If you called up your friendly local venture capitalist and said to them, “I am going to start up a company that hand-crafts lures for largemouth bass that are so detailed that I have to charge $160 each for them to make a profit,” you would probably be rapidly escorted to the door with a boot placed aft to help your exit.
Mike Bucca did it, and has been laughing all the way to the bank.
Bucca, who began crafting the Bucca Bull Shad and similar models some 20 years ago and charging a then-outrageous $60 for them, just released the “Gizzard Trick Shad” that goes for $160.
He can’t keep up with the demand—he’s sold out for the time being.
The heart wants what the heart wants, and apparently a lot of bassheads consider a $160 lure a good investment.
As an angler who has left countless lures decorating sunken stumps, trees and rocks, as well as a few in the jaws of fish, I’m not inclined to buy and fish a $160 lure, unless I have a mask and fins in the boat and cast it on 200 lb test braid.
But I guess it’s all relative. If you’re buying a bass boat that costs 80 to a hundred grand—which a lot of the full-sized premium brands do now, fully loaded up--then balking at the cost of a $160 lure that might increase your success is a bit pointless.
Of course, you might want to keep said lures in a gun safe overnight rather than in a tackle box in your truck, but that’s another matter.
Mike’s lures work. I have fished the Bucca Wake Shad here on Guntersville a couple of times with Captain Mike Carter, a true believer, and caught some very nice fish in that dawn patrol bite when the fish come up on the bars next to the channel to feed. But as a matter of principal (rather than a matter of principle) I don’t buy lures that expensive.
Like most outdoors writers, I am independently wealthy, in the sense that I don’t have to work again in my lifetime unless I want luxuries like electricity, running water and food on the table. Money is not an object for me, except at rent time.
(As James Baldwin famously wrote, money is like sex—if you have enough, you don’t think of it, and if you don’t you think of nothing else—but I digress.)
Amazingly, the Bucca Gizzard Trick Shad is not even the most expensive bass lure on the market.
In fact, it’s not close.
That honor apparently belongs to the “Roman Made Natural Wood Mother Chaser Swimbait”, on sale now at Tackle Warehouse for . . . $1100!!!
Here’s now TW describes it: “The absolute pinnacle of swimbait craftsmanship, the Roman Made Natural Wood Mother Chaser Swimbait is a monster-sized 16” swimbait that is meant for chasing trophy-caliber bass and is simply in a league of its own. Painstakingly hand built and tuned one at a time by Toshinori Takeyama in Japan near Lake Biwa, the Roman Made Natural Wood Mother Chaser Swimbait produces an incredible wide gliding action and moves a tremendous amount of water to entice trophy bass to come out of hiding.”
I have owned several boats that did not cost $1100 in my lifetime, so despite the attractive description, I will pass on the RMNWMCS.
Also, casting a 16” lure that weighs 22 ounces—yep, 1 lb., 6 oz.—would be a bit of a challenge on the tackle that I own these days.
The bass that I catch are usually not that big, actually. The lure exceeds the minimum length limit on most lakes.
On a junket off Martha’s Vineyard trolling a plastic squid about this size, I hooked, briefly, a bluefin tuna just slightly smaller than a VW. We were both very happy to part company when the hook pulled.
But casting such a monster lure in hopes that it will land in front of a bass that thinks it can swallow it—well, the odds are maybe a little better than winning Powerball, but not by much.
So for the time being I will stick to more reasonably sized and much more reasonably priced lures, secure in the doctrine that elephants do, in fact, eat peanuts on occasion. I know, they also eat hay bales, but they don’t swallow them whole . . . .
— Frank Sargeant
Frankmako1@gmail.com