sASSY AS IT gETS

“Rapala?! What’s a Rapala?! Get yourself a Sassy Shad – that’s what it’s all about! That’s what you’re gonna’ catch your trout, your bass – smallmouth and largemouth –  your walleye, pike, perch, crappie, rock bass, catfish, everything, on!” exclaimed Mr. Schoenfeldt, now turning red in the face or moving to a shade just beyond. “It’s a magic lure, just magic – tsiiiinnngg!!!” as he slung another perfect faux cast toward the row of Commodores on the back wall. Mr. Schoenfeldt, the seventh grade math teacher, was easily distracted from algebra and equations.

And we’d have to admit, both Drew and I, that we laughed at him, just a little, for his blustery off-topic instruction and his fixation on one simple lure while we knew of so many other more modern and “perfect” alternatives. Nowadays though, I’d have to say that we’re not laughing anymore at the floppy misshapen little fish from Mr. Twister.

Maybe we just laughed at the simplicity of the lure that our algebra instructor seemed so engrossed with. There’s nothing ostentatious about this shad – no lifelike eyes, no fishy color patterns, no sparkly scales. Surely even we, as seventh graders could do better than this.

But what we failed to see about the Sassy Shad was how it moves and how it feels to a fish when his jaws close on it.

So, it took a while to find myself tying on the Sassy Shad and giving it some lake time. I think it was while living in North Chicago, a long way from seventh grade in upstate New York, that I decided I needed a pack of these in the small fishing kit I started putting together for Lake Michigan. But it did start producing smallmouth bass for me and I used it to place second in a little fishing tournament. I caught at least one Coho Salmon on it as well.

I lived north of Nashville, Tennessee and gave it a shot in old Sycamore Creek, again finding the smallmouth receptive. Living in West Virginia for a little while I found it effective for most of the fish that swam in the Ohio River including big Skipjack Herring. Channel catfish ate it up routinely.

By the time I settled into Pennsylvania, this special shad had become the most common lure in my box, filling trays in various sizes and colors. I’d tried knock-off shads from other sources too but I’d come to see that there really was nothing quite like the original. And I could see it as it swam back to me on each retrieve: an irrepressible fishy wiggle that just wasn’t as reliable in any other shad.

Over the course of years, the Sassy Shad has earned its place as my number one go-to search lure. This means that when I find myself on new water (and I always fish new water) I reach for this shad first, the vast majority of the time. If there are fish of some species present, chances are they’ll take the shad.

It would be difficult to compile a full list of all the fishes I’ve taken on the Sassy but the list would probably begin with smallmouth bass – likely what this lure does best. I like to fish the two inch shad for big panfish – perch, crappie and rock bass. White bass can’t resist it and larger Sassy’s can be thrown to “wipers,” hybrid white/striped bass. Nowadays, it is my #1 or #2 soft plastic for walleye, a fish I take a lot of time for now that I’ve learned where and when to find them. And I might not have learned the where and when without a lure that they’ll reliably smack.

My first steelhead trout fell for a Sassy Shad on Lake Erie, trolled behind a kayak. Half an hour later a barrel-shaped smallmouth ate it too – twenty-two inches long and about seven pounds. My largest walleye, a twenty-six inch fish, couldn’t resist the magic shad pulled along the shore of the Allegheny in Pittsburgh at four A.M. one morning. So, my largest steelhead, smallmouth and walleye have all eaten Sassy. And there’s another new largest, below.

I e-mailed the photos below to my old classmate Drew last week after I’d had some success on the Fox River, Wisconsin (where I took the above photos) along with the concise note:

  A couple of photos from the Fox River, Wisconsin this morning. Something to brighten your Monday. Please note the featured lure.

Photos Courtesy of Jeff Cihak

Drew thought that somewhere, Mr. Schoenfeldt was smiling.