My best producer is a green/gold sinker that my wife found on the beach once while looking for sea shells. I was on the first sand bar and I heard someone yelling and turned around to see her standing there waving me in. When I got to the beach she handed it to me with a big beaming smile on her face. I tied it on right there, mostly just for her benefit. I thought I'd throw it a few time and then get back to fishing for real. In the next 40 minutes I caught 5 specs from 21 to 25 inches long. I have also done well with a hot pink (sinker) and a white/red head (floater). Then again, some days a mirro lure is the only thing in my box that won't catch a spec.

Just one more of fishing's little mysteries...W. J.

BlowUp's retreive works well, and ripping it hard can sometimes even get those non-active fish to come alive.

That's my bread & butter plug in the winter over shell in anywhere from 2 to 8' of water. I can probably safely say that I have caught more quality fish on a mirro-lure than just about anything else, so I have a lot of confidence in it. We chunk it a lot in the spring & fall also, and it's a killer surf bait.

As far as retreives go, you'll just have to experiment and it changes sometimes by the hour. One minute they want it on the bottom, clicking the shell every now & then, next minute they will take it hard just underneath the surface. Now they want a straight steady retreive, an hour ago it was 'try & jerk the knot off' of it. Try throwing it around proven structure and key on the changes, like right where the shell meets sand, humps, dropoffs, pilings, etc. A good way to find them is to count it down a foot deeper on each cast until it hits paydirt, then repeat as necessary.

A long time ago we used to have fun trolling them in the surf. We would haywire a light leader on them and cruise around just past the breakers. The 52's have a real nice tight wiggle to them, and many a toothy critter fell prey.

It's a great plug with probably too many color choices, so don't give up. I'd have to add that my alltime confidence plug is chartrues/gold for most water conditions, but that's just me.

Try to stick with the 'R' series, as in 52 MR. which stands for 'rattle'. I think once you have a good trip with one, you'll be stuck with it too!

Good luck.

I think I know that article (a 3 parter) you are talkin about with fishing Mirrolures by Capt. Mike Williams a coupla years back. It was like a 3 part series. It was in a free Outdoors Magazine that Academy gave out. Man, I lost those articles (I think my Mom trashed em). Those were the most in-depth and informative fishing articles about a lure that I ever read. Blowup, if you still have those 3 articles. How bout emailing them to me? I know it means typing em up, but if that's too tedious, and if you have a scanner; scan em in .gif or .jpeg form and email it to me. I would really appreciate it. Hell, I'll type the 3 articles up and post em on the message board. I know Mike Williams helped create some designs and color schemes for Mirrolure. I just want to get my hands on those informative & helpful articles again, but I can't remember the name of that old outdoors mag.

Adios,

Caveman

I've always had my best luck here in N.E. Florida with a mullet imitating color - like the ? or similar (21/26?) Anyway, the topwaters (7M) are a really wonderful lure if you fish'em around mullet schools - I use three quick darts - about 1ft pulls, and then a pause - not long enough for the plug to get back to the surface every time, but a nice little pause - that's usually when the big ol' trout wants it - on the pause.

There's also an "Unknown" MirrOlure you can special order!! It's the 70 series floater! This plug is a bigger version of the 7M, and drives the big trout wild. You have to call MirrOlure in Largo, and special order this one, but believe me, it's worth it! It's not too heavy if you like light tackle, but it's a nice size topwater (4.25") and has a good heft for nice distances. It's made for the big Snook, Tarpon, etc. in Central America and not sold here in much quantity. Try it and you'll surely like it!

BlowUp

Even though their catalog doesn't list all the models of hooks, they can get anything you can find on the VMC site (www.vmchooks.com/). These are some super hooks - thanks to the guys in TExas that turned me on to them last year!

Hey, there's also some unique colors available on these 70 series floaters that you can't get in other models of MirrOlures either. They cost about the same as a Top Dog, and cast well too. What I like about them is sometimes, the fish want a quiet topwater, and this one can be worked quiet on super still mornings around mullet schools, and they have no problems at all finding it!