Old Bass Anglers Never Stopped Using These. Here’s Why.

Picture a 14-foot bamboo pole, a foot and a half of heavy line, and a frog on the end. You ease along the lily pads, swing it in a figure eight, and a bass blows up on it three feet from the boat. People were catching bass like this long before anyone owned a graphite rod or a screen.

That bamboo pole and a handful of other baits older than most of the people fishing them all keep working for the same reason. Once you see what it is, it changes how you fish the expensive gear in your boat, too. It also explains why a jitterbug still wins at night and why a plain plastic worm hasn’t been replaced in 70 years.

0:00 The bamboo pole and the frog
0:48 Pole fishing: how it works and why it catches fish
2:51 The Jitterbug: still catching fish since the 1930s
3:56 Why a bait that old still works at night
4:30 The plastic worm that changed bass fishing
5:56 The jig and the pork rind that started it
7:25 What all of these old baits have in common
8:24 How to use the same idea with the gear you already have