You might just have one of "special individuals" by that I mean all baits are not the same. You can go to a shop and there may be twenty of the identical bait. I mean IDENTICAL same manufacturer, same color, same size, same lot number. Yet if you bought all 20 you would find that 10 fished about the same 5 fished worse than the others and 5 fished better. Then there are those one in hundred, or maybe even one in athousand individual baits that are totally superior. I had one once. it was a heddon dying flutter. It would catch fish when nothing else would. It ALWAYS produced. Many was the day that it rescued me from the skunk. Then one day it got lost in the jaws of a mighty huge pickerel and that was that. I immediately went out and bought another, not nearly as good, so I bought another. Again not so good. I bought a bunch more....none as good. Over the years I still occasionally buy one but I long ago concluded that that particular example just had something special about. Yes, I have bent the props, tweaked it this way and that. NO dice. You either get one or you don't.
Avid,
I know exactly what you mean. I have a Luhr-Jensen "Wobble-Pop" in bone white that a rep gave me 20 yrs ago. I have thrown that lure so much, and it has has been eaten so often, that it has little paint left on it. I have risked life and limb to save it a couple of times! I've got other ones but none produce like it does.