Fishing with Spoon Lures

Spoon lures have been around since the early 1800s and they’re still in tackle boxes everywhere because they still catch fish. The basic physics haven’t changed: a concave metal piece wobbling through the water reflects light, creates vibration, and looks exactly like an injured baitfish trying to stay upright. That combination is hard for predatory fish to ignore. Here’s what I’ve learned about using them well.

The story of how spoon lures were invented involves a man named Julio Buel who reportedly dropped a silver spoon into Lake Bomoseen in Vermont around 1820, watched a large fish follow and strike it as it wobbled down, and spent the next few years developing that accidental observation into a real fishing lure. Whether completely accurate or not, the story captures something true about spoon design: it happened by noticing what fish actually respond to rather than what anglers theorized they should respond to. That’s still the right approach to using them.

Types of Spoon Lures

The category is broader than most people realize, and each style has a specific application.

• Weedless spoons: Hook is guarded by a wire arm or flexible weedguard, allowing you to work the lure through lily pads and matted vegetation without constantly fouling. The classic application is slow-reeling a Johnson Silver Minnow through dense emergent vegetation for bass and pike. You lose a little action compared to a standard spoon, but you can fish water that would otherwise be untouchable.
• Casting/trolling spoons: The most common type — a polished metal oblong with a treble hook. Acme Kastmaster, Dardevle, and the Michigan Stinger are classic examples. Cast them and retrieve at medium speed for trout, salmon, and pike, or troll them behind a boat for salmon and lake trout. The reflective surface is the main attractor in clear or moderately clear water.
• Jigging spoons: Heavier and more elongated, designed to be worked vertically. Drop them straight down and lift the rod tip sharply, then let them flutter back down on semi-slack line — that fluttering fall is what triggers strikes. Most effective for suspended fish over deep water, particularly walleye and lake trout in winter, and crappie over structure.
• Flutter spoons: Larger, thinner, and wider than standard spoons. They fall on a wide, side-to-side flutter rather than a straight drop. Used for targeting large predator fish — big lake trout, striped bass, large salmon — that are triggered by a lure imitating a larger, struggling baitfish.

Using Spoon Lures Effectively

Temperature changes how aggressive fish are, which changes how you should work a spoon. In cold water — below 50°F — a slow, steady retrieve barely maintains the lure’s action. Fish are lethargic and won’t chase something moving fast. In warm water, a faster retrieve with occasional pauses and direction changes imitates an erratic baitfish more convincingly. The pause is often when the strike happens.

Depth control matters and it’s straightforward: let the spoon sink before you start retrieving, count down to a specific depth (one foot per second is a rough rule), and repeat the same count on subsequent casts to work the same zone consistently. In deep water over known structure — a 40-foot lake trout school, for instance — a jigging spoon worked vertically is more precise than anything you can do by casting.

One common technique mistake: retrieving too fast in a straight line. Vary it. Let the spoon dart sideways with a twitch of the rod tip, then resume the retrieve. Pause it and let it flutter. A spoon that’s behaving erratically looks more like a wounded fish than one moving at a consistent pace, and that erratic behavior is what triggers predatory instinct.

Advantages of Spoon Lures

They work in freshwater and saltwater — one lure type that crosses environments without modification. The metal construction means they last for decades without degrading. I’m apparently the kind of angler who still uses spoons my grandfather left me, and they fish exactly as well as they did when he bought them.

They’re also genuinely easy for beginners to use. You don’t need to learn a complex retrieve. Cast, let it sink a few seconds, reel in at moderate speed. That basic approach produces fish on its own merit, and once you have the fundamentals you can layer in the more refined techniques.

Challenges and Tips

Line twist is the main practical annoyance with spoon lures. The rotating, wobbling action can spin the line above the lure on repeated casts, eventually causing line to coil and creating frustrating tangles at the reel. The fix is simple: attach the spoon to a ball-bearing snap swivel rather than tying directly to the line. The swivel rotates freely and prevents twist from transferring up the line. Use a quality snap swivel — a cheap one that seizes up defeats the purpose.

Color selection follows the basic rule: natural silver and gold in clear water, brighter colors (chartreuse, orange, white) in stained or murky water. That rule covers 80% of situations. The remaining 20% is observation — if fish are ignoring your standard choice and you see them reacting to something else (a specific baitfish pattern, an unusual color), don’t be stubborn about changing.

That’s what makes spoon fishing endearing over decades of use — the lure is simple, but using it well isn’t, and there’s always another situation to figure out.