Beautiful and Bewildering Bird Baits for Bass

Gear

Oct 24

While birds may not be a major part of their diets, there’s no doubt that hungry bass will eat them on occasion. Those of us who follow professional bass fishing closely may recall Aaron Martens winning at Havasu while chasing a redwing blackbird pattern. A few years earlier, Steve Kennedy weighed in a fish that had swallowed a baby duck. Even if you don’t care about the cast-for-cash world, you almost certainly remember that companies like Arbogast made their topwaters in bird-brained patterns.

I’ve already detailed how “canary” or “tweety bird” patterns don’t work for me, so I’m leaving them out of the following survey, but there have been plenty of avian lures throughout recent years – some gimmicky, some effective. I’ll leave the antiques to others more knowledgeable about that world, but below are a few worth noting. Tomorrow I’ll come back with a list of bird-patterned lures that are easier to find today.