Teal season a little slow? Then turn your attention to gallinules and rails for some sure-fire action.
Often it isn’t just what artificial lure you’re casting but what you do to the artificial lure that makes a difference in catching bass.Spinnerbait aficionados know it can be the weight, the color of the skirt or, much of the time, the blade(s). A Minnesota lure manufacturer has turned out some blades that ought to draw the attention of bass and bass fishermen.
They are ribbed patterned blades with ridges that slant from top to bottom (in different directions on each side) on willowleaf and Colorados.
“You can make some unique looking things,” admitted a proud Lakeland Inc. production supervisor David Paulsen, “but it might be difficult to get it to work.”
Apparently, Lakeland of Isle, Minn., got his idea to work. It wasn’t easy because the mechanics of getting the patterns and blocks right to stamp them out needed trial and error starting about three years ago.
“I’ve tried some different things over the years. I’ve tried a few different ones, and that one we decided to go with. It has a lot of flash,” Paulsen said in mid-January.
The finished product is a different kind of blade and looks like it can be an added fish attractor.
It is the sixth blade pattern produced by Lakeland. The others are plain, hammered, diamond, scale and fluted, according to customer service rep Tonja Eklund.
The ribbed blades were available in catalogs starting last August.
Feedback — what there has been in the blade’s brief time on the market — has been encouraging, Paulsen said. The blade is working its way into tackle boxes and on to wires that make up spinnerbaits from North to South, East to West.
“It takes our customers a couple of years before they incorporate it into their line. But it’s been pretty positive,” he said.
“People up here in this area who build spinnerbaits, we take it to them and they test them out,” he said.
Those bass anglers have liked what they’ve seen, he said.
One of the dealers who tried it out was in Morgan City, where Ivy St. Romain at Ivy’s Tackle Box got the call from Lakeland.
“They always call me when they’ve got something new. I said, ‘Send it, let me try it out and see if it works,” he said.
St. Romain said he has been using them since he got his hands on them in early fall.
“They’re working real well,” he said. “I think it’s one of the best concepts I’ve seen in a long time. In the water it looks like a beautiful stream, like a line coming in.”
The blades have an all-brass base with a premium plated finish, Paulsen said. The colors are gold, nickel, silver, copper and black nickel.
“Looking at the top of the blade, the diagonal lines are going from the upper left to the bottom. The other side is flashing the other way. It does send off a lot of flash,” he said.
And, he said, it probably adds vibration because the ribs are raised on the blade. He said no acoustic tests have been done on the ribbed blades, but, he said, “I assume as it it goes through the water it’s going to have more vibration.”
For more information on Lakeland Inc.’s ribbed blades and other products, call 320-676-3666, or log onto www.lakelandinc.com.
