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Mike Jackson: Old plastic lures can still get the job done

Please, don't ever minimize the great potential of lots of fish on your hook from standard, nationally advertised lures. Sometimes these baits are exactly what the "doctor" ordered. But then there's other side of the coin.

Your greatest tool today is a sonar unit. Be it hi-definition; low-def; no definition, or just the plain old units with 35-year old birthdays attached to their existence.

A sonar unit, or fish-finder as many call it, is designed to show you weed lines and drop-offs. The wunderkinds who played with the guts, and chips and dips, and screens of their test units made sure potential buyers would see an advantage by purchasing one of their fancy units - the ones that have GPS embedded and may even point out the closest hot dog stand.

In my book, I use my units to find what I just described. The boys with three first names would argue otherwise because some of them get paid to hype the brand name.

Now when it comes to tough situations where I know there are fish beneath my boat and I sometimes can't get them to hit a lure, here's a tactic I discovered without any help from the boys with product stickers covering every inch of their boats:

I like plastic lures, especially an old one called a French Fry. I don't know who makes it or if it's still in production. It's a short piece of plastic with a ribbed body. It undulates in the water when retrieved.

Another hot-to-trot "set" of plastics are the Mini-Mite II and Big Mini-Mite. But don't let the name fool you - the big Mini Mite is just over an inch long. The II model is slightly shorter in length.

After hours of experimenting with different weighted jigs, I still didn't have a result I could take to the bank.

My results became highly positive when I fished these smaller baits right off the bottom. Walleyes picked them up as soon as they hit the sand bottoms.

The same held true when I fished for suspended crappies and bass on the Chain. As the plastic was slowly dropping through a school of crappies, I felt strikes every time.

I used a 1/32-ounce jig head because I wanted an extra-slow drop.

I shared my discovery with a bass tournament guy who laughed in my face.

I showed him pictures of good-sized largemouth taken on the Fry and Big Mini-Mite. He still refused to accept the information.

The real test came on Lake Michigan. I was hunting smallmouth bass, and after a tiresome two-hour search I discovered a small school of brown bass hanging out in shallow water behind old, dilapidated pilings.

Nine casts produced eight fish.

I cut the French Fry down a couple inches and subsequently got more strikes and hookups.

Apparently on this particular day the smallies wanted a much smaller bait than what's been tossed at them by other anglers.

Experiment on your own and log your successes and failures - then let me know the score.

• Contact Mike Jackson at angler88@comcast.net, catch his radio show 7-9 a.m. Sundays on WGCO 1590-AM (live-streamed at www.1590WCGO.com) and get more content at www.mikejacksonoutdoors.com.

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