Fishing lures: types and how to fish them
Compare fishing lure types: hard baits, soft plastics, metal, and fly. Open a lure for the retrieve, sizes, and the species anglers catch with it.
Fishing lure types
Each fishing lure is a catalog type, not a brand. We start from action, depth, and water — spinning, jigging, or fly — then show the sizes that match the fish. Callouts on the plate name the parts that change the retrieve.
Hard baits
Compare crankbaits, minnows, poppers, and other hard baits. Open a lure for the retrieve, depth, and the species it catches.
Soft plastics
Compare worms, swimbaits, and other soft plastics. Open a lure for the retrieve, sizes, and when it belongs on a jig or weighted hook.
Fly patterns
Compare dry flies, nymphs, streamers, and other fly patterns. Open a pattern for the retrieve and the species it matches.
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Minnow
A minnow lure copies a slender baitfish and is the first hard bait most spinning anglers learn.
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Jerkbait
Jerkbaits suspend or sink slowly so you can hang the lure in a predator’s face.
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Crankbait
Crankbaits are the search lures of spinning.
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Lipless crankbait
Lipless crankbaits have no lip, so they sink and rattle.
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Swimbait
Hard swimbaits imitate a full-size forage fish.
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Stickbait
Stickbaits (sinking pencils) are spinning lures for long casts over open water.
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Topwater plug
Topwater plugs wake the surface with a cupped mouth or prop.
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Popper
Poppers spit water on each snap.
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Walking bait
Walking baits (walk-the-dog) glide left and right on a rhythmic rod twitch.
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Glide bait
Glide baits sweep side to side on a pull-pause retrieve.
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Spinnerbait
Spinnerbaits run through wood and grass that bury treble-hook crankbaits.
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Spoon
Spoons wobble and flash like a dying baitfish.
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Inline spinner
Inline spinners (Mepps-style) are the simplest spinning lures: blade, body, treble.
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Casting jig
Casting jigs (lead head plus skirt or trailer) are the bottom-contact lure of spinning and light jigging.
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Metal jig
Metal jigs (speed jigs) are cast or dropped for pelagics and bottom fish.
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Slow pitch jig
Slow-pitch jigs flutter and slide on a lazy fall.
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Vertical jig
Vertical jigs stay in the cone under the boat.
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Inchiku
Inchiku jigs combine a metal slider and a dressed assist.
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Kabura
Kabura (and tenya cousins) put a dressed hook behind a sliding head.
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Egi
Egi are cloth-wrapped squid jigs with a crown of pins.
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Soft jerkbait
Soft jerkbaits (flukes) dart on slack line and hang in the column.
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Soft worm
Soft worms are the most fished soft plastics.
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Craw
Craws imitate crayfish and gobies.
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Creature bait
Creature baits mix craw, insect, and baitfish cues.
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Shad
Shad-shaped soft plastics are the all-round paddletail for perch, zander, bass, and inshore species.
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Paddle tail
Paddle tails (soft swimbaits) thump on a straight swim.
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Fly
The catalog fly is the all-round fly-fishing lure: a dressed hook for trout, sea trout, and light salt when you have not committed to dry, nymph, or streamer.
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Dry fly
Dry flies sit in the film and imitate adult insects.
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Nymph
Nymphs are the subsurface workhorse of fly fishing.
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Wet fly
Wet flies imitate emergers and drowned insects.
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Streamer
Streamers are the fly-fishing lure for predatory trout, pike, bass, and sea trout.
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Emerger
Emergers sit in the meniscus — half nymph, half dry.
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Terrestrial
Terrestrials imitate insects that fall in from the bank.
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Fly popper
Fly poppers are not spinning poppers: they are deer-hair or foam heads on a fly hook.