In-Line
Spinners for Everything Game
By what I’ve gathered, a Frenchman,
Andre Meulnart, invented the in-line spinner in 1938, which led to the Mepp’s
brand emmerging after World War II. Whatever the ins and outs of lure making
and market history, during the 1970’s, in-line spinners held a special
fascination foe many anglers. This attraction has seemingly declined, though
not the lure’s compact and tantalizing effectiveness. Today, the in-line
spinner’s popularity for bass—largemouth and smallmouth—is eclipsed by
spinnerbaits, and its reputation among trout anglers is shadowed by Trout
Magnets and other tiny jigs, and although in-line spinners seem to maintain stable
value for pickerel over the past four decades, regular use centers upon a
relative few who, instead of denigrating these fierce members of the pike
family, uphold their secret good reputation, savaged otherwise by abusive
language. Native to New Jersey, pickerel, like brook trout and yellow perch,
have bloodlines in our state going way back before more “respectable,” but
introduced, species like largemouth bass took popular strongholds.
Since the 1970’s, northern pike are
not strangers to New Jersey, either, and I’ve found that although in-line
spinners take second place to spinnerbaits as the popular choice for catching
pike, even small spinners appropriate for trout can be killers. Nowadays I work
in Stirling, New Jersey, near the Passaic River. A coworker recently told me
his lunch break once resulted in a 30-inch northern on a little Rooster Tail
within short walking distance of where we spoke. Spinners catch fish; perhaps
any and all gamefish species will hit them.
Atlantic or so-called landlocked
salmon inhabit Wawayanda, Aeroflex, and Tilcon lakes, for another example of a
species introduced to New Jersey. It’s a species mystifying many anglers. How
do you catch them? Many approaches work, and one of them, if especially this
time of year, is to fish small spinners as if trying for 10-inch hatchery
trout. However, the salmon impress me as more aggressive than rainbows, browns,
and lakers. They’re fiercer than the formerly stocked brook trout, also. You
can fish a spinner near the surface in open water, and if salmon cruise below,
even well below, one or two of them might shoot for the surface and strike, but
a paradox rules the game. For all their willingness to strike with great
abandon, they’re hard to catch, because most of the time they stubbornly refuse
offerings. It’s the exception among the marks on the graph recorder that
counts.
All six of these species mentioned,
and more besides, are especially vulnerable to spinners now, early in the
season. Aquatic vegetation is only beginning to grow and will remain in recess
into April, which means weedless presentations are not a concern. In-line
spinners may serve as the lure to
retrieve over residual weedbeds without getting hung up. The flash and
vibration sustained like a beacon throughout the retrieve seems to mesmerize
gamefish. As some of the weedy green mass begins to flourish late in April,
spinners may yet prove effective, as for example, Bedminster Pond yielded my
son and me some action last year on spinners I’ve owned since way back in the
1970’s.
I used to make them 40 years ago, buying
component parts at Andy’s Sport Shop in Trenton and assembling varieties to
suit my pleasure. I dug a couple of them up, comparable to size 3 CP Swings, contraptions
built with lightweight, metal bead bodies, so light that the blades kept the
lures running high near the surface on a slow retrieve. The spinners proved to
be the perfect choice for slow retrieves over and amid the weeds coming back up
for the warm months ahead, resulting in a few quick largemouths at sundown.
Bedminster Pond is shallow and all
but unfishable after April. Like other ponds that become thoroughly weed-choked
by May or June, now is the time to probe with the sensitive instrument that is
a spinner. For the time being, such shallows warm much faster than deeper water
and nourish forage. Bass; pickerel; even northern pike where a feeder stream is
associated with a flat; all of these gamefish cruise shallows with an intent to
feed; as do trout and salmon in the shallows of the lakes and reservoirs where
they are present.
Even if the water remains cold—in the
40’s--tickling bottom by dead-slow retrieves is not necessarily best, not even
for bass. I think of spinners as mid-column lures, which means they meet
gamefish halfway between winter torpor and warm-water awakening. As a young
teen, I fished a Delaware and Raritan Canal basin pond in late February,
catching bass by barely moving a Johnson Beetle Spin along the deepest bottom.
One afternoon just before March arrived, I caught nothing, while I watched “The
Teacher,” we called him, begin to catch bass after bass on a fairly large size
6 CP Swing. The water temperature was about 45.
The example of The Teacher taught me
to think of a cup as half full, rather than half empty. Early season gamefish,
if they could invent an excuse, would do so, taking any and every advantage to
feed. Their cold-blooded metabolism, I opine, permits more action than it
restricts. Bass might not even notice a fast retrieve, because their senses
aren’t yet awake on such level, but a spinner retrieved moderately slowly may
trigger response.
Spinners work down to at least 10 feet, and
you can get heavy-bodied spinners twice as deep by letting them plummet and
then turning the handle slowly, a deadly method on Round Valley and Merrill
Creek trout, although it is fishing requiring a lot of patience and time. In
streams and small rivers, before they close March 19th and once they
open April 7th, spinners are a long-standing tradition for trout. Names
like Rooster Tail, CP Swing, Panther Martin, and Mepp’s may seem forgotten in
recent years but can prove better than other choices on occasion.
About 10 years ago, I came to the
North Branch Raritan River just before a 5:00 p.m. opening after stocking
accompanied by my son, and we witnessed a cloud of rainbow trout, dozens of
them milling about. We cast salmon eggs right into their midst to no interest
whatsoever. The water was clear. Had it been off-color, we would have begun by
retrieving spinners, but as fortune turned in our favor this day, I soon
decided to tie on size 0 Rooster Tails to see what might happen.
Trout slashed at the spinners from
every angle. We caught and released a dozen or so quickly, and then decided to
leave the rest for others. Catching them was so easy, I wanted to preserve the
initial feeling of zest in memory.
Spinners for trout can result in
other outrageous surprises. Last April, David Jeon came to the South Branch
Raritan on my suggestion in pursuit of rainbows, fishing a small spinner. He
hooked something that drew a much harder and jagged fighting response than
would a trout of any size, and soon measured the smallmouth bass at 22.5
inches!
https://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2018/03/18-inch-largemouth.html
