The Beetle Spin is the ticket for a variety of panfish during the summer months
Every kid has their go-to bait they rely on to put fish on the bank. Mine was the Johnson Beetle Spin. I’d fling that 1/32-ounce white grub with the red dot up and down the shoreline at New Orleans City Park until it was time to go home. I’d catch a little bit of everything using that lure — bream, bass, and even the occasional sac-a-lait.
At that point in my life, I really wasn’t into reasoning. I didn’t know that bigger baits catch bigger fish. I didn’t know trying different lures throughout the day was best. And I certainly didn’t know that my Zebco push-button Silvercast reel was considered a beginner’s reel. All I knew was the reel cast a mile, and that everything bit that Johnson Beetle Spin.
Since then, my horizons have expanded to other reels and other lures. But it’s the Beetle Spin that taught me the power of the “safety pin” arm connected to a simple teardrop blade.
A search bait
Austin Dabdoub is only 16 years old but has learned the power of the Beetle Spin already. Dabdoub fishes local ponds around Lacombe, as well as Bayou Lacombe, and said he likes to use the lure to cover water.
“I like to throw the Beetle Spin when I’m trying to find the bream,” he said. “It’s kinda like throwing a spinnerbait when bass fishing.”
The teen also uses it when shooting docks.
“When I’m dock-shooting, I use the Beetle Spin because the 1/16-ounce one is the perfect weight to skip in underneath,” he said.
Dabdoub likes to use the chartreuse-colored grub with black stripes. In addition to bream, he picks up sac-a-lait when using the lure under docks.
On his latest trip, he was fishing Bayou Lacombe with his grandfather, Jim Bates. The team launched at the Main Street launch in Lacombe and headed north to the Highway 190 Bridge.
“We started fishing around 6:45 under the bridge,” he said. “You could tell there were fish there because we could see the old beds from the spawn.”
The team caught 12 bream at the bridge, but no keepers. Dabdob said he only keeps bream that are 7 inches or bigger. After about half an hour of fishing at the bridge, they made a move south to Cypress Bayou.
“We saw them on the LiveScope, and you can see the old beds,” he said. “There were chinquapin and bluegill all over on LiveScope.”
The two anglers started throwing all over, but for some reason the fish weren’t biting. Then it happened.
“About 10:30 — once that sun came up — I don’t know what it did, but it made their mouths start opening up, and that’s when we caught everything,” the youngster said with a slight Cajun accent.
The final tally
The majority of bream caught were bluegill, but Dabdoub added that there were a few shellcrackers in the mix.
“Whenever we would slow things down and reel in slowly — that’s when it seemed the shellcrakers bit,” he said.
The tide was falling all morning, which was key because when it stopped, Dabdoub said the bite stopped with it.
“All of a sudden, they got lockjaw when that tide bottomed out,” he said.
When they went home to clean the fish, they counted 40 bream and three sac-a-lait. The biggest bream of the day was a shellcracker that Dabdoub caught on a chartreuse and black beetle spin.
“That thing was huge!” he said. “I had to use two hands to get a grip on it.”
When preparing bream, Dabdoub prefers them whole, fried.
“I throw some of that seasoning from Stale Cracker (Cajun Two Step) in the batter — I like that stuff — I think that gives it a little kick,” he said.
After the fish comes out of the oil, Dabdoub sprinkles even more seasoning on it and uses Sriracha ketchup as a dip.
Stepping back in time
I had the chance to get back to my roots and fish with the Beetle Spin on a recent trip to Bayou Lacombe. My day started out a bit early at 6 a.m. With the summer heat beginning to set in, I thought I would shift my trip to an early slot in the day and gain an extra hour of fishing while the air temps were in the 70s. I slid my flatboat from the back of my truck and into the water. After seeing the battery in the boat and attaching the trolling motor, I was headed down the bayou.
The morning started out terrific as the wind was non-existent, perfect for throwing a 1/32-ounce beetle. I immediately started casting in the open pocket of water where there was no duckweed, alligator grass, or branches. I was using my Ultralight Shimano Miravel reel loaded with 6-pound mono paired with a 6-foot, 3-inch Fenwick Elite spinning rod. That line was zipping off that little reel, and I pounded the shoreline.
As a recovering “bank-beater,” I could feel myself relapsing back to an unhealthy habit, but oh well! The first thing I noticed was a few beds peppered along the shallows, but there were no bream in sight, indicating that the bream spawn is over here in Southeast Louisiana.
Making a change
It didn’t take long to sling my first bream into the boat. I was underwhelmed, however, by the size of the 3-inch fish. I continued to cast along the shoreline and only caught a decent 6-inch bluegill.
After about an hour of catching 2- to 4-inch bream, I decided to make the change to a bigger grub, so I tied on the 1/16-ounce Catalpa (green with black stripes) with a silver blade and started tossing it to spots with a clean retrieval path. Five casts in I connected with a solid fish, and for the first time that morning, my drag made noise. After a quick battle, I lifted an 8-inch bruiser of a shellcracker into the boat.
“This is what we’re looking for,” I whispered loudly as I unhooked the fish and tossed it in the ice chest.
After a few casts and a quick tightening of the drag, another bream jumped on, this time trailing behind the beetle, throwing as much of a wake that a bream could throw. I set the hook with a quick swing of the rod and slung another quality bream into the boat. This time it was a beautiful bluegill, which I refer to as the wood duck of the bream world because its distinct colors appear as if painted on.
It seems that the move from the 1/32-ounce beetle to the 1/16-ounce made a huge difference in the size of the fish I was bringing in. While there were still a few small bream that managed to bite the lure, it was about a 3/1 ratio between bream over 7 inches to those under.
A successful trip
After working the shoreline for about 4 hours, I was finally run in by the wind that began to make casting a bit difficult. Plus, it felt like I was approaching 30 or so bream in the box.
After picking up the boat, I made the trek back home and was able to count the fish while filleting them up for that evening’s fish fry — 36 bream and three frying-size bass — all caught on a lure that I cut my teeth on.
I thoroughly enjoyed my day using Beetle Spins on ultralight tackle, and as my family gathered on the back patio to enjoy the perfectly-sized, crispy fillets, I thought to myself — some things never change — I threw a lure that I used 42 years ago in the same bank-beating way.
Now, I just need to wean myself off casting at the bank before my next bass fishing trip!
