February 2, 2012
I've started my offseason tackle organization substantially later than normal this year. Being a confirmed procrastinator, I will further delay the process of figuring out what needs to be trashed, repaired or replaced by blogging about little oddities that I find along the way.
I thought my spinnerbait addiction was bad, but I'm pretty sure topwateritis will ultimately lead to my demise. I just can't resist a sexy surface bait. The real beneficiaries of this disease are the manufacturers of clear tackle boxes -- I used to carry just a single one with all varieties of topwaters but now I carry at least three at most times, one for popping and chugging baits, one for walking baits and a third for lures with propellers.
I'm not loyal to any one particular walking bait. In the box pictured here there are models from Megabass, Ima, Lucky Craft and a few others that I'm not at liberty to disclose. They all have their time and place, as does the original Zara Spook, like the one featured in this pic. Even though I started fishing at the club level in late 1995, I had never thrown a Spook prior to 1998. I had a few of them, but didn't know how well they could work. Late that fall I was practicing for a tournament when I ran into a friend who asked if I could take a picture of an eight-pound class fish he'd caught. I obliged and after snapping a few pics noticed that he had only one rod on the deck, with a full-sized Spook attached. [He was a good stick, but not very smart or cagey].
After parting ways, I quickly dug into my storage box and pulled out the lure pictured here. Within five minutes I'd caught my first Spook bass. Within an hour I'd landed a 6-12, at that point the largest bass I'd caught on that lake.
The model seen here was part of a signature series of baits that XCalibur produced. Not surprisingly, this one was endorsed by topwater guru Zell Rowland, who claimed that it incorporated several of the tweaks that he added to his own Spooks -- a third hook, a changed line-tie placement, split rings on the hook hangers and paint jobs that mimicked his own preferences. Unfortunately, PRADCO discontinued this lure a few years after its introduction. Some but not all of the mods can be seen in the Super Spook series that came out later.
I must not be the only one who realized how well this particular Spook works. If and when you find any on eBay they tend to sell for amounts of money normally reserved for hand-carved baits or super-rare Japanese products. I have a couple in my tackle box and a few more still in the package on the garage wall pegboard. They are not available at any price.
