Ode to a Great Lure . . . May it RIP

[1morecast]

How long should the state of mourning be for a discontinued lure? How much 'weeping and gnashing of teeth' should there be when your line has gone limp and some brushpile greedily clutches a bygone lure in Davy Jones' Locker? Of course such over-sentimentality is in jest . . . but it's a dark humor!

I ran across a post in the main forum titled "Old Rebel Crankbaits," and was pleased to see that I am not alone . . . there are others with some separation anxiety over a certain lure, LOL (and that's a laugh tinged with sorrow and chagrin)! Although I'd never disparage a fellow member by implying for a moment they are as woefully distraught as myself. Let me just say that was the best little crankbait I ever owned, my favorite of all time: The Mini-Crawdad in Red Devil Pattern. The name of it should be in gold, or glow, or have an angelic choir singing it, or something. HTML just doesn't capture the reverence the title of that lure evokes.

I was 12 or 13 years old when you could last find it in stores . . . that would have been circa-1985. Yeah, it's been two decades and I'm still bereaved. I kept a fishing journal the summer of my 12th year, and I caught well over 1000 fish on that lure in TX, MO, and VA. I was the Babe Ruth of fishing . . . if I could see a fish swimming, I could point my rod at it, guaranteed to catch it or at least get a strike. The action, the wiggle . . . my eyes mist over in melancholy reminisce. I had a girlfriend once who could move her hips almost as seductively. I said almost. I went through a few back then (the lures, that is), and now I wish I'd gotten a case or two (of lures, though I've cried into many a beer, repeating my sad tale to whomever would listen, like some besotted Ancyent Marinere).

I vividly recall when I got the last Red Devil hung up on some submerged timber . . . I was standing on the shore of Lake Truman. How many people commit to memory where and when they lost a certain lure?! The interrobang really is the only punctuation to express my wonderment and exasperation. I wish now I'd swum out after the lure. It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway), I've been looking for that crankbait ever since. Looked on eBay a few times with no luck. I've even thought, in the midst of a drought, could it still be hung in that cursed bush? I see it like an 'air-drawn dagger' sometimes. What fortunes I could seize, if only I'd had the foresight to have stored up a few more Red Devils!

I have always wondered why the lure was discontinued. Must the good die young? I wrote to Rebel years back telling them it was the greatest lure ever, and asking if they would please make more. 'Please, please, please, make more!', I believe, was how the letter read. My reply was a letter telling me to look at the great lures in the current catalog, and I was sent a catalog. Umm, thanks anyway. I want THE ONE! A buddy I grew up with, who also has reserved in the halls of the immortal The Red Devil, thinks maybe some tycoon bought the rights to it, or some state conservation departments twisted their arm-- 'That lure's just catching way too many fish. Our resource programs are in jeopardy because of it. Quit making it or else!' I can just imagine the mafioso sitting on warehouses of the lure. Just kidding, I don't mean to imply any wrong-doing was done. Of course, maybe aliens abducted them. Maybe Scully and Mulder need to be deployed. I doubt either of those scenarios, but can't you just see Trump gloating over a horde of Red Devils?

I have always been puzzled as to why lure manufactures tinker with, or discontinue the great lures. I wouldn't ordinarily name names, but I guess this isn't exactly a splinter in my eye . . . it's a log, with lures immemorial stuck all over it in the flooded forest abyss. Maybe Dante should've added one more circle to his schemata-- the one reserved for shag-eared bean counters who steal away our hope and joy and leave us with lures that catch fisherman. A few years ago BPS changed the formula on their 3" swimming shad . . . I always caught LOTS of walleyes and crappie on it, much less now that it has a 'new improved scent' which is specifically designed for bass. They did the same thing to their Tripple Ripple worms a while back. Thanks a lot! LOL, 'if it ain't broke' . . .

Then there's the thin minnow / floater-diver I found stuck in riprap during some low water on Pomme De Terre years ago. There are a lot of musky in that lake, and I'm sure that was the target of the person throwing that lure . . . it was blue, very thin, about 10 inches long, kind of a metallic scale cross-hatching on the side . . . steel leader still attached, hooks rusted mostly away . . . I'm guessing something from the 60s. Who knows? I don't have a picture of it, but I would know it if I saw another. I replaced the hooks and took it with me in my floater box to Bull Shoals one time when the walleyes were going gangbusters . . . caught a bunch on that thing, then put that floater in a flooded treetop. The water was about 30 feet over flood stage and really moving; no way to dive for that one, either. *Whew* Kind of breaks your heart sometimes.

I recall the wistful fellow who came into the sporting goods department
when I was working as a clerk, before things fell apart and I took to literary exercises in futility . . . There he stood, looking for a crappie crank-- Bomber, I believe, was the manufacturer. The color, electric blue, I think it was, had been *gulp* discontinued. He had just driven four hours in hopes of finding one. You can guess the rest. The guy had set a state record for white crappie on that particular precision-molded piece of wiggling joy. No other lure would do. He walked away in disgust, shoulders slumped, head hung low, muttering something in dour expletives I'll spare the lily-eared.

Back to the Red Devil, with some beaken of hope amid the -ahem- sir-reverence. One nugget in the pan of misfortune I've sifted. Last year I was telling my uncle about how I missed the old Red Devil --I had recommended it to him over 20 years ago-- and he said the words I shall ever hear echoing as if from a dream of bliss, words descending with seraphic wings --er, fins-- from the flooded Elysian Flats of that great reservoir in the sky: 'You know, I still have a couple in my old tackle box, go ahead and take them, I hardly fish anymore.' I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw them-- the paint wasn't even scratched, just a bit of dried moss in one of the trebles. WEll, my old fishing buddy is just as keen on that lure as me (Okay, maybe not QUITE so keen), and you honestly wouldn't believe how many times we have discussed that lure, usually when the fish are biting so-so, articulating with a philosophic vigor usually reserved for the immemorial mysteries of life, death, and love how we are getting skunked because of Rebel. Or Trump. Anyway, someone's to blame for this travesty. I packaged one of the lures up for him for Christmas of '05. I knew if anyone would appreciate it, it would be him. We both have them packed away with collectibles now, right next to the vintage Star Wars . . . I think I'm gonna frame mine on some black velvet I'm not joking!

I sit here at my desk, holding it like Yorick's noggin (only cleaner, and with treble hooks), student to the wisdom of antiquity, pondering la calavera y la rana, the impermanence of being and what a perfect form actually looks like (Plato should've seen this, might have changed his mind about the whole cave-thing.). I did lose one on a carp once, wish i could've seized THAT sucker.

I really should post a pic of it, only I'm concerned that might be too much for some poor souls out there . . . might burn their eyes, kind of a problem when you see divinity unveiled. Or the tantalizing sight of it might just be more than they can bear. Don't want any Oedipus-es on my conscience, clawing their eyes out. It seems wrong, looking at it here in front of me, and makes me feel kind of guilty, like this thing really ought to be collecting dust in some quiet gallery in The National Mall, bells and whistles at the ready around a vacuum case, alongside other national treasures like the Hope Diamond or Mr. Rogers' red sweater.

Now, if I could only find some more so I could actually fish the thing. Maybe someone should start a petition to send to Rebel. Or supplications and gesticulations, with a waving censer. I guess decrying a lost loved one, or the cruel chance that robs us of 'just such an one,' has been done better justice than I can muster with my ham-fisted, verbose theatricality. I'll leave you with some Hardy . . . maybe the title would be better read, 'SNAP! (To a Lure, Stuck and Gone)' :

"Hap"

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”

Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased, too, that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
--Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan….
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

[browndogmack]

You know I may have one of these in one of my fathers old tackle boxes.
He has passed on, and has left me holding all his lures.
I will do some digging tonight and if I come across a rebel crawdad in the red devil color.........well it will be yors. I'll let you know. The dog.....

[CrappiePappy]

Discontinued lures of the "fish catchingest kind" -

REBEL MINNOW - Chartreuse Back ... Silver sides ... white belly ... 3 treble hook size

STORM WIGGLE WART - Baby Bass pattern ... chartreuse belly

BLAKEMORE ROADRUNNER - Peacock coloration ... Chartreuse head, teal body, chartreuse tail (Marabou style)

BLAKEMORE ROADRUNNER - Solid Pink ... marabou

SILVER BUDDY - (blade bait) ... solid White


I still have some of the Wiggle Warts, and use them sparingly.
The Rebel Minnow (in that coloration) is decades out of production, so I've taken to repainting the Blk/Silver version ... painting the black back, white - then painting over the white, with Chartreuse.
I contacted Blakemore about the Peacock Roadrunner, couple of years ago, and received a reply that stated "it will never be reproduced". I contacted "OregonSlabMan", and had him make me some "similar" versions. I also had him make some "solid pink" versions.
As to the White Silver Buddy .... thankfully I had the foresight to purchase many of these, while they were available. I've also painted some of the original "silver" (unpainted) ones.

............. luck2ya, in your pursuit of d/c'd lures of the catchingest kind ...... cp

[pstone]

I hate it when that happens.

I found a lure in the rip-rap at Grenada Lake one time, and never knew the name, but it was a bass killer. It was a minnow bait kinda like the long rebel minnow, about 6 inches long with 3 trebles. The thing would only swim about 4-6 inches under the surface, with a wide wiggling motion. I killed them with that thing, but lost it, and haven't found another since.

Anyway, I feel you pain. Ever thought about getting an airbrush?

[J White]

Whew - thought I was the only one who stewed over stuff like this :D

How many of you can understand spending the money in your pocket
that was supposed to be for gas for the next week because you found
six or eight old discontinued baits hanging in the back of some dusty old
store? Never mind the fact that they were a dollar or two higher than they
should have really been, or that I've probably got more of them already than
I could ever use...

[pstone]

That is perfectly understandable to me......heck, I do that on lures that aren't dis-continued!

[1morecast]

Dog, you would be this man's best friend if you did that!

[wrwest]

My dad passed away several years ago, I was cleaning out some old stuff and found "one" of his old tackle boxes. For fun I got some of the old lures out and took them fishin. They still catch fish.

I have several lures on the discontinued list. I just waych Ebay and pick them up when I can.

[J White]

That is perfectly understandable to me......heck, I do that on lures that aren't dis-continued!

I hear ya! They might BECOME discontinued, and then we'll have a "stash":D

[browndogmack]

Good news and bad news.. I found a red rebil crawdad but the bad news it isn't a small one, it is the larger one. Sorry about that, I thought I could help you out. The Dog