by Keith Lozott, Contributing Writer
It’s that time of year again, the annual Delacroix, La redfish galore trip. All year long I anticipate our trip to the Bayou with the fellas, some light tackle spinning rods, soft plastic lures, gold spoons and some coolers full of food and beverages. This being my third year and hopefully even better than the last, I decided to put a homemade “joke” lure to the test. Last year I thought if I were able to rig a Coors Light bottle cap and get in front of a fired up redfish, it would crush it like an unsuspecting blue crab cruising the shoreline. So, I laid out a plan to rig this contraption for the trip and I admit I had a few cold ones concocting this idea.
The research was put together after catching redfish on all kinds of lures. I used spinner baits, Chatter Baits, DOA CAL paddle tails (root beer and chartreuse mainly), topwater Zara Spook Jr’s, Rapala Skitter Walks, shallow running crank baits that wobble, popper flies and various other flies and I’m sure I forgot something. I will put on the record that the numerous fly catches, were all caught by my partner Martin. He used the fly most of the trip and had major success. I was the one that was mixing it up to see if I could trick these amazingly, willing-to-eat-anything redfish into whatever I found in the tackle box. One observation during the research was that color was very important. Gold, purple, black, root beer, pinkish red and chartreuse were consistently out fishing the rest. This was very important in the development of the “CL” Redfish Destroyer.
For the production of the lure, several CL’s (Coors Light) were consumed to develop this masterpiece. I needed the hardware to make it, so I figured why not get fresh bottle caps right from the garage fridge. I made a few that didn’t make the cut, so a few more were consumed to finally craft the final prototype. My thoughts were that crabs have a roundish body with protruding claws and legs. Therefore, the bottle cap would represent the main body, a circle hook attached to a snap-swivel and the main line swivel with an added split shot weight for casting distance would be the claws and legs (maybe a stretch). I added some color even though the cap had silver and some red. I thought chartreuse/red/pink. It was on the latest Flats Class show where C.A., the host used an Aqua Dream spoon in a similar color pattern. I didn’t have any paint in this crazy color, but my daughter has a million wild nail polish colors that were perfect, so pinkish red it was.
I decided once the polish was dry that it would be a good idea to see how she swam. I didn’t have any delusions that it was going to swim well based, on its ludicrous look and cockamamie origins. To my surprise it swam like a champ, which I will attribute to the last second addition of a split shot weight to the front of it. So, in finishing this story the follow up to this article will be when I get back from Delacroix with fish pics of reds caught on the CL Redfish Destroyer. For the record I do think black drum are going to love this thing if I see any. I have caught them on bare ¼ oz. Owner Keeper Hooks.
To Be Continued!