Walking the floors of the winter shows I saw a lot of cool lures that I’m sure will work to catch myriad of gamefish. Among the quality wares, these three trolling lures caught my eye, just in time for the Spring Trophy Rockfish season that kicks off in Maryland next month:
Puller’s Chuggers
If you’re going to make fishing lures for both Chesapeake and offshore fishing, it can only help to have a last name like Puller. That’s Keath Puller of Pasadena, MD, to be precise. Keath was a 16-year old working on a charter boat when he got the idea to create a more unique design with flash and color.
“My lures consist of flash that the fish can’t resist!” Puller said of his Chugger. What sets his lure apart is the wobble head, which creates a side-to-side action that’s bound to bring strikes. He adds that the oversized glass eyes intended to mimic a common Bay baitfish, the alewife, are proven to catch trophy stripers.
“The Chugger’s wide open mouth creates a heavy bubble trail that is sure to attract big rockfish,” he says. “I’ve found over the years that spring rockfish definitely feed in the top 20 feet of the column where color and flash definitely play a part,” he said. “My ‘go-to’ combos consist of four (different) sized tandems—2/4 ounces, 5/3 ounces, 4/6 ounces, 4/8 ounces—which I stagger on my planer boards no more than 60 feet out. I like darker heads in overcast conditions and silver, white, or green heads when the sun is beating.”
Keath recommends fishing 40-pound test mono as your running line (on the reel), and attach that to a three-way swivel and rigging the tandems with a 60-pound leader, “to ensure the proper (lure) action, connect by loop; I prefer crimping which allows for free movement at the lure eye.”
Capt. John’s Spoonbrella Rigs
These trolling spoons are the brainchild of Captain John Whitman, who almost every day this April you’re likely to find trolling for stripers aboard his charter boat Patent Pending, a 46-foot Allen-Markley that he docks at Herrington Harbour North Marina in Deale, MD. As a Chesapeake native, he has decades of experience fishing for stripers.
Captain John says he has long enjoyed good success trolling spoons in the spring for trophy rock. When his preferred commercially made trolling spoon was bought out by a national company, he wasn’t happy with the lure’s new action. So he did what any inventive charter skipper would do—created his own. Alas, the Spoonbrella was spawned.
“I started tinkering with the design around three years ago, taking soup spoons and drilling them out to create a lure,” he says. “Eventually I settled on chrome-plated brass, and I finish them off at my shop.” He adds peel and stick prism tape in several colors as well as eyes to give them a realistic baitfish look. He says the spoon rigs and lures are “amazingly productive and durable, and eventually they out-fished everything else” he was dragging behind his boat.
In addition to rockfish, the Spoonbrella has taken bluefish, big red drum, and Spanish mackerel.
Bloody Point “Mini Skirt” Parachutes
Also new for the 2017 trophy rockfish season are the Bloody Point Mini Skirt parachute lures, produced by the Annapolis-based tackle store AllTackle. Owner Keith Fraser, who opened the business in 1999, says the new lure features a spire head that comes in four sizes, ranging from three ounces to eight ounces. It also is made using the company’s new silicone/mylar skirt combination.
“The ‘Mini Skirt’ action from the silicone combined with the mylar flash provides an effective fish-catching presentation that is sure to produce results this spring,” says Fraser. “We took the highly effective vertical jigging component and applied it to its trolling counterpart.” As a bonus, the rubber skirt could better handle the slime of those dreaded winter jellyfish, which can be prevalent at times during the trophy season.
The “Minis” join the family of AllTackle’s Bloody Point lures, which also include the popular Chomper, Chugger, Mojo, and Smiling Jack series of trolling baits. Bloody Point Baits, Fraser says, have created a parachute lure that has proven to be an excellent fish raiser in the Chesapeake Bay. He expects the newest member of the family to continue that tradition.
by Captain Chris D. Dollar