i need to start rebuilding my plug collection. my old one died a few years ago.. and never bothered getting more cause i didnt fish much. but now its time.. especially with all the top water goin on. most of my collection was from when i was kid. things shop owners gave me to try out. things friends let me use etc etc. i'm not a big fan of buying before trying. especially now. since i want some good things. i dont wanna drop $20-$30 on a plug to have it not work.

so... i think this might be helpful.. just a list of what the bass are feeding on.. what lure and color you use as your main weapon for the bait fish type. and an alternative lure you will go too if the first fails...
i know every unique situation calls for something different. but there must one thing ya try out right away for each bait fish you identify.
example:
BAIT FISH ------------- Lure/Color ---------- Alt. Lure/color
mackerel - bomber/ mackerel bomber/tiger


heres a template.. add any baitfish you encounter cause my list fairly short..



BAIT FISH---------------- Lure/Color ----------------Alt. Lure/Color
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Mackerel
Bunker
Herring
Eels
Sardines
Small Minnows
Crustaceans


hopefully i can get some good ideas of what to get. cause i need to get in on this action soon. chunkin is fine and dandy still. but they just came off the bottom feeding like 1month ago in the area. and now i find em jumping all over the place. i'm dying to get back to plugs.

Yozuri crystal minnows , mag darters or Bombers for the small stuff

ya can't go wrong with a gibbs pencil in medium, start with white, if you need to reach the middle of the canal or something-get the 3 oz canal special.
Creek chub poppers are cheap and work fine.
for metal lip swimmers like a danny, try a RM Smith danny white with pink down the middle.
another topwater = Bernzy surf howdy will smoke fish.
If you have any money left, try anything Habs makes.

for rubba, there are many choices

where do you fish? that's probably the most important thing to base what plugs to buy on.

I wouldn't get to fussy with color and matching baitfish when building a collection if I were you, thats stuff you can add later. Been there, done that and now pretty much all I fish are white (day and bright nights), yellow (day and medium to bright nights), medium (something like herring or olive over white), and black or blurple (dark nights). You could easily get away with only white, yellow and black IMO.

As far as plugs, some slow sinking needles (Gibbs, Mr. Wiggley) and some medium sinkers (Habs, Afterhours, Superstrike), bombers and redfins (if its not too rough, these maybe all you need most nights), a couple superstrike 2 3/8 oz poppers, a pencil popper or two (brand will depend on budget) and maybe a spook (I really like Surf Asylum's spooks). Tough to get a good wood swimmer on a budget IMO, if you want to spend the money (and you can find them) the hab's mullet and beachmaster junior are awsome as is anything by RM Smith.

Ahem..... the canal special is weighted at 3 1/8 oz... Duh:usd:

firstly thanks for the responses.. but now i'm overloaded by the random throwing out of plug types. thus trying to get that whole some sort of pattern thing going. i've been looking around (like always) and there is so much out there that looks great. that it's overwhelming. back in the day i had one lure for stripers. sadly i haven't been able to find one since i bought it close to 13 years ago. and once that thing kicked the bucket i pretty much stopped pluggin. i'd say of the 70 or so fish caught in the three years that thing was in working condition.. only 7 or so (IF that) were caught on something else. and i didnt fish much. maybe an hour, three days a week. from halfway in june till mid july. that thing produced. wasnt uncommon to pull in 7 fish in an hour. hell i threw it out for %$%$%$%$ and giggles in a tiny little pond once. with in seconds of hitting the water something slammed it HARD. missed it. but i will never forget the splash it made in that little pond.

the mystery plug is still in production. (i think) but no one carries it..5 1/4" jointed rapala in gold fluorescent red. i cant find one any where. plus the one i had.. had a medium diving lip on it. instead of the shallow diver. every picture i see of them online appears to be of the smaller jointed raps with the shallow diving lip. so i am unsure if they still make it with the medium lip. plus the it had an "o-ring" to tie onto.
do the 5 1/4" still have that set up? i havent seen one in ages. seems all the shops rather carry the big plastic bombers than the big wooden raps.

i still have it in my box.. it just doesn't... do ANYTHING right anymore. the lip has been banged against more rocks than i thought possible. its got nicks and gouges. the paint wore off.. first the eyes. then the rest.
its so banged up it doesn't swim anymore. its just kinds drags in. sideways... and half the time on its side..

yeah i fished the hell out of that thing. every now and then i throw it out thinking it works like new. only to be depressed when it comes in looking like a drowned rat.

i think i bought it on a whim. cause that was back in my freshwater days. and bassmaster did a piece on "strange looking lure work" or something. where the gist was give the fish something they dont see every day. so i saw this massive bright orange broken back and thought "well they dont see that every day". never really used it. then i decided to go fishing down by my old house. and it was the only thing i had that i thought was big enough for saltwater. and first cast, under a dock from off a small jetti. now from the dock to where i was, was only about 20ft of water, probably 8-14ft deep. larry knows exactly where i speak of. it was half way in. i was giving that old slow retrieve with some jerks. and i mean slow. barely breaking the surface. and BAM!!! it was only a 15inch schoolie. but i saw the wake coming up behind and then the flash and splash and my line went tight. from there that only repeated time and time again. just about every other cast.

oddly enough.. under the same conditions my buddy at the time had the same results with a black jointed bomber. but if we switched em up and used each others. we couldnt catch jack. same retrieves and everything. but one worked only in his hands the other in mine.


any way.. enough of the reminiscing.. down to business.

where do you fish? that's probably the most important thing to base what plugs to buy on.


i fish where the fish take me. we have a little bit of everything in this town. sand, rocks, surf, backwaters, rivers, bays, open ocean, deep channels and pockets, shallow flats. you name it. it's here.

so we chase the fish through all of those places. most days chunks work just fine. just get a lil of everything. throw it out. see what happens. see what the fish are in the mood for. alot of the season though the top water action seemingly did not exist. up until august, as far as i knew - (and i was fairly in tune) next to no keepers were taken with a fish in the guts. it was all crab clams and lobsters. then one day it changed and the bait fish were in and the top water started up. and now it all over. i have yet to go out since august and not end up in the middle of top water action at some point. granted sometimes ya gotta search some weird places to find it. in some spots they are hitting the little minnows. and others its a bunker busting frenzy. (though usually those turn out to be the work of blues and anything that hits the water at that point becomes a working bait).


right now i am interested in an area with an exspansive shallow flat. small rocky/gravely bottom. with scattered grass beds. decent size fish hoppin out of the water in what couldn't be more than 3-5ft deep. only yards from shore. i heard some (and saw one) belly flops that almost had me in tears. big fish. floppin all over.

my buddy JUST called. im actually going out now and returning to that crime scene.. we are gonna stop in and grab some top water things... we shall grab something white. let ya know how that works out.

right now i am interested in an area with an exspansive shallow flat. small rocky/gravely bottom. with scattered grass beds. decent size fish hoppin out of the water in what couldn't be more than 3-5ft deep. only yards from shore. i heard some (and saw one) belly flops that almost had me in tears. big fish. floppin all over.

try a white 7.5" or 6" sluggo

i almost grabbed one yesterday.. i've never had any luck with sluggos though. fins on the other hand.. but not in salt water. i'm sorta worried about the blues in the area and rubber.. i hear the two don't mix very well.

You might find a similar jointed lure from the surfcaster catalog. They are also online. They call it the miracle lure or something. I wouldn't go without some bucktails either. Plug choice really makes a difference and varies greatly depending on location so it is hard to be too specific...

lol. my buddy and i went out almost all day. grabbed some plugs. prepared for some chunk and plug.. and i will be damned if we couldnt find a single fish. nothing. nada. zip. zilch. perfectly crappy rainy windy day and not a fish to be found. not even a nibble. we drove all about searching and searching trying here trying there.. turns out they were out in boat land. saw the blitzing with no way in hell of reaching them. apparently it took every fish in the area to pull this blitz off. we finally thought we had a plan to get close enough.. as soon as we made the plan and starting heading to them. it dispersed... just like that. :rotflmao:
that when we decided to give up. cause the fish dont like us today.

Sounds like the legacy all us surfcasters encounter from time to time.It's nice to wet the line and let the plugs swim once in a while.

It's nice to wet the line and let the plugs swim once in a while.

the line wasnt the only thing that was wet. i soaked through my leather jacket. it was freakin pouring. that was all my fault though. it started raining pretty decent and i HAD to say "well atleast it couldnt rain any harder" no sooner had said that then did the rain start coming down harder. and continued to increase for almost 15mins. of course he stared me down for the remainder of the trip. looking like a nice night though. too bad he has my gear in the back of his truck so we dont hafta deal with it in the AM.