Types of Fishing Lures: The Six Families, What Each Does and When

The types of fishing lures sort into six families: hard baits with a lip, topwater, wire baits with blades, jigs, soft plastics and swimbaits. Spoons, blade baits, umbrella rigs and flies are the four outliers. Each type answers one question, where is the fish and what is it eating, and each was made for a depth, a speed and a water temperature.

The American lure trade descends from a teaspoon. Julio Buel dropped one overboard on Vermont’s Lake Bomoseen in 1824, watched a lake trout swallow it, soldered a hook to the next one, and from 1848 sold spoons from a small plant in Whitehall, New York.

Which lure does what?

Fifteen types cover the wall. Depths and temperatures are for largemouth and smallmouth unless the row says otherwise.

The fishing terms define every name in the tables.

Which lure for the water in front of you?

Four questions, in this order, pick the type before you pick the color.

1. How deep are the fish? Top 2 ft (0.6 m): topwater, buzzbait, wake bait. Middle, 2–10 ft (0.6–3 m): spinnerbait, chatterbait, squarebill, swim jig, swimbait. Bottom in 10 ft or more: football jig, Carolina rig, deep crankbait, blade bait, spoon.
2. What is the cover? Matted grass: a frog on top, a punch rig through it. Standing grass: lipless crankbait, chatterbait, swim jig. Wood and rock: squarebill, spinnerbait, jig. Open water: jerkbait, crankbait, drop shot, umbrella rig. Single hooks with a weedguard go into cover; trebles run beside it.
3. How far can you see into the water? Clear, several feet: natural colors, finesse soft plastics, jerkbaits, willow blades. Stained, a foot or two: chartreuse and white, a Colorado blade, a chatterbait. Muddy, inches: black and blue, the biggest Colorado blade, a rattling lipless bait. The fish finds it by feel, so it has to thump.
4. What is the water temperature? Below 50 °F (10 °C): jerkbait, blade bait, jigging spoon, a jig dragged slowly. 50–65 °F (10–18 °C): crankbait, spinnerbait, lipless bait, chatterbait. Above 65 °F (18 °C): topwater and frogs in low light, Texas rigs and football jigs by day. Cooling back through 65–55 °F in the fall: spinnerbaits, lipless baits and walking topwaters behind the shad. Kevin VanDam’s six-season guide is the long version, and the water temperature pages give the bands for 26 species.

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Crankbaits, lipless baits and jerkbaits: what does the lip do?

A crankbait is a hard body with a plastic lip, and the lip sets the depth. A short, square lip keeps a squarebill at 3–6 ft (1–1.8 m). A long, round one takes a Strike King 6XD to 19 ft (5.8 m). Crank it straight into cover: the deflection off a stump or rock draws the bite. The first was Creek Chub’s Wiggler of about 1915, the first lure with a diving lip, Bernie Schultz writes for Bassmaster. Lauri Rapala carved his first floating minnow from cork in 1936.

The lipless crankbait sinks and carries a rattle chamber. The Rat-L-Trap comes from a 1/8 oz Tiny Trap up to a 1 oz, 4 in (10 cm) model. The jerkbait is the slender one that suspends when you stop it. FishUSA’s cold-water guide puts it at its best in 38–55 °F (3–13 °C) water, with pauses of ten seconds or more below 42 °F. The crankbaits hub sorts the depth classes, with lipless and jerkbait pages beside it.

Popper, walker, prop bait or frog?

Hard topwater baits differ by what the face does. A popper’s cupped mouth spits, a walking bait’s blunt nose zigzags on a slack-line twitch, and a prop bait’s propeller churns. The hollow-body frog is the soft one: weedless, with two upturned hooks, made for matted grass where nothing else can be fished.

The Heddon Zara Spook, the original walking bait, went to plastic in 1939; Heddon added “spook” to the names of its plastic lures. The topwater hub covers the five types, and the frog page has the hookset that waits two full seconds.

Spinnerbait, buzzbait, inline spinner or chatterbait?

The spinnerbait carries its blades on a safety-pin wire above a skirted single hook, which is why it comes through wood and grass. The blade decides how it fishes. A round Colorado blade thumps and fishes slow, deep and in muddy water. A long willow blade flashes and fishes fast in clear water. Two small willows take a 1/2 oz bait to 10 ft (3 m); the same weight under one big Colorado runs at 2–3 ft.

The buzzbait swaps the blades for a propeller that holds the lure on top as long as the retrieve is fast. The first was the Lunker Lure of the 1970s. The inline spinner puts the blade on the shaft, and it is the trout lure. A Mepps Aglia runs from a #0 at 1/12 oz to a #5 at 1/2 oz, and Mepps’s catch reports name pike, walleye, trout, bluegill and catfish.

The chatterbait is a jig with a hex blade clipped straight to its head, which makes it hunt side to side. Ron Davis sold the first on March 10, 2004. The spinnerbaits hub explains the blades, with the buzzbait and inline spinner pages beside it; the chatterbaits hub has the model ladder.

Which jig for which cover?

A jig is a weighted head molded onto a hook, dressed with a skirt or a soft plastic and fished on the bottom. Each type has its cover:

• The football jig for rock and offshore structure.
• The compact flipping jig, with a heavy hook and a stiff weedguard, for brush and mats.
• The Arkie or casting jig for docks and laydowns.
• The swim jig for the middle of the water column.
• The finesse jig, down to 3/16 oz, for clear or cold water.

The smallest jigs catch everything else. 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, hence the jig tipped with a minnow. The jigs hub covers the jigs, and the rigs hub the Texas, Carolina, Ned and drop-shot rigs; the football jig, swim jig and jig heads pages go deeper.

Which soft plastic, on which rig?

Soft plastics are a material rather than a lure. A worm, a creature bait, a stick bait, a tube or a craw becomes a Texas rig, a wacky rig, a drop-shot bait or a jig trailer, depending on the hook. The fluke, the soft jerkbait, crosses over most. Wired2Fish’s striped bass guide names the 7 in (18 cm) Zoom Magnum Super Fluke and the Lunker City Slug-Go.

Nick Creme cooked the first plastic worm in Akron, Ohio, in 1949 and sold it by mail from 1951. The soft plastics hub sorts the shapes, the Texas rig page the rig most of them ride on, and the Senko page the stick bait.

Spoons and blade baits: when does metal win?

A spoon is a curved piece of metal that wobbles and flashes on a straight pull, and it is the oldest lure still made. Nordic anglers forged iron and bronze spoons from the 8th to the 13th century. Spoons come in four kinds, by how they are fished:

• Casting spoons, thick and heavy for distance.
• Trolling spoons, thin so they wobble at slow boat speeds.
• Jigging spoons, dropped to the bottom and worked in short jerks; most strikes come on the fall.
• Weedless spoons, with a wire guard for the grass.

Take Me Fishing says spoons “work best for larger fish species such as northern pike, largemouth bass, muskies, walleye, salmon and trout.” For trout, Outdoor Life’s pick is the Acme Phoebe at 1¼–2 in (3–5 cm). The best pike lures page has the pike spoons.

The blade bait is a thin metal fish with a weighted belly that vibrates when lifted. On The Water fishes it from late fall to early spring with short rod flicks, for bass, walleye and lake trout. The Heddon Sonar of 1959 was the first. The Silver Buddy followed in the early 1980s, from Paul Banks and smallmouth angler Billy Westmorland.

Swimbait or glide bait?

A swimbait imitates one big meal, a trout, a gizzard shad or a bluegill, and is thrown for the biggest fish in the lake. It comes in four builds. Hard glide baits have one joint and swim a wide S; segmented baits have several joints and a tight swim. Then come soft rigged baits such as the 8 in (20 cm), 4.8 oz Huddleston Deluxe, and paddle tails on a jig head.

Tackle Warehouse puts most glide bait rods at 7 ft 4 in to 8 ft (2.2–2.4 m), rated so the bait sits mid-range: a 4 oz bait on a 2–6 oz rod. The swimbaits and glide baits pages have the sizes and retrieves.

Umbrella rig or fly: the two outliers

The umbrella rig, the Alabama rig in bass fishing, is five wires joined in a shad-shaped head with a jig and a paddle tail on each, so one cast swims a school. Rigged, it weighs 1–3 oz (28–85 g), and Jason Sealock fishes it on an 8 ft heavy rod with 65 lb braid. It arrived in the fall of 2011. From February 1, 2012, B.A.S.S. limited Elite Series anglers to “a single lure.” Where the Alabama rig is legal depends on the rules you fish under.

A fly weighs almost nothing: feathers, fur and thread on a bare hook, imitating insects, nymphs, shrimp and baitfish. It is cast with the weight of the fly line, because the fly has none. The fly fishing for trout page starts there.

What do the ounces on the package mean?

Lures are sold by weight in ounces and length in inches, and the weight decides the rod. Every rod carries a lure rating: the range of weights that loads the blank on the cast. Too light and the rod does not load, so the cast falls short. Too heavy and it overloads and casts sluggishly.

On Ebb N Flow’s chart, jig heads run from 1/16 oz (1.8 g) to 1/2 oz (14 g), and the depth and the fish pick the weight:

The rods hub has the power table.

Which ten lures to buy first?

A beginner’s box needs one lure per job. For the bottom: a jig, a Texas-rigged soft plastic and a stick bait. For the middle: a spinnerbait, a chatterbait, a squarebill and a lipless bait. Then a jerkbait for cold water, and a popper and a frog for the surface.

For other fish the same logic gives an inline spinner for trout, a jig and minnow for walleye and crappie, and a casting spoon for pike. The best fishing lures page names the models, sizes and prices. The best bass lures page shows what the 2025 and 2026 Elite Series were won on, event by event.

What changes in salt water?

The families are the same in the surf, scaled up and renamed. A swimming plug such as the Daiwa SP Minnow or Bomber Long A is a minnow crankbait. A 9 in (23 cm) walker such as the Musky Mania Doc is topwater, and a 3 oz Joe Baggs Skipper is a popper built to reach a blitz from the beach.

The bucktail, deer hair on a lead head, is the saltwater jig, and The Tackle Room calls white a must-have color. Diamond jigs of 2–6 oz are the jigging spoons of reefs and rips. Bunker spoons and umbrella rigs are trolled for stripers along the whole coast; paddle tails and 7 in flukes are the soft plastics.

Depth, cover, clarity and temperature still decide, with tide as a fifth question. The striped bass pages take it from there, and the lures hub has every family.

Free PDF · 16 pages

Know what's biting before your first cast

The Water Temperature Fishing Chart. Take one water temperature reading, find it on the chart, and you know which of 26 freshwater fish are feeding today, where they are and what to throw. For your phone and the tackle box.

• The 26-fish chart: who's spawning, feeding hard or shut down at your reading
• Where they sit and what to throw at every band: bass, crappie, bluegill, walleye, catfish and trout
• The best hours at your reading, the cold front day by day, and the spawn calendar from ice-out to midsummer
• The three thermometer mistakes that make a reading lie (the first one is the surface)

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