Presenting the “Misfit Tacklebox”
Quite a few years ago, I came up with this idea to take a batch of old lures that I just had to have or that somehow wound up in my tacklebox and see if they could actually fool a bass. In an excerpt from the original 2014 intro post here’s a little background (along with some of the original photos passed along in each of the 14 posts in the series as there was a separate post for each lure).
Sometime back in 2010 I got this brilliant idea for a fishing experiment. Emiquon was at its peak, I was getting in tune with being a blogger and I had more than a few utility boxes full of must have lures that had never caught a fish. It dawned on me that the dumb bass of The Emiquon Preserve could provide a perfect opportunity to finally get some return on my investment in that batch of “can’t miss” lures. Well, I wound up missing my window of opportunity as I got too carried away catching Emiquon bass on stuff I liked to throw and the next thing I knew those uneducated bass started to wise up to public angling pressure.
Fast forward to late September 2013 when I found a remote batch of dumb basses on some public Knox County strip mine ground. Forgive me, but I can’t resist resorting to an old comedy standard regarding these fish.
Okay, so I say, “Those strip mine bass are so dumb.”
You inquire, “How dumb are they?”
I respond, “Those bass are so dumb that I would take a bite of my sandwich, cast out twice, catch and unhook two bass while I chewed and entered them in the log, take another bite, repeat…”
That’s a true story as I wound up catching 12 bass in 15 minutes during my first visit to the spot while eating a sandwich and documenting my catch.
So, as it turned out I gave 14 lures a shot in a project that I called “The Island of Misfit Lures.” In terms of numbers it was a rousing success as all of them landed a bass (one of them even fooled a double). In terms of quality, however, all were of the less than stellar size in a spot that I call Cottonwood Lake.
Perhaps someday I’ll dust off that old Misfit tacklebox again but for now I’m intent on sticking with the tried and true. Talk to you later. Troy