If you’re a bass angler who hasn’t heard about the urchin craze, you may be living under a rock. Those goofy-looking lures are dominating conversations and some tournaments. The recent ICAST was full of new variations.
Now, make no mistake, I’m hardly an expert at fishing these creatures, but I have used them and have had some success. I will explain about that later.
While the urchins are catching a ton of fish, I’ve been bass fishing for decades and know bass get conditioned to some baits, and yet new or different baits will catch them for a while.
So what’s the attraction of this style of lure?
For years we thought a bait had to resemble something natural that the fish ate regularly, but this thing doesn’t resemble anything.
But bass are curious, and without hands, the only way they can grab something out of curiosity is to put it in their mouths.
It falls slowly, has some subtle movement, and perhaps that’s what intrigues them.
Years ago, when I started fishing, the late Guido Hibdon was winning a lot of tournaments and was trying to help me with my fishing career. He won a lot of money on the Bobby Garland Gitzit, which closely resembles today’s tube bait, and I asked him what the fish thought it was.
His reply was simple and yet very common sense: “Hell, I don’t know what a bass thinks!”
That stuck with me, and it’s true we really don’t know what bass think of those urchin baits other than they bite them.
We do know that bass’ ultra-sensitive lateral line is their underwater ears and they can pick up any vibration. The tentacles probing from these urchin baits create pressure waves and the slow movement draws a bass to investigate something they haven’t seen.
I saw that firsthand last year while fishing a buoy off the tip of Lake Ontario’s Stoney Island where smallmouth were hanging around the chain that helped anchor the buoy. I caught a couple of fish on a standard drop-shot bait, but after a while, the fish would follow my lure to the bottom but not take it.
I switched to a green pumpkin dice-style bait on the drop-shot rig and caught a 5-pounder on the first cast and several others.
And this year, I was up there fishing around the spawn. My forward-facing sonar showed several fish hanging around 10 to 15 feet in an area that had been fished a lot by other boats.
I threw several baits in that spot and caught a couple, but it was obvious the fish were wary. I rigged up a Yamamoto Uni urchin and caught several, much bigger fish quickly.
I have to believe they were seeing something different than what other anglers were fishing and bit it.
How long will the urchin craze last? Who knows, but my feeling is it will subside a bit. It will remain a lure you always want tied onto a rod.
We’ve only scratched the surface as to how to rig and fish it, but Elite pros are proving it works in a variety of conditions and waters.
As time goes on, these Elite guys will teach us a lot more about how and when to fish it, how to rig it and how to use it in a broader range of applications than it is being fished today.
