There is no doubt in my mind that the sport of fishing is by far one of the fastest evolving sports known to man. Heck, I change my rigging techniques more often than I change the fuel water separator on my motor. (That means at least every season, if not more often than that.) Even products are rapidly evolving, seems like only yesterday we were using loran to navigate offshore, then GPS, now differential GPS. What’s next? Well it seems that fishing lures are not exempt from the constant revolution either. Even a lure as simple as the cedar plug is undergoing changes.
Cedar plugs have been around for decades and my first exposure to them was some 13 years ago when I worked in Johns Rod and Reel. As it turns out anglers were having great success on these natural wooden plugs in the Gulf of Mexico catching Ling or as we know them Cobia. At the time the owner of the store stocked the shelves with these cheap wooden plugs hoping they would catch on here in the lowcountry as a good casting bait. I was a firm believer that these plugs would catch fish, however they did not catch customers. The lures were just too plain looking for a customers viewpoint and they always wanted to purchase an item that was more flashy and complex than a plain wooden cylinder with a lead head. Heck there were not any lips or even eyes drawn on the bait, remember most baits are designed to catch the angler not necessarily fish.
About 5 years ago I noticed that manufactures were starting to paint cedar plugs making them a little more attractive to the angler. Here in the lowcounty and elsewhere on the east coast cedar plugs were beginning to sell as a trolling lure for tuna. I purchased my first cedar plug about 2 years ago as we started doing more and more tuna fishing. The colors provided more appeal to me and I heard that a green body with a black head was a good color. The lure still has no eyes, no lips, nothing flashy, but I am here to tell you it catches fish. I will be the first to admit that I personally have not cau