The first magical bait for me was a Rebel Deep Wee R. Frog and craw patterns were the hot ticket. I caught hundreds of bass on a couple lures that cost less than $3 at the time, which was a small fortune for an artificial bait. Minimum wage was half that, so consider that along with current minimum wages and the price of a Lucky Craft bait, and you get the picture. It was expensive, but way cheaper than buying worms, and a lot less time spent digging for them.
Next up was a Texas rigged curly tail worm. A guy in a bass boat pulled two fish from the slop near our dock where I was fishing, and that his bait could not only get through that stuff without becoming a giant green wig, there were fish to be caught in there. It was a real revelation for my 12 year old brain. That guy gave me a bag of Culprits, some offset hooks, and bullet weights. He showed me how to tie it up and rig it. Whatever angler I am today, I owe it to that guy. 80% of the shoreline opened up for fishing that was previously inaccessible. Thanks dude.
Shortly after that, the Slugg-O came into being. I would say it was as big a deal, if not bigger than the Senko. People that normally didn't fish could get the hang of it quickly, and immediately catch. It was weedless and weightless, so any decent spinning or spincast gear laying around worked fine. Skipping docks in the evening became common sport for many boaters - most not anglers. You could get reasonably close to cover, and skip that bait under and twitch it back without need for a trolling motor. These baits eventually evolved into what we call flukes these days. In-Fisherman archives has a great article on this segment of baits.
The Senko. Not much to say here. I still throw them. Great baits. Lots of ways to rig them.
The next magic bait for me is actually two: Lucky Craft Sammy and Megabass Popmax. I've fished topwaters since I was a kid. Wooden Lucky 13 "plugs" were an old stand by. Later Spooks came into play, once I learned how to walk them. Bt it was the Sammy and Popmax that got me to throw these almost whenever, not the usual dawn/dusk presentation, and not just shallow. They are a top 3 go to bait in many situations, and may be the only thing I throw ALL DAY LONG.
There are other baits that I throw regularly like jigs, spinnerbaits, cranks, frogs, big swimbaits, etc., and there are rigs that use quite a bit that are key to my success and probably define me as a type of angler, like Drop Shot and Wacky Jigs, but they weren't magical like what I detailed above.
I hope this forum brings these experiences to new anglers. I'd love to hear that story.
