I\u2019m trying to remember when the last time was that I had one tied on.\u00a0 A Lazy Ike that is.\u00a0 When I was a kid, these were the go-to bass lures for our haunts.<\/span><\/p>\n

I look at my meager collection of Lazy Ikes, and they invoke these feelings that I can\u2019t quite describe.\u00a0 Feelings of happiness, thinking about how a ten-year-old version of me viewed a Lazy Ike hanging from my rod tip, how it represented so much hope and anticipation, and at the same time a nostalgic sadness for days gone by.\u00a0 \u00a0Feelings way stronger than a grown man should have over some old fishing lures.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bass fishing for me when I was a kid was different then what most people picture when they think of bass fishing.\u00a0 Grandpa [we all called him Phred] took me fishing where he and his son [my uncle] had fished starting in the 50\u2019s.\u00a0 A quick trip east on 94 brings you across the St Croix River and into St Croix County, the place where I did most of my fishing between the ages of 5 and 15.\u00a0 Head north from the freeway and you\u2019re bound to run into the Willow River. Over 100 years ago dams were built on this [and every other] river, creating some small lakes.\u00a0 These lakes provided great fishing in the 50\u2019s and to a lesser extent now.\u00a0 On every\u00a0car ride over Phred would regale me with tales of years gone by, times when the bass would fight each other over a frog-colored Lazy Ike, where so many bass were caught they didn\u2019t know what to do with them all. \u00a0\u201cThey were all five-pounders!\u201d was often how a story would end.\u00a0 No wonder I often got restless while we were bobber fishing for sunnies– I was eyeing the far shoreline, thinking there must be at least one five pounder left for me\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Here’s Phred with one<\/h2>\n

This must have been a slow day–there’s only one on the stringer<\/p><\/div>\n

There was no boat.\u00a0 Phred never owned a boat, never got in a boat, got nervous if he saw a boat.\u00a0 We mostly fished for panfish around the dams or trout in area streams.\u00a0 On a good day I could talk Grandpa into bass fishing. So, clad in hip boots, we made our way along the dirt foot paths that followed most undeveloped shorelines.\u00a0 Our rods were standard fiberglass spinning rods from the 60’s [ at least a couple were Heddons], the reels were Johnson Citation push button reels.\u00a0 These reels are meant to be used on the top of the rod, but Phred learned a way to convert them so they would hang under\u00a0a spinning rod.\u00a0 Tangle free, but otherwise awful, this was what we used, as he was very skeptical of open-face spinning reels.\u00a0 Quick to point out the abundant poison ivy, Phred would lead the way and we would gingerly step in at various openings in the trees.\u00a0 Knee-deep, the fan-casting process would begin.\u00a0 First make a couple short casts straight out.\u00a0 This cast rarely got a strike.\u00a0 The 45 degree angle casts were more likely to produce, but it was the casts that would be nearly parallel to the bank that were \u201cmoney\u201d.\u00a0 A steady straight retrieve was all that was needed to get the Lazy Ike to dance.\u00a0 We really liked the frog pattern Ike, and I remember once when we lost a favorite frog-colored one to a snag.\u00a0 Anyone whoever fished with Phred can relate to how losing a lure to him was almost as bad as losing a family member.\u00a0 I remember the days we caught bass doing this, and I have forgotten all the days we didn\u2019t.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t really grasp seasonal movements of fish, and I\u2019m sure that the productive trips were all in the spring or early summer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bass that were unfortunate enough to fall for the siren song of the Lazy Ike always ended up on the stringer. We never really caught that many; any day where at least one was caught was a success. Grandpa was not a believer in catch and release, and on a good day there could be several largemouths on the chain when we got back to the station wagon where our catch would be bagged and deposited in the green cooler.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve never used a Lazy Ike, you probably didn\u2019t do any fishing before 1980.\u00a0 This lure style dominated the fishing scene from the 50\u2019s through the 70\u2019s, and for good reason.\u00a0 They cast well and have a very enticing wobble even at slow speeds.\u00a0 They dive down to about 3 or 4 feet and are known to catch all types of predatory fish.\u00a0 Why aren\u2019t they used anymore?\u00a0 Or better question, why don\u2019t I use them anymore?\u00a0 I think that when a Bass Pro Shops Catalog found\u00a0its way into my house when I was about 14\u00a0and I became aware of things like Rebel crankbaits and Mann’s Jelly Worms that my taste in bass lures changed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Check out how prominently\u00a0Lazy Ikes were featured in this great old book, \u201cMinnesota Fish and Fishing\u201d by Kit Berg.\u00a0 I somehow ended up with a first edition from 1958.<\/span><\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

The only negative thing I can think of\u00a0about these lures is that they were notoriously hard to keep \u201cin-tune\u201d [to non-anglers, this means keep them running straight].\u00a0 Bounce one off a rock too hard, or catch too many fish on one and the next thing you know the lure is riding up to the surface on the retrieve instead of doing its \u201ccha-cha\u201d dance in front of a fish’s face.\u00a0 Bending the line-tie slightly [very slightly] in the opposite direction that the out of tune lure is running will usually get it running straight again.\u00a0 Usually.\u00a0 I can remember times where the air turned blue around my grandpa as he got creative with words describing\u00a0a Lazy Ike that he couldn\u2019t get to run straight.<\/span><\/p>\n

My\u00a0 love for Lazy Ikes never completely went away.\u00a0 In more recent history, but still a couple of lifetimes ago, I resurrected some of my old Ikes as I found them to be effective for casting for walleyes in the spring or fall from shore.\u00a0 You can reel these things SLOW and they still have great action.\u00a0 Reeling into current you can go even slower. \u00a0This was when I lived up north.\u00a0 I even bought some new ones at some point, but found that the quality had fallen way off.\u00a0 I took a friend with me one crisp fall evening.\u00a0 We parked near a bridge that crossed the Upper Mississippi where I had been regularly catching a few walleyes each session.\u00a0 He wanted to use a Rapala, but I insisted he rig up with a beat-up Lazy Ike.\u00a0 The streetlights illuminated the rocky path, and cast an eerie glow on the river.\u00a0 I instructed Gunnar exactly where\u00a0to cast: at an angle to shore, right along a shadow line.\u00a0 He made the first cast straight out.\u00a0 \u201cNO!\u00a0 Cast it THERE!\u201d as I pointed out the money cast.\u00a0 He dutifully reeled up the red and white Ike and casted as instructed.\u00a0 Three cranks of the handle and our dinner was on the line. After he set the hook, he gave me a knowing glance and said \u201calways listen to the guide\u2026\u201d We could see its eyes glowing in the streetlight haze before we could see the fish, and before long we had two more, each one between two and three pounds.\u00a0 Every one of them hit the same red and white Ike while it was being reeling in slowly against the current.\u00a0 We ate well that night.<\/span><\/p>\n

This one time in Downtown Minneapolis I met a gal who claimed her grandpa had started Lazy Dazy Lures, a very similar lure to the Lazy Ike. \u00a0She claimed that Lazy Dazy was the original and seemed to be carrying some of her grandpa\u2019s pent up anger at Lazy Ike for copying his design. Typical for me to actually meet a girl and then start talking about fishing lures. \u00a0Lazy Ikes were made in Fort Dodge, Iowa, while Lazy Dazy Lures were made in Preston, Minnesota. \u00a0I haven\u2019t been able to find the real answer as to which one was first.\u00a0 \u00a0I have tried fishing with a Lazy Dazy, and while at a glance they are almost identical to an Ike, the have a much tighter wobble, and I don\u2019t like them as much.<\/span><\/p>\n

My collection of Lazy Dazy Lures<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

These things aren\u2019t doing anyone any good locked in a box.\u00a0 While none of them have any real monetary value [there\u2019s millions of these things out there, and they are worth about $5 each to a collector] I would be wildly disappointed if I lost one to a snag or a pike.\u00a0 I\u2019m\u00a0 going to make it a mission to catch some fish on one of these this summer.\u00a0 I can think of a couple of good applications for where I fish nowadays.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I won\u2019t use this perch colored one though. \u00a0I caught a lot of different fish on it when I was kid and despite using it a lot, I never lost it.\u00a0 It was retired many years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m trying to remember when the last time was that I had one tied on.\u00a0 A Lazy Ike that is.\u00a0 When I was a kid, these were the go-to bass lures for our haunts. I look at my meager collection of Lazy Ikes, and they invoke these feelings that I can\u2019t quite describe.\u00a0 Feelings of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1465,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1464"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1479,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464\/revisions\/1479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}