About 15 years ago, while working in a retail fishing store, I had a regular customer start buying beetle spins like they were going out of style. About once a week he would come in and buy a few dozen. Knowing that he spent the majority of his time fishing saltwater, I asked him what in the world he was doing with all of the beetle spins. He grinned the grin of a man that had just been caught and said, “Catching spottail”. I thought he was pulling my leg until he went on to explain that he was having to buy so many because the fish were tearing them up and after a fish or two he would tie on a new one and catch more fish. The following week my buddy and I headed out onto one of my favorite flats tied one on and within 5 casts had a small redfish on. We went on to catch at least a dozen fish, but they were all small and the small hooks on the beetle spins were only good for a couple of fish.
After that trip I was excited about the fish we caught and decided that if the small fish would hit the beetle spin then a larger fish would certainly hit spinner bait. The next trip we were loaded for bear with spinner baits and some larger buzz baits. We located some fish and began to cast and the results were great. We caught several really nice fish and found that the smaller fish were not afraid of the bigger baits. We also found the heavier hooks and wire on these baits held up much better.
Today over a decade later buzz baits and spinner baits have found their way into the mainstream with anglers targeting redfish. If you keep up with some of the redfish tournament news, you will not make it through a paragraph without someone mentioning the success they had in the tournament using these baits and the number of companies manufacturing them for saltwater use is growing by leaps and bounds. The growth in popularity is really quite easy to explain. First and foremost, they catch fish! They are also very easy to use and are very effective in shallow water situations. The first point is self-explanatory, but I will el