Fishing Lures Explained: Which Lure for Which Fish

Walk into any tackle shop and the lure wall will overwhelm you. Hundreds of shapes, colors, and price tags, all promising fish. The truth is they fall into a handful of categories, and once you understand what each type does in the water, the wall stops being intimidating and starts making sense.

A lure is just an attempt to imitate something a predator wants to eat, a fleeing baitfish, a wounded minnow, a wriggling worm. The differences between lure types come down to where they work in the water column and how they move. Here is the practical tour, the one I wish someone had given me before I bought a tackle box full of stuff I never used.

Spoons and spinners: start here

Spoons are the simplest lure there is, named for the obvious reason that they look like the bowl of a spoon. As you retrieve one, it flickers and wobbles, mimicking the flash and panic of a fleeing baitfish. They are cheap, easy to use, and forgiving, which makes them the ideal starting point for anyone new to lure fishing. If you are buying your first handful of fishing lures, a few spoons belong in the bag.

Spinners are nearly as beginner-friendly and a bit more versatile. A spinner is a blade that rotates around a spindle as you retrieve it, throwing off flashes of reflected light that imitate a baitfish's scales and movement. The clever part is control: you set the retrieve depth by how long you let it sink before you start reeling, and you change the blade's spin speed by speeding up or slowing your retrieve. For trout and mullet, go smaller. For pike, size up and add a treble hook dressed in red wool. A light spinning reel pairs naturally with both spoons and spinners.

Surface lures: the exciting ones

Surface lures are worked right on top of the water, and they are the most heart-stopping lures to fish. You can actually see the take, the fish often launching clean out of the water as it smashes the lure, and the anticipation as you work it across the surface is half the fun. Because they ride on top and do not snag below, they are an excellent choice in weedy areas where a diving lure would foul on every cast. If you have never had a fish explode on a topwater lure at dawn, you are missing one of fishing's genuine thrills.

Plugs: floating, diving, sinking, suspending

Plugs are the hard-bodied lures that dive, and the category splits by buoyancy. Floating divers are a must-have for any lure angler because they cover a huge range of depths, from just under the surface down to fifteen feet or more. The diving depth is set by the angle of the vane (the lip) to the body: the shallower that angle, the deeper the lure dives. The shape and size of both the vane and the body shape how the plug moves through the water.

Sinking plugs are built for deep water. You cast, count it down to the depth you want, then begin your retrieve, and because you count the same way each cast, you hit the same depth every time. The distance a lure sinks in a given count, its sink rate, also tells you how deep the fish are holding when they strike, which is genuinely useful information.

Suspending plugs are the specialists. They have neutral buoyancy, so once you dive one to depth and pause, it hangs there, suspended, instead of floating up or sinking. That makes them deadly for picking off fish tucked against weed beds, rocks, or banks. A sharp twitch brings the plug to life and often triggers a crashing strike from a fish that was just watching. Match your fishing rod action to plugs, you want enough tip to impart the right twitch.

Soft baits and jerk baits

Soft baits are exactly what they sound like, soft rubber lures in a huge range of shapes, sizes, and colors. They work in both fresh and salt water, commonly rigged on a weighted jig head and worked like a plug or jerk bait. Their lifelike give means a fish that grabs one tends to hold on a fraction longer, which buys you time to set the hook.

Jerk baits have no action of their own. Sitting still in the water, a jerk bait does nothing, the angler is the one who brings it to life. Every twitch, shake, or jerk of the rod makes it dart and stutter like an injured, wounded fish, and that distressed movement is exactly what triggers a predator to lunge. It is the most hands-on style of lure fishing, and it rewards a feel for rhythm. Keep a selection of soft plastic baits organized in your tackle box so you can match the size and color to conditions on the day.

Building a starter set

You do not need the whole wall. A practical starter kit covers the water column: a couple of spoons and spinners for easy flash-and-wobble fishing, a topwater for exciting shallow action, a floating diver and a sinking plug to reach different depths, and a few soft baits and jerk baits for finesse work. With those in the box, you can fish nearly any situation, and as you learn which ones produce on your water, you build out from there. Tie them onto matched fishing line and the only thing left is figuring out which one the fish want today, which is the fun part.