoundrel is still a very popular worm when bass are shallow in the spring.
The success of Creme's soft plastics really elevated fishing tackle and made it a viable business for a lot of folks. This one innovation moved fishing tackle forward more than any other, in our estimation. So thanks for coming up with a seemingly simple idea and expanding our horizons for catching bass infinitely. The Creme Wiggle Worm is the No. 1 pick on this list.
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