The Lure Fish Can't Refuse

[Hot n Tot]

I'm wondering about the original balsa floating Rapala. Do you use them much and which size is your favorite? My first one was a #7 in gold/black. My first memorable day bass fishing (other than my very first bass) was using this lure and killing them casting into the shallows with an ultralite rod. This was in the mid seventies.

a few years later, I met up with an old friend from school, and he was using a longer, 3 treble hook silver/black..size 11 think but it could have been a 13. He looped the the line around the front hook so it would turn on it's side when he twitched it. I was impressed with the quanity and size of the bass he was catching that day. He said it was the only lure he used, and for some time after that it was about the only lure I used as well.

Now I don't use them as often, sometimes I never tie one on during an outing, although I always have some with me. I still have a special feeling for this lure, and will always remember fish I've caught with them. For those of you too young to remember, there was a look or life magazine article about this lure back in the 60s, titled "the lure fish can't refuse. My uncle was the first person I knew who used one, and he killed them on our local lake and I was really impressed, and saved my money and purchased my #7 gold/black which I still have 40 some years later. Back then, we used pre-rigged plastic worms during the day, jitterbugs late evenings, and Rapalas. If we wanted to try for the "king of freshwater", the northern pike we would tie on a Mepps. Well, this was my first exposure to bass fishing which I still have fond memories of.

[Avalonjohn44]

Those and Rapala Countdown Minnows still produce for me. I prefer the countdown, they run as deep as you want them to, and fish don't often see them these days.

[Marty]

I should use these lures but I generally don't because I want something heavier that I can cast a little farther.

I'm pretty sure the magazine article was 1962, Life Magazine, with Marilyn Monroe on the cover.

[basscrusher]

I wouldn't call myself an old-timer (34), but that lure was a staple for me when I was younger. For years my PB was a 5+ caught on a #5 floater in chartreuse. Caught it when I was 16 in a farm pond of my grandfather's friend. I was twitching it like a popper and then the toilet flushed. I'm pretty sure my grandfather had a mild heart attack when it hit. I still have the lure, although the bill snapped off when it hit a rock some years ago. No problems though...I've seen what a C-rigged floater can do!