The days before needlefish...

[Nebe]

Originally Posted by tlapinski

Easily 100+ fish over 20#'s on it last season alone.

[*LB]

I have had good sucess with Bombers but I have never tried a Red Fin. Because they both look similar, and my local shop doesn't carry Red Fins, I never went out of my way to buy one. Can anyone describe the difference in action or castability between these two types of lures?

I find the Bombers to be most effective with a slooowww retrive - as a result the jointed versions don't seem to have the action at that speed. I like black and the school bus color. For some reason the hooks on the tackle shop bombers are a lot beefier than the X-mart version of the same plugs. Another good reason to support the local tackle shops.

[goosefish]

chunks

[Saltheart]

There was a time when the only plugs I had were black and silver rebels , big danny swimmers , Atom swimmers and atom poppers. That was it. We also carried metal like hopkins , some big spoons and some bucktail jigs.

[basswipe]

Kastmasters,Atom poppers,Bombers,Cordell Redfins,Rebels and Mirrolures were what I used throughout the 80s with good success especially on blues.They also worked quite well on freshwater stripers and hybrids when I was stationed in TX.I even took some decent redfish and specs on them when I made the journey down to Port Aransas and Corpus.

[Crafty Angler]

Tin squids.

[BrianS]

Ya know
One thing I loved, and I havent seen them in a long time....

Were these metal sand eel replica's. They were white and jointed, one hook...
I caught my first keeper on one of these.

I gotta see if my grandfather has any hidden away.

[Mr. Sandman]

going back in time.... while todays go-to is the needle, in the late 70's and 80's it was the gibbs bottle for me. Prior to that it was the rebel.

Funny I don't fish the bottle or rebel that much anymore..I love the plug but todays customs are more fun, in fact, as for the future...while I still fish needles a lot, I am moving away from them more and more. Fishing more swimming custom plugs. Needles offer castbility and a range of fishing options that few plugs do. I think it will be around for a long time. Last year my "go-to" was the big surf howdy (although fished like a needle) followed by a pike then 2.5 oz habs needle. Whatever seems to work finds its way to the top. After last spring, I found myself fishing the Salmo Fatso....with VMC hooks. I took several nice fish with that plug last year. Looks like a real fish, no lip but wobbles nicely and looks real! However, once the spring run was over it did not catch as well as the others.