Rooster Tail Lure: Sizes, and How to Fish It for Trout

Two inline spinners lying on a white surface: a painted blade on a clevis, a weighted body, and a red hackle tail dressed over the treble hook — Photo: Danndorfer1914, Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

The Rooster Tail is Yakima Bait’s inline spinner, sold in nine weights from 1/24 oz to 1 oz. A willow-shaped blade spins around a weighted, painted body on a straight wire, and the treble hook wears a hackle-feather tail that flares like a rooster’s. You cast it out and reel it back, and it catches trout, bass, panfish, walleye and pike. In 2015 the company’s president called it probably the top-selling inline spinner in the United States, ahead of Panther Martin and Blue Fox.

Howard Worden first called his spinner the Retreat Special. He renamed it the Rooster Tail after watching the Seattle hydroplane races, where the boats throw a plume of spray by that name.

Which size do you need?

Match the size to the fish and the water. The 1/16 to 1/8 oz sizes are the stream-trout range; 1/4 oz is the bass size and 3/8 to 1/2 oz the pike size. Length is measured with the hook. Most sizes also come with a single hook (a #4 at 1/6 oz, a #2 at 1/4 oz) for waters where single hooks are the rule.

Size	Length	Treble	Fish (the guides’ sizes)
1/24 oz (1.2 g)	1 3/4 in (4.4 cm)	#14	Bluegill, crappie, the smallest trout streams
1/16 oz (1.8 g)	2 in (5.1 cm)	#12	Stream trout, panfish
1/8 oz (3.5 g)	2 1/4 in (5.7 cm)	#10	Stream trout, trout in lakes
1/6 oz (4.7 g)	2 1/2 in (6.4 cm)	#8	Trout in lakes and bigger rivers
1/4 oz (7 g)	2 3/4 in (7 cm)	#6	Bass, river smallmouth, trout in lakes
3/8 oz (10.6 g)	3 in (7.6 cm)	#6	Pike, bass
1/2 oz (14 g)	3 1/2 in (8.9 cm)	#4	Pike
3/4 oz (21 g)	4 in (10.2 cm)	#1	Pike; long casts and deep water
1 oz (28 g)	4 1/2 in (11.4 cm)	#1/0	Pike; long casts and deep water

The weights, lengths and trebles are Yakima Bait’s; the species column follows Tackle App’s inline-spinner guide. The usual advice puts stream trout on 1/16–1/8 oz and trout in lakes on up to 1/4 oz. Bass get 1/4 oz and pike 3/8–1/2 oz. There is one exception worth knowing: when the bass bite on a big lake goes tough, Wired2Fish’s reviewer drops to an 1/8 oz on a medium crankbait rod.

In the end, the right size is the one that turns the blade at the speed you want to fish. To see what a #14 or a #1/0 treble actually looks like, the hook size chart has them side by side.

What rod and line?

Tackle App’s guide puts inline spinners on a light to medium spinning rod. Stream trout get 4–6 lb monofilament; panfish get 2–4 lb line on an ultralight. The same Wired2Fish reviewer fishes his on anything from a 4 ft 8 in (1.4 m) ultralight to a 6 ft (1.8 m) rod with 6 lb mono. In his view, the longer rod only buys distance.

The 1/4 oz bass size goes on a medium spinning rod with 6–8 lb mono or fluorocarbon, also for river smallmouth.

Monofilament suits the lure. It floats or sinks only slowly, which helps keep a light spinner up in a shallow stream. It is also cheap enough to change when the twist gets into it anyway. For northern pike, whose teeth cut light line, Tackle App’s pike setup adds a 12-inch steel leader.

Why does the line twist, and how do you stop it?

An inline spinner’s blade turns one way, and every turn puts a twist in the line. Over a day of casting, light mono starts to coil and loop off the spool.

The fix is a small barrel swivel, size 12 or 14, tied into the line about 12 in (30 cm) above the lure, with a leader below it. The swivel absorbs the twist. Tackle App’s guide starts with a direct tie, the lightest connection in clear water, and adds the swivel once coils appear.

Some spinners are built to fight the twist. The Vibric Rooster Tail’s offset body reduces it, and Blue Fox says the Vibrax’s two-part body virtually eliminates it. Carry the swivel anyway.

Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How do you fish it?

Reel just fast enough to feel the blade thump through the rod. That is the one rule every spinner guide gives. Reel faster and the lure rides up and the blade blurs; reel slower and the blade stalls. In current, the water turns the blade and the reel only takes up slack.

Water	Cast	Retrieve
Small stream	Upstream and across, above the pool or the seam	Reel just fast enough to turn the blade against the current; let it swing through the seam and the tail-out
River, bigger water	Across, or slightly upstream	Slow reel, rod tip low; the current turns the blade; pause at the end of the swing
Lake, shoreline	Along the bank, parallel to weed lines and drop-offs	Count it down a foot a second to the depth, then a steady retrieve, with an occasional pause so it flutters
Lake, deep	Over points and humps	Count down, slow retrieve, rod tip up to keep it off the bottom
Pond	Anywhere	Steady; vary the speed until fish follow

A twitch of the rod every few turns makes the blade stutter and the tail pulse. A stalled blade that starts spinning again is a strike trigger.

For river trout, the reviewer describes the version he grew up with on Georgia’s Chattahoochee. Reel it right under the surface through the current eddies, and watch the fish come up for it.

When do you set the hook?

The treble swings free behind the body, and that is why a Rooster Tail hooks and holds so well: a fish cannot use the body as a lever against the hook. How you set the hook depends on the mouth.

Bluegill and other small-mouthed panfish: let the rod load before you pull. A bluegill often misses the treble on the first grab and keeps hitting until it is hooked.
Bass and crappie: a short sweep the moment the rod loads. Wait too long and the fish swallows the treble, and a treble hook deep in a crappie is hard to get out alive.

The trebles stay sharp for a long run of fish, but they dull on rock. Check the points after every snag.

Which color?

The 1/16 oz alone comes in 128 colors, the 1/24 oz in 60 and each of the three largest sizes in 24. The choice is simpler than that wall suggests, because a trout sees the flash first and the tail last. The blade finish matters most, the tail color less and the body color least.

Trout: black with a yellow body, brown trout, rainbow trout; a white or chartreuse body in stained water. A gold or copper blade in low light and tannic water, silver in bright sun and clear water.
Bass and pike: white, chartreuse, firetiger; a gold blade on the bigger sizes.
White bass: white or white-and-gold when the run is on.

Hank Parker’s blade rule for bass spinnerbaits holds for spinner blades too: thump for dirty water, flash for clear. A Rooster Tail’s willow-shaped blade is on the flash side, one reason it suits clear trout water. For more noise, Yakima Bait builds the Vibric with a noise-producing blade and body. The spinnerbaits hub sets the inline spinner beside the bass spinnerbait and the buzzbait.

Which Rooster Tail model?

The Original is one of a dozen models that share the blade and the hackle. These are the ones that change how the lure fishes:

Model	Sizes	What differs	Use it for
Original	1/24–1 oz	Silver, brass, copper or painted blade; hackle tail	Everything on this page
Vibric	1/16–1/2 oz	Noise-producing blade and body; offset body that reduces line twist	Where sound helps, and less line twist
Sonic	1/16–1/4 oz	Weighted brass body with a sound-producing design; #12, #8, #6 trebles	Deeper, faster water for its size
Minnow	1/16–1/4 oz	Realistic minnow-shaped body, the Original blade	Where baitfish are the forage
Super	1/8–1/4 oz	Double hook instead of a treble; the maker says it reduces snags	Bass, trout and panfish near cover
Prop Blade	1/32 oz	Propeller blade, #14 treble	The smallest streams and the smallest trout

Hammered-blade, copper-blade, UV and red-hook versions of the Original add a finish, not a different lure.

Where did the Rooster Tail come from?

R.B. Worden founded Worden’s Floating Spinner Company in 1934, by the company’s own account; his son’s obituary puts the founding in Granger, Washington, in 1929. In 1941 it became the Yakima Bait Company, selling hand-tied flies and wooden bass plugs.

His son Howard joined in the late 1940s, just as spinning reels reached the United States. On a summer trip to California he built a weighted spinner with a willow leaf blade and a hackle tail.

The lure stayed a regional one until the 1960s. Then Florida anglers tried samples and, in the company’s words, immediately caught bass with them; the East Coast followed. Howard Worden died in 2015 at 93, and the lure he named still carries the Worden’s name on the card.

Mistakes to avoid

No swivel. Twisted line by lunch.
Reeling too fast. The blade blurs and the lure rides up; slow down until you feel each turn.
Too big a size in a small stream. A 1/4 oz in a tiny brook trout stream is overkill; go down to 1/16 oz.
Casting downstream only. Up and across lets the lure swing at the current’s speed.
Setting the hook like a jig. A sweep is enough; the free-swinging treble does the rest.

Rooster Tail, Mepps or Panther Martin?

All three are inline spinners, and all three twist line. What separates them is the blade and the profile.

	Rooster Tail	Mepps Aglia	Panther Martin
Maker, origin	Yakima Bait, Washington, late 1940s	André Meulnart, France, 1938	Panther Martin, Italian design, sold in the US since 1958
Blade	On a clevis, willow shape; a hackle tail	On a clevis, the wide “butterfly” blade	Spins directly on the shaft; no clevis
Starts spinning	Easily	Easily	Instantly, even in slow water; the choice for small, slow streams
Profile	Fuller, for the tail; sinks slower than a Panther Martin	Medium	Small, dense teardrop body; casts far for its weight
Twist	Yes; swivel	Yes; swivel	Yes; swivel
Best for	Lakes, bass, bigger trout	The all-rounder	Small streams, wary trout

The case for the Panther Martin is its shaft-mounted blade, which spins the moment the lure moves. Even so, the trout spinner lists keep all three. The inline spinners page adds the Blue Fox Vibrax to this comparison, and the lures hub maps every other family.

The small sizes are trout lures first; the rainbow trout page says where to find the fish.

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