The Found Lures Thread

[AlabamaSpothunter]

Now here's a wild one.    Back in October IIrc., I hooked into a big Catfish on a point on a brand new Jackall CB that had been tearing them up hours before.

 

This Catfish had me wrapped so deep in a weed mat that for 30mins I tried to get it out.   Ultimately I was so frustrated I just cut my line and then tied that line to the bottom of a dock piling that was right there.    I came back the next day hoping the fish had freed itself from the bait, and the bait would remain......no luck, the fish broke it off and swam free I assume.

 

Flash forward to today, I'm about a mile away from that location, and more crazy I was deep within a cove when I faintly see what could be a floating CB.   Lo and Behold it was Jackall from October.    If only a CB could talk, did the Catfish die and then the bait float free, did it just rot a hole in it's lip loose enough for the bait to finally come free, did it come free back in Oct. and just been floating around.   Oh the wild and crazy lives of a JDM CB ?

 

I haven't even started to clean it up, but I can't see any rust on it.   I lost one other prized bait to a Catfish in the Fall that is much more important.   A LuckyCraft oldschool BDS 3.    I look for that bait every time out, now I'll be looking even harder lol. 

 

 

[AlabamaSpothunter]

Wow Jackall finishes and hardware are for realz.....the back treble has a bit of rust in the area where the finish didn't get applied likely, will replace.    They are just as crazy sticky sharp as out of the box.   

 

5months in the water, 5 mins with a toothbrush, and one quick treble replaced....this bait will be hammering fish in a month or two I'd imagine.

 

 

Come on BDS 3 ?

 

[fin]

A few weeks back I found a Sexy Dawg floating along the bank that I had lost last summer. A few days later I found a jerk bait floating along the bank I had lost last summer as well.

 

The week before that I had lost a different jerk bait, and then a week later one of my fishing buddies caught the fish that had broke me off, with my jerk bait still stuck to his face.

 

So that’s three lures I got back in the same week. I’m pretty good about not losing lures, and when I do lose them, it’s rare that I find them again. The odds of me getting three back in one week have got to be a million to one.

 

11 hours ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

If only a CB could talk, did the Catfish die and then the bait float free, did it just rot a hole in it's lip loose enough for the bait to finally come free, did it come free back in Oct. and just been floating around.

 

All of mine were lost when I got broke off, and I felt bad about each one. I would love to know what happened to those fish.

[WaterOtter]

23 hours ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

If only a CB could talk

I have had those exact same thoughts so many times!  When I find a lure I know it could have been somebody's go-to lure that's caught a million fish and a pb, or it could have been fresh out of the box and one dunderhead cast, or snagged on a log and it was gone. 

 

I once joked about microchipping lures, but if we microchipped lures like we microchip our dogs, we could solve these mysteries!   Then we could use an RFID reader to get the fisherman's contact info to get back to them.  I would return all the lures I find to hear the stories of when and where and how they got away.  I could also get some answers about the really wackadoodle rigs I find.  lol

[WaterOtter]

Sunday was my first time on this lake and I got a new PB ... for found lures.  Nothing exotic, but several solid lures and nice variety.  I haven't cleaned them up and replaced hooks yet, but I think 44 can swim again, 11 are too damaged, and 6 were plastics.  A 3 Whopper Plopper day!

 

I was out there 5-1/2 hrs and covered 70% of the lake, but bad weather made me pass on some up in trees and drove me off the lake.  I'll be back.

[AlabamaSpothunter]

10 hours ago, WaterOtter said:

Sunday was my first time on this lake and I got a new PB ... for found lures.  Nothing exotic, but several solid lures and nice variety.  I haven't cleaned them up and replaced hooks yet, but I think 44 can swim again, 11 are too damaged, and 6 were plastics.  A 3 Whopper Plopper day!

 

I was out there 5-1/2 hrs and covered 70% of the lake, but bad weather made me pass on some up in trees and drove me off the lake.  I'll be back.

Lmao, you don't realize how bad fishing pressure is until you see some posts in this thread. 

 

I'd say a Whopper Plopper is one of the most common found baits among you guys, and yet they are one of the more expensive lures.  I've heard people talk about these baits exploding in popularity after somebody won a big tourney on them or something.  

[WaterOtter]

23 hours ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

you don't realize how bad fishing pressure is until you see some posts in this thread

I don't know if this lake is all that pressured, I think it's just been a while since anyone came around with a kayak and an extension pole and combed through the detritus along the shore.  My trip worked out to 1 lure per 1/10 of a mile of shoreline, and nearly all had at least surface rust on them, even the ones in bushes. 

 

Talk about fishing pressure -- on the small lakes I fished and searched in Alabama, on peak weekends the bass boats would all move around the lake the same direction, one after the other.  I think they had to leave snagged lures behind because etiquette prevented them from going in close and disturbing the fish for the next guy, who was right behind them. 
 

The most common lure brand/type I find in Michigan is Rapala minnows.  I've seen on this thread where people get tired of the repetition of finding KVD square bills, but here it's those Rapala minnows. 

I can't get lures out of my head and it's spring break, so yesterday I went back and finished up the lake from Sunday.  I have some real cleaning to do. 

[Bluebasser86]

On 3/22/2023 at 7:11 PM, WaterOtter said:

I want to see it how it looks once you paint it!  And I would like to know how you get the old paint off.  I've thrown away a lot of found lures because the paint has come off and I don't know how to clean the rest of the paint off to repaint.

Also, what do you use to fill in tooth marks from the critters that chew on it on shore?  ?  It was a huge revelation a few years ago when I figured out the small pits in lures were coming from pointy critter teeth.

I use a very light grit sandpaper to remove old paint. 

 

I don't do anything with chewed baits. I've stopped doing much with the baits I find. I just sell most of them as is with a heavy disclaimer to the buyer so they understand they aren't new but they're still getting way more than their monies worth if they're willing to put in the work cleaning the baits and adding new hardware. I think the last total was 183 baits and I sold them all for $100 shipped. There was something like 13 whopper ploppers  in the lot to cover the cost by themselves, everything else was just a bonus. I have too many baits as is, so if it's not something nice that I really want, it's moved on to a new owner who will use it. This year, I've got a box that is for donations. I think I'm going to save them all and donate them to the highschool kids. They'll be the ones that are weathered but still usable with some TLC. I remember how hard it was to afford baits when I was that age, those beat up baits usually still have a lot of life left in them if you look beyond the outer appearance. 

[AlabamaSpothunter]

Karma found a G Loomis IMX with a nice little Shimano spinning reel while I was cleaning trash off the lake today 

 

[WaterOtter]

Here's that 2-day haul after I cleaned them up and replaced a few rings and hooks.  I'm still blown away!

 

[WaterOtter]

Could you imagine, with all the fish that you catch, if you could keep them (and they didn't rot or get smelly), so you could bring them home and hang them on a display board all next to each other, and then you could compare them and keep admiring them and recalling so many good memories.  Oh, and if they were small enough you could fit them all into a manageable space.  Well, that's the joy of lure hunting. 

 

[WaterOtter]

Here's a good picture of a lure in the wild ...

 

[ATA]

8 minutes ago, WaterOtter said:

Here's a good picture of a lure in the wild ...

 

I am blind, Cant see it LOL

[WaterOtter]

This was a tough one.  It's a squarebill floating near the center of the picture, with only its back sticking out of the water  lol

 

It was a slightly wrong shape to be in among the brush, so I went in to investigate.  It was the second of this week's finds.   

[AlabamaSpothunter]

3 minutes ago, WaterOtter said:

This was a tough one.  It's a squarebill floating near the center of the picture, with only its back sticking out of the water  lol

 

It was a slightly wrong shape to be in among the brush, so I went in to investigate.  It was the second of this week's finds.   

If there was a professional lure finding league, you and BlueBasser would be the champs easily ?

[WaterOtter]

I thought the most interesting lure was the "Bob's Flies", which is a spinner with a fly with a treble hooked onto the fly. It seems like they're taking a cheeseburger and trying to make it better by adding something to it that's also already great by itself, like bacon, when really both are just as great by themselves.

 

The most impressive "finding it" was the Googan crank, which was stuck on a chunk of wood just under the surface in a narrow, current area of the river.  It looked like a large swan feather (we have a ton of those) wrapped around the wood as I zipped past, or a white piece of plastic trash (we have a lot of that too).  But, I have a policy that if something looks interesting, then go back and look at it, and this time, like about 30% of the time, it was a lure.    And that's how we make the dream a reality!

[TheSwearingAngler]

All my best finds happen when searching for one I lost… threw a ned rig into a tree before work, didn’t have time to get it, went back at lunch it was gone but these 2 were on the ground… anybody got an ID on the squarebill? 
 

second time finding this exact whopper plopper at this pond while looking for a lure I lost.

[fin]

1 hour ago, TheSwearingAngler said:

All my best finds happen when searching for one I lost… threw a ned rig into a tree before work, didn’t have time to get it, went back at lunch it was gone but these 2 were on the ground… anybody got an ID on the squarebill? 
 

second time finding this exact whopper plopper at this pond while looking for a lure I lost.

 

That's an Ozark Trail (Walmart brand) crankbait. Very cheap, swims poorly. I throw them in the trash. They make a terrible Whopper Plopper knock-off too, but that's a legit Whopper Plopper you've got.

[TheSwearingAngler]

1 hour ago, fin said:

 

That's an Ozark Trail (Walmart brand) crankbait. Very cheap, swims poorly. I throw them in the trash. They make a terrible Whopper Plopper knock-off too, but that's a legit Whopper Plopper you've got.

Thanks for the ID… crankbait looks cheap so that makes sense… this is the second “I know it” 90 whopper plopper I’ve found at this pond. I thought since I found them within 3 inches of each other and they’re colored similar it might have been the same guy that lost them, but the disparity in quality leads me to believe perhaps not.

[galyonj]

All my found lures are evidence of CHUDs that evolved to use fishing gear.

 

 

Not pictured: Approximately a hundred miles of fishing line that I had to drag out with this Walmart jighead.

[AlabamaSpothunter]

58 minutes ago, galyonj said:

All my found lures are evidence of CHUDs that evolved to use fishing gear.

 

 

Not pictured: Approximately a hundred miles of fishing line that I had to drag out with this Walmart jighead.

I pulled about 30yds out two days ago on a stupid looking T-Rig setup.  It's the Crappie folks that are the bad offenders on my homelake though....they get their line stuck and they just break it off. 

[galyonj]

35 minutes ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

I pulled about 30yds out two days ago on a stupid looking T-Rig setup.  It's the Crappie folks that are the bad offenders on my homelake though....they get their line stuck and they just break it off. 

 

In the defense of whomever left what I found above, the place I was fishing at is basically a black hole for me. I lost three (completely different presentations, mind) lures in the hour I  was there.

 

It'd probably help if I quit setting the hook on logs and chunk rock, but this isn't about me.

[WaterOtter]

Last week I cleaned a similar plastic on a lead head out of a bush, and the long piece of line attached to it led straight out into the water.  That meant it was someone fishing from a boat, and he didn't even bother to move closer to the thing before cutting his line.  I was miffed.  No effort to free it up, no effort to reduce the amount of line he left behind.  That, in my book, is littering. 

[galyonj]

17 minutes ago, WaterOtter said:

Last week I cleaned a similar plastic on a lead head out of a bush, and the long piece of line attached to it led straight out into the water.  That meant it was someone fishing from a boat, and he didn't even bother to move closer to the thing before cutting his line.  I was miffed.  No effort to free it up, no effort to reduce the amount of line he left behind.  That, in my book, is littering. 

 

Absolutely. One nice side effect of braid to leader is that breaking off becomes a really simple affair when necessary to do so. And I minimize the mess. 

[WaterOtter]

However, the people who left the rest of last Saturday and Sunday's haul behind left easter eggs. lol

 

This is the year of the chunky whopper ploppers.  The most I've ever found before was 4 in a year, but this year I already have 7.  By the way, the big swivel on the little loon makes it a suspending lure.  It dropped from the tree into the water and disappeared, but fortunately it had 3' of floating line attached, so I was able to pull it back up.