Fishing Lures: The Six Types, What Each Catches and When to Throw It

Fishing lures are artificial baits that catch fish in one of two ways: they imitate something a fish eats, or they provoke a reaction strike from a fish that was not planning to eat. Six families cover nearly all freshwater fishing: jigs, chatterbaits, crankbaits, topwater, spinnerbaits and soft plastics. Which one to tie on comes down to the water in front of you: its depth, cover, clarity and temperature, and what the fish are eating. The same lures, scaled up or down, catch bass, pike, walleye, trout, crappie and stripers.

At Lake Tenkiller in 2025, six of the final ten Elite Series anglers were fishing a Texas-rigged soft plastic, a rig from the 1950s. The newest lure is not always the one that wins.

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Filling a first box? Best fishing lures names the ten to buy first, and types of fishing lures sorts all fifteen types on the tackle-shop wall, spoons and flies included. Then go to the family you need:

• Jigs: the bottom-contact family, with football, flipping, swim and finesse jigs. The Texas, Carolina, Ned and drop-shot rigs that fish the same plastics are on the fishing rigs hub.
• Chatterbaits: the bladed jig, on sale since 2004 and winning tournaments since 2006.
• Crankbaits: squarebills, deep divers, lipless baits and jerkbaits, sorted by the depth they run.
• Topwater lures: walkers, poppers, prop baits, frogs and buzzbaits for the surface bite.
• Spinnerbaits: blades, buzzbaits and the inline spinners trout anglers use.
• Soft plastics: worms, craws, flukes, swimbaits and glide baits, and how to rig them.

How does a fishing lure catch a fish?

A lure works on the senses a predator hunts with: its eyes, its lateral line and its ears. Each family leans on one of them, and knowing which tells you when it will work.

Sight. A largemouth bass sees fewer colors than you do. Mitchem and colleagues found two kinds of color cells in its eye, one tuned to green light at 535 nanometers and one to red at 614 nm, and no blue cell at all. In their tank trials bass could not tell chartreuse from white, or blue from black. To a bass, chartreuse is bright rather than a color, and blue is a dark shape. The do fish see water page has the rest of the eye.

Vibration. Along each flank runs the lateral line, a row of pores that feels low-frequency vibration in the water. That is how a fish finds a wobbling crankbait or a thumping spinnerbait it cannot see. In muddy water, or at night, the lateral line does the work the eyes cannot.

Sound. The IGFA puts a bass’s hearing peak around 100 cycles per second, weak above 200 and gone above 600. The loudest sounds a rattling crankbait makes are high-pitched, mostly over 2,000 Hz. So a bass feels a rattlebait’s body thump more than it hears the rattle. Carp and catfish hear far higher, as do fish hear explains.

That leaves two ways to build a lure. An imitator, such as a jig crawled along the bottom like a crayfish, gets eaten by a fish that is feeding. A reaction bait, such as a crankbait burned past a stump, gets hit by a fish that sees prey escaping and strikes before it decides.

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What are the six lure families, and what does each imitate?

Each family copies a different meal and fishes a different layer of the water. The depth figures are the crankbait classes from the crankbaits hub.

The families also differ in what they are made of, and anglers name them by it. Hard baits, also called plugs, are carved or molded: Lauri Rapala’s first minnow was cork, and many crankbaits are still balsa or plastic. Soft baits are plastisol, PVC resin in a liquid plasticizer, often salted so they sink; Z-Man’s ElaZtech is a buoyant, stretch-resistant alternative. Spinnerbaits and chatterbaits carry metal blades and silicone skirts. Store the soft baits apart: ElaZtech and plastisol melt each other in one tray, the soft plastics hub warns.

Four families in one frame: a soft paddle tail on a jig head, a spoon, a Rapala crankbait and an inline spinner. Photo: R. Henrik Nilsson, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Outside the six sit a handful of specialists. Spoons, which Nordic anglers made as early as the 8th century, catch pike, trout, walleye and salmon. Inline spinners, such as the Rooster Tail, are the stream-trout lure. Blade baits are fished from late fall to early spring. Umbrella rigs swim a whole school of shad, and flies are cast with the weight of the line. The types of fishing lures page covers each one.

Which lure for which fish?

Most of the six families were built for bass, but they catch other fish too. Here is one lure to start with for each, a backup and the page that explains the fishing.

No lure catches every fish, but a small jig comes closest. Wired2Fish’s crappie guide puts more than nine in ten crappie anglers on a jig or a minnow. Wisconsin’s biologists call walleye minnow feeders first, which is why a jig tipped with a minnow leads that row. For pike, a wire leader keeps the teeth off the line, and the muskie lures page scales everything up again.

One lure can also be sized for each fish. The Mepps Aglia inline spinner runs from a #0 at 1/12 oz for bluegill and small-stream trout up to a #5 at 1/2 oz for steelhead.

What changes with saltwater lures?

Less than the names suggest: the families are the same in salt water, scaled up and renamed. The Tackle Room’s striped bass guide lists the top artificials on the Atlantic coast. Its list: bucktails, with white “a must-have color”; paddle tails in bunker and sand eel patterns; big swimming plugs such as the Daiwa SP Minnow and Bomber Long A; spook-style topwaters; diamond jigs; and soft plastic jerkbaits.

Translated, a swimming plug is a minnow crankbait, and a bucktail, deer hair on a lead head, is a jig. A diamond jig is a jigging spoon worked in the rips, and bunker spoons and umbrella rigs are trolled. Wired2Fish’s striped bass guide names the 7 in (18 cm) Zoom Magnum Super Fluke and the Lunker City Slug-Go, both soft jerkbaits. Inshore, some bass lures cross over unchanged: Z-Man’s own ChatterBait guide names redfish anglers, with walleye and pike anglers, among those using the blade. The striped bass pages take it from there.

How do you choose a lure for the water in front of you?

Ask five questions, in this order. They pick the family before you ever think about color.

1. How deep are the fish? On top in low light: topwater. In the top few feet over grass and wood: a chatterbait, spinnerbait or squarebill. On the bottom: a jig, a Texas rig or a deep crankbait. A crankbait’s lip sets its depth, so read the box: a squarebill runs 0–6 ft (0–1.8 m), a deep diver 12–20 ft (3.7–6.1 m) and more.
2. What is the cover? Matted grass: a hollow frog over the top. Standing grass: a chatterbait or lipless bait, ripped free when it ticks a stalk. Wood and rock: a squarebill, which deflects off a stump and draws the bite, or a jig. Single hooks with a weedguard go into cover; treble hooks run beside it.
3. How far can you see into the water? In clear water the fish sees the lure well: natural colors and finesse plastics. In stained water, give it a dark outline and some thump. In muddy water the fish finds it by feel through the lateral line, so pick a lure that thumps, such as a Colorado-blade spinnerbait or a chatterbait.
4. What is the water temperature? It sets how fast the fish will chase. Cold water wants a slow bait on the bottom or a paused jerkbait; warm water lets you burn a moving bait or fish the surface. The table below gives the bands for bass.
5. What are the fish eating? Match the size of the food when you can see it. In early fall the bass follow the shad into the creek arms, and the bass water temperature chart matches the lure to the 3–4 in (8–10 cm) shad of the year.

Which lure at which water temperature?

For bass, each temperature band has its own place and its own lures. The bands come from the site’s bass water temperature chart, which rests on state agency data such as Florida FWC’s 65–80 °F (18–27 °C) feeding range for largemouth. This is the spring warm-up, with the water rising.

Falling water in the fall is a different season at the same numbers. At 55–65 °F (13–18 °C) the bass are in the backs of the creeks behind the shad, and the throw is a lipless crankbait, a spinnerbait or a swim jig. The bass page has that table too, and the water temperature chart gives the bands for 26 species.

Topwater has the narrowest window of any family: about 65–85 °F (18–29 °C), low light and a calm or lightly rippled surface, as the topwater hub explains. Below 60 °F (16 °C) the surface bite all but stops.

What color and size should a lure be?

Color follows how far you can see into the water. Tyler Brinks’s rule on BassResource keeps it short. In clear water, green pumpkin, watermelon and other natural or translucent colors. In stained or muddy water, black, black and blue or white, and chartreuse with a black back or fire tiger on hard baits. What the eye study adds is why. A bass reads chartreuse and white as the same bright flash, and blue and black as the same dark shape, so contrast with the background matters more than the exact shade. If one color has to do everything, it is green pumpkin; the best fishing lures page has the full clarity table.

Depth takes color away too, and not the same color in every lake. Steve Quinn of In-Fisherman describes three cases: in the clearest water blue reaches deepest and red goes first; in lakes with moderate plankton, green and yellow last deeper down; in muddy water, red travels deepest. That may be one more reason red crankbaits work in muddy spring runoff, though no study has tested it.

Size is two numbers on the package. Length, in inches, should roughly match the forage. Weight, in ounces, decides the rod. Every rod carries a lure rating, the range of weights that loads the blank on the cast. Too light and the cast falls short; too heavy and the rod casts sluggishly. A 1/16 oz trout spinner wants an ultralight rod, a 1/2 oz bass jig a medium-heavy one, and a 4 oz swimbait a rod rated in whole ounces.

Jig heads show how depth sets the weight. On Ebb N Flow’s chart, a 1/16 oz head suits crappie in shallow, calm water. A 1/8–1/4 oz head is for bass in open water and along cover, and 3/8–1/2 oz for bass in 12 ft (3.7 m) or more, in wind, or under a big swimbait.

Which rod and line does each family need?

Each family has its own tackle, and the wrong pairing loses fish. Crankbaits want a slow rod so the trebles stay pinned; jigs want a fast one to drive a single hook.

Fluorocarbon sinks, which is why it never goes on a topwater. The line page explains the three materials, and the gear hub the rest of the outfit.

What goes in a first box, and what do lures cost?

A first bass tackle box needs one lure per job, not one of everything. The best fishing lures page builds it from the 2025 tournament record: a jig, a Texas-rigged plastic, a wacky Senko, a spinnerbait, a chatterbait, a squarebill, a lipless crankbait, a jerkbait, a popper and a hollow frog. Its first five cost about $60; all ten about $100.

Many lures cost $5–10. A ten-pack of 5 in Senkos is $7.99 and a Rat-L-Trap $5–9 on the makers’ pages. A tournament chatterbait such as the Z-Man JackHammer runs $19.99–21.99. At the top end, glide baits run from about $9 for a Berkley Nessie to $270 for a Gan Craft Jointed Claw. A fishing advent calendar puts 12 or 24 lures and tackle items behind numbered doors, for 80 cents to $5 a door in the US.

Lures or live bait: which is better?

Neither wins outright, even with the biggest fish. Florida’s TrophyCatch program has logged 168 bass of more than 13 lb. Of those, 53% were caught on an artificial lure and 47% on natural bait. In FWC’s breakdown of the first 100 of those giants, soft plastics took 71% and plastic worms alone 41%.

So the choice is about the day. Lures cover water fast and find active fish; bait sits in front of a fish that will not chase, and it smells like food on its own. The bass bait page makes the case for live bait.

For fish you release, the hook position matters more than the bait. In an experiment with European sea bass by Lewin and colleagues, none of 61 fish caught on two artificial lures was deep-hooked, against 7 of 36 (19.4%) on natural bait. All the fish that died had been caught on bait, 13.9% of that group. For bass the picture is less clear-cut, and the bass bait page covers whether live bait kills more bass. Set the hook early with anything a fish can swallow.

Can you fish a lure and bait together?

Yes, on one hook. Iowa’s DNR calls a leadhead jig tipped with a minnow “an excellent spring and fall walleye bait.” Some waters forbid it. Pennsylvania’s catch-and-release artificial-lures-only sections allow lures of metal, plastic, rubber or wood and flies, and ban “any other lures or substances”. Read the rules for the water before you tip a jig.

Do fish learn to avoid lures?

Yes, and fast. At the Illinois Natural History Survey, largemouth bass learned to avoid lures from their own capture, not by watching other bass get caught. A lure in a new color caught more fish at first. A spinnerbait’s catch “shot up, but then dropped within four angling sessions,” and over 12 sessions the catch declined steadily.

Trout do the same. In five small British Columbia lakes, Askey and colleagues fished eight angler-hours a day on every hectare (2.5 acres) and released every fish. Catch rates dropped within 7–10 days. Their model fit a group of easy fish that were caught quickly and then learned to avoid hooks.

The practical answer is our reading of both studies: on pressured water, show the fish something they have not seen. Change the color, the size or the family, or fish where fewer people do.

Are any lures against the rules?

A few, depending on where you fish. Pennsylvania’s artificial-lures-only waters define what counts as a lure, as above. In New Hampshire, a law in force since June 1, 2016 bars lead sinkers and lead jigs of 1 oz or less in fresh water. In tournaments, B.A.S.S. limited Elite Series anglers to “a single lure” from February 1, 2012, which kept the umbrella rig out of its top events. Read your state’s regulations for hook, bait and tackle rules before you fish a new water.

What wins on the tournament trail?

The lure industry runs on marketing, so results are the better guide. Bassmaster publishes the winning and top-ten baits after every Elite Series event. The half-ounce Z-Man JackHammer chatterbait was one of Wes Logan’s two winning baits at Tenkiller in 2025, with a flipping jig, and was on the sixth-place rods at the St. Johns River and Okeechobee. Okeechobee itself was won on two crankbaits, one built to run 10–12 ft (3–3.7 m), and a jerkbait.

That record is bass fishing, and bass are the fish most of these lures were designed for. The best bass lures page has the event-by-event table.

Who invented fishing lures, and what is the $100,000 lure?

Almost every lure family has a named inventor and a date. Among the first American lure makers was Julio Buel, who dropped a silver spoon over the side on Vermont’s Lake Bomoseen in 1824 and watched a lake trout take it. Twenty-four years later he went into the lure business in Whitehall, New York. Lauri Rapala carved the first floating minnow from cork in 1936. Nick and Cosma Creme cooked the first plastic worm in their Akron, Ohio, kitchen in 1949 and poured it into a mold in the basement.

Bill Lewis built the Rat-L-Trap in Louisiana in the late 1960s and early 1970s; lipless plugs were older, but its rattle chamber was new. The ChatterBait of Ron Davis Sr. and his son Ron, of Rock Hill, South Carolina, first went on sale on March 10, 2004. It became the generic name for every bladed jig after Bryan Thrift’s 2006 wins on it. Ned Kehde’s four-hour, 109-bass trip on October 12, 2006, turned a mushroom-head jig into the Ned rig.

The most expensive lure ever sold at public auction is older than all of them. Riley Haskell was a gunsmith who took up lure making in the mid-19th century. His “Giant Haskell” Minnow is 10 in long, nearly twice the size of every other known Haskell Minnow. On November 18, 2003, it sold at Lang’s for $101,200. The lures, baits and rigs section of the fishing terms explains every name on this page.

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Stop guessing. Know which lure to tie on, and what color, before the first cast

A full box, the wrong lure on all day, and a Saturday with nothing to show for it.

The What-To-Throw Pack. Take the water temperature, look at the water, and the two-page chart gives you the lure, how to work it and the color. Bass first, with a starting lure for five other fish.

• The lure for every water temperature, rising and falling, six families side by side
• Clear, stained or muddy: the color for each, and the two exceptions
• The first box for $60: five lures that fish nine months of the year

Every line from the lure pages on fishing.info and the 515 sources behind them, Florida FWC, In-Fisherman and Bassmaster among them.

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