Wooden Vintage Fishing Lures

Wooden Fishing Lures: The Appeal of Floating Bugs for Fish

Antique fishing lures hold the secret to past fishing techniques. When you search for old wooden fishing lures, be aware that vintage wooden lures needed lead weights to sink them to the proper fishing level unless the conditions called for surface appeal for fish, such as in heavy rain conditions. When you come across antique wooden fishing lures for sale on eBay, consider them based color, articulation, and condition.

Vintage fishing lures take the form of fragile flies for light casting and heavier vintage wooden lures. Because the wood is solid and painted to convey a realistic appearance, the wooden lure can last long enough to become an antique. A Wotta frog lure whose articulated hind legs carried three-pronged hooks and whose spotted paint emulates speckled frog skin makes an attractive antique. Another appealing wooden lure is the Thoren minnow chaser, which presents a scenario of one fish dashing after another on one machined steel support; it was designed to lull larger fish into attacking the two of fake lures.

When considering used lures and to their accompanying boxes or instructional pamphlets, pay attention to the condition descriptions:

• Gem: Gem means that the lure is basically uncirculated because its paint is pristine with no flaking or chipping as well as no rust on the hook. The pamphlet and box, if present, show minimal handling in the form of smudges or stains.
• Fine: Fine means that the lure has been gently used. There is slight rust on the hooks or articulation connections, and any box or pamphlet shows water spots and fold marks. The box is uncrushed and the pamphlet legible, and the paint on the wood displays full detail mimicking a fish while a chip or two has flaked off.
• Good: Good means that the lure withstood heavier use but is still in deployable condition. The cracked or chipped paint indicates the identifiable kind of fish it was meant to simulate, and the hooks show greater rust. All the hooks and weights are present on a multi-hook lure.
• Fair: Fair means that the lure shows strong use, which might indicate the most effective design. Hooks may be missing and paint flaking is present, but the basic design remains. Any box or pamphlet included shows tears, stains, and crumbling, but the print is mostly legible.

Weedless bait contains a guard fashioned to prevent snarling in weeds, lily pads, or heavy underwater growth. As far back as 1915, the E-Z Way Bass Bait wooden lure contained spring-loaded hooks designed to evade being caught in weeds until a fish struck for it.