The Origin

Everything starts here. In 1949, a machinist from Akron, Ohio named Nick Creme worked in his basement with his wife Cosma, heating combinations of vinyl, pigments, and oils in pots on the kitchen stove. He poured the mixture into molds cast from real nightcrawlers and produced what would become the most consequential fishing lure ever made — the Creme Wiggle Worm, later renamed the Scoundrel. Creme began selling it by mail order in 1951, five worms for a dollar. At the Cleveland Sportsman's Show, a distributor sold nearly 10,000 of them in a matter of days.

The early reception was skeptical. Creme had to rig them the way live-bait fishermen rigged nightcrawlers, complete with a hook harness and a small propeller. But as he moved his operation to Tyler, Texas in the early 1960s to follow the bass fishing boom in newly flooded Southern reservoirs, something clicked. Unknown anglers fishing brush-choked Lake Tyler discovered they could bury the hook point into the plastic body itself — nearly weedless. What we now call the Texas rig was born, and bass fishing was never the same.

The Impact

The Texas-rigged plastic worm gave anglers access to cover that had previously been unfishable. Sunken timber, flooded brush, laydowns, dense grass — all of it was now in play. When Ray Scott founded BASS in 1967 and competitive bass fishing exploded, the plastic worm became the dominant tournament bait. Bill Dance caught the very first bass in the first-ever BASS event on a Texas-rigged Creme Fliptail.

Why It's Still Relevant

Every soft plastic ever made — creature baits, stick baits, swimbaits, craws, flukes, tubes — owes its existence to Nick Creme's kitchen experiments. Texas rigs, Carolina rigs, wacky rigs, Neko rigs, drop shot rigs: all revolve around a concept introduced more than 75 years ago. The category Creme created generates hundreds of millions of dollars annually. No single lure in bass fishing history has done more. Browse our full selection of plastic worms →

The Origin

Gary Yamamoto had already built a reputation as one of the most innovative soft plastic designers in bass fishing when he introduced the Senko — officially the Yamasenko — in 1996. The concept was deceptively simple: a straight, salt-impregnated stick bait with no built-in action, designed to do virtually nothing on its own. The specific gravity achieved by packing the bait with salt gave it a slow, seductive fall that drove bass absolutely insane. Yamamoto obsessed over the formula — the exact salt content, the precise density, the subtle shimmy produced by the weight distribution — for years before bringing it to market.

The Impact

The Senko broke every rule about what a bass lure was supposed to do. It had no curl tail, no rattles, no paddle, no built-in wiggle. It just fell. But that fall — a gentle, side-to-side flutter as the bait sank horizontally — triggered something hardwired in bass that no other lure had captured quite the same way. The wacky rig, where a hook is run through the middle of the bait and cast weightless, became one of the deadliest presentations in all of bass fishing almost overnight. Outdoor Life has suggested more bass may have been caught on a Senko than any other lure in history — a credible claim given its decades of dominance across every region, every season, and every level of competition.

Why It's Still Relevant

The Senko remains the benchmark against which every stick bait is measured. The wacky rig it popularized is now a staple from amateur weekend anglers to Elite Series pros. Hundreds of knockoffs exist; none have displaced the original. It's the go-to finesse option when the bite is tough, a big fish producer when bass are lock-jawed, and the easiest bait in the world to hand a beginner. Shop stick baits and worms →

The Origin

Fred Young was a wood carver from Oak Ridge, Tennessee who spent years in the 1960s whittling balsa wood plugs in his garage and testing them on nearby Norris Lake. What he eventually produced — a fat, round-bodied bait with a distinctive squared-off diving lip — behaved unlike any crankbait previously made. It ran shallow, wobbled wildly, and most critically, it deflected off cover rather than hanging up in it. Young named the lure the Big O after his brother Odis, who helped him field test the designs.

Young transported his handmade baits to tournaments in egg cartons to protect the paint. Demand was so intense that fellow anglers were renting them for $25 a day with a $25 deposit. In 1973, pro angler Bobby Murray witnessed the Big O dominating tournaments and called Cotton Cordell from the Beaver Lake event. Cordell struck a deal with Young, and within 13 months had sold over 1.3 million plastic Big Os.

The Impact

The Big O didn't just create the squarebill category — it effectively created the modern crankbait industry. The bait's body shape became the template for generations of cranks. Bagley, Rebel, Norman, and eventually Strike King and Rapala all built product lines influenced by Young's hand-carved design. The squarebill's ability to be banged directly into stumps, rocks, and laydowns without snagging opened up an entirely new approach to fishing shallow cover. Takahiro Omori's 2004 Bassmaster Classic win — burning a squarebill through a treetop in August heat — reminded the world that this approach never goes out of style.

Why It's Still Relevant

The squarebill is one of the most versatile search baits in shallow water bass fishing. It covers water quickly, generates reaction strikes, and produces in every season. The Strike King KVD 1.5 and 2.5, the Rapala DT series, the Berkley Dime — all trace their lineage directly to Fred Young's garage. Over 50 years later, the squarebill remains a fixture in every serious bass angler's rotation. Shop shallow diving crankbaits →

The Origin

The spinnerbait's story begins in 1893 when John Hildebrandt, a watchmaker from Logansport, Indiana, fashioned the first primitive spinner blade from a flattened dime. By 1915, the Shannon Twin Spinner introduced a lead head combined with twin rotating blades. But the lure we recognize today — the safety-pin wire frame design — wasn't patented until 1964, when John W. Thomas secured the configuration that made the bait truly weedless. Early BASS tournament competitors like Bill Sloan (Zorro Spinnerbait) and Don Butler (Okiebug) helped establish it as a tour-level weapon, and the introduction of the large willowleaf blade in 1984 by anglers like Roland Martin and Hank Parker took the category to another level entirely.

The Impact

The safety-pin spinnerbait solved a fundamental problem: how do you deliver flash and vibration through cover without constant snags? The wire frame riding hook-up over a weighted head created a lure that could be burned through grass, helicoptered along a bank, slow-rolled over structure, and fished in muddy water that would render most other baits useless. For decades it was the most reliable searching bait in bass fishing — capable of covering acres of water and triggering reaction strikes in conditions where finesse presentations would never reach enough fish.

Why It's Still Relevant

In stained water, around wood and grass, during the pre-spawn and post-spawn, the spinnerbait is consistently one of the top tournament-winning presentations at every level of competition. Modern versions with premium blades, living rubber skirts, and sharp hooks have refined the concept without altering its fundamental genius. Every bass angler from beginner to Elite keeps spinnerbaits in the boat year-round. Shop spinnerbaits →

The Origin

Harry Ehlers worked at Totes, a company that manufactured rubber rain boots, when the material science he encountered daily gave him an idea. In 1961, he founded Snag Proof and began producing the first modern hollow-bodied soft plastic frog — a lure with a collapsible rubber body, exposed-point hooks that rode flush against the top of the bait, and the ability to skate across the nastiest mats of vegetation on any lake in America. Hollow-body frog concepts date back to 1895, but Ehlers's soft-plastic version was the first to work consistently and at scale for bass fishing.

For years the bait was viewed as a novelty. It wasn't until anglers began pairing it with longer, heavier rods, high-speed reels, and ultimately braided line in the late 1980s and early 1990s that frog fishing over matted vegetation became a legitimate, elite-level technique.

The Impact

The hollow body frog opened up a category of water that was previously off-limits to conventional presentations: floating mats of hydrilla, milfoil, lily pads, and slop so thick that other lures couldn't penetrate or move across it. Bass living under that canopy were, for the first time, accessible. The visual explosion of a double-digit bass blowing up through a mat to eat a frog walking across the surface became one of bass fishing's most iconic moments — and a consistent driver of tournament outcomes at the highest levels.

Why It's Still Relevant

As long as there are bass living under floating vegetation, anglers will be throwing hollow body frogs. The SPRO Bronzeye, Booyah Pad Crasher, and Snag Proof's own Bobby's Perfect Frog are among the most consistent big-fish producers in tournament bass fishing. No other presentation accesses matted cover as efficiently, and modern hook designs combined with braid have made this a more productive technique today than ever. Shop frogs and toads →

The Origin

Ron Davis Sr. and his son Ronny built the first ChatterBait in their garage in South Carolina, attaching a hexagonal metal plate directly to the eye of a jig in a configuration unlike anything on the market. The blade didn't spin like a spinnerbait — it chattered, vibrated, and clacked with an erratic, aggressive action that combined the flash of a spinnerbait with the thump of a crankbait. The bait remained a local secret for years, known mainly to Carolina tournament anglers who were quietly winning money on it.

Everything changed in 2006 when Bryan Thrift used the ChatterBait to dominate a major tournament on Florida's Lake Okeechobee. When national fishing media identified the bait, demand exploded. Z-Man eventually acquired the brand and the bladed jig category was officially born.

The Impact

The ChatterBait created an entirely new lure category that now occupies its own section in every tackle retailer in the country. It filled a gap between the spinnerbait and the swim jig — a compact profile with extreme vibration and flash that could be felt on the rod through virtually any retrieve. It excels where a spinnerbait is too large or too snag-prone, and its versatility with different trailers allows anglers to match it to an enormous range of forage types and conditions.

Why It's Still Relevant

The ChatterBait is now one of the most consistently tournament-winning lures at every level of competition. Elite Series pros throw it year-round — in grass, around laydowns, on shallow flats, and in open water. Two decades after its public debut, it remains one of the first baits pros reach for when they need to cover water and locate fish fast. Shop bladed jigs and ChatterBaits →

The Origin

The swimbait as a distinct bass fishing philosophy was born in Southern California in the late 1980s, when trophy bass hunters like Allan Cole began casting oversized, hand-carved wooden lures on trout-stocked highland reservoirs. Cole's AC Plug — a large, jointed wooden bait originally developed to mimic stocked rainbow trout — became the foundational text of what would become an entirely new approach to targeting double-digit bass. As Cole's success spread, other craftsmen entered the space: Ken Huddleston developed the Huddleston Deluxe, a soft plastic trout imitation credited with more double-digit bass catches than any other single lure in history. The category exploded in the 1990s and 2000s as word leaked from California's big bass lakes to the rest of the country.

The Impact

Swimbaits didn't just create a new category — they created an entirely new fishing culture. The philosophy of throwing a large, ultra-realistic lure to target only trophy-class fish, sacrificing numbers of bites for quality, was a radical departure from how bass had always been fished. It drove a parallel equipment revolution: specialized heavy swimbait rods, large-format reels, and heavy braided lines became their own market segment. It also changed how anglers understood bass behavior — particularly the role of large forage like trout and bluegill in the diets of trophy-class fish.

Why It's Still Relevant

What started as a California trophy-hunter niche is now mainstream. Multi-joint hard swimbaits, glide baits, and paddle-tail soft swimbaits are tournament-winning baits on waters across the country. Keitech, Megabass, Savage Gear, and dozens of other manufacturers produce swimbaits at every price point. On any trout-stocked lake, a well-presented large swimbait remains among the most reliable big fish baits available. Shop hard swimbaits →

The Origin

In the early 1960s, Bill Lewis was working in his garage in Alexandria, Louisiana, building fishing lures and handing out prototypes to locals to test. One day on Toledo Bend he encountered a boat full of anglers catching bass after bass on one of his lipless prototypes. He'd added shotgun BBs to the bait simply to help it run properly — not realizing he'd created one of the first rattling lures in existence. The Rat-L-Trap hit the market and slowly built a devoted following. Its name eventually became so synonymous with the lipless crankbait category that anglers across the country call every lipless rattlebait a "Rat-L-Trap," regardless of manufacturer.

The Impact

The Rat-L-Trap transformed how anglers fished shallow to mid-depth water with speed and sound. Unlike diving crankbaits that required specific lips and line weights to reach target depths, the Rat-L-Trap sank on its own, could be fished at any depth in the water column, and generated a combination of visual flash and audible rattling that triggered reaction strikes in conditions where other lures produced nothing. It could be burned fast, yo-yoed off the bottom, ripped through grass, or slow-rolled at depth. Its versatility was unprecedented. It also proved definitively that sound was a major factor in triggering bass — a realization that influenced lure design across every category for decades.

Why It's Still Relevant

The Rat-L-Trap is one of the best-selling bass lures of all time and remains a staple in every serious angler's boat. In early spring when bass are chasing shad in the shallows, nothing covers water and generates reaction strikes like a lipless rattlebait ripped through grass. In winter, slow-rolling one along the bottom is a technique that consistently produces when almost nothing else will. Shop lipless crankbaits →

The Origin

Andy Poss was a pipefitter and part-time tournament angler from Muscle Shoals, Alabama when he watched a BBC documentary showing tuna attacking a school of sardines and had an idea. He built his first prototype in August 2009 — a five-wire harness designed to be cast rather than trolled, mimicking a small school of baitfish in a way no single lure ever could. He filed for a patent in December 2010 and sold his first rigs in July 2011 for $25 each. In October 2011, pro angler Paul Elias used the Alabama Rig to win the FLW Tour Open on Lake Guntersville with a four-day total of 102 pounds, 8 ounces — beating second place by over 17 pounds. The bass fishing world lost its mind.

Within days, rigs were selling for $99 to $600 on eBay. Poss and his wife were building and shipping 200 rigs a day from their home. Mann's Bait Company signed an exclusive licensing agreement by December 2011. Major tournaments banned the rig. States began regulating hook counts per lure. The Alabama Rig had become the most controversial and talked-about bass fishing lure in decades.

The Impact

The Alabama Rig forced a fundamental rethinking of how bass relate to and feed on schools of baitfish. It demonstrated that bass — particularly in fall when shad schools are tight — could be triggered into attacking a group of lures simultaneously in a way that produced catches that seemed impossible. It drove a massive spike in swimbait sales, terminal tackle sales, and heavy-action rod development. The controversy it generated, including its banning from major circuits, is itself a measure of how effective and how disruptive it was. No lure in recent history changed so much so fast.

Why It's Still Relevant

While the initial frenzy has faded and tournament bans remain on most major circuits, the Alabama Rig is still a genuinely effective tool for targeting suspended bass feeding on shad schools, particularly in fall and winter. Modified three-wire versions are legal in most state tournaments. The A-rig permanently changed how anglers think about presenting multiple baits simultaneously and gave rise to an entire category of multi-bait configurations that continue to evolve. Poss's creation may be the most impactful single lure introduction of the 21st century so far.

The Origin

Herb Reed was an artist before he was a lure designer, and that background showed in every aspect of what he created. Working out of Connecticut, Reed wanted to build a weedless lure that could replicate the darting action of a hard Rapala minnow bait in cover-choked environments where treble hooks made hard jerkbaits nearly useless. He built balsa wood prototypes, went through roughly 60 different designs and material combinations, and eventually settled on soft plastic as the ideal medium. Reed introduced the Slug-Go through his company Lunker City around 1988 or 1989. He also invented an entirely new palette of baitfish colors — Alewife, Arkansas Shiner, Green Shiner — because no such colors existed in soft plastics at the time.

The lure gained national attention after a glowing review in In-Fisherman magazine, and Reed struggled for years to keep up with demand as anglers across the country discovered what the Slug-Go could do.

The Impact

The Slug-Go created the soft jerkbait category from scratch. Before it, soft plastics were bottom-contact baits — worms, creatures, and grubs worked at or near the bottom with the angler generating the movement. The Slug-Go was the first soft plastic designed to be worked in the water column with sharp, erratic twitches that caused it to dart and glide like a dying baitfish. It introduced the concept of random, non-repetitive lure action to soft plastics, proving that bass responded to unpredictability in a way no other soft bait had previously demonstrated. Every soft jerkbait that followed — the Zoom Fluke, the Berkley PowerBait Jerk Shad, the YUM Money Minnow — owes its existence to Reed's obsessive refinement.

Why It's Still Relevant

The Slug-Go remains in production at Lunker City and is still one of the most versatile soft baits available — rigged weedless Texas-style, on a drop shot, on a jighead, or wacky-style. It catches bass, stripers, pike, musky, and virtually every other predatory fish on the planet. Over 35 years after its introduction, the category it created has never been more popular or more productive. Shop soft jerkbaits →