This is something that’s always perplexed the heck out of me. Here you have a company that’s been making spinners for trout for a ga-gillion years and there’s a multi-million dollar bass market that they can’t break into.
To me it doesn’t seem all that difficult to design a good spinnerbait – especially if you have experts at your disposal who know how to bend wire and mount clevises. Still the Mepps lure company has never been able to break into the bass market.
Looking at this ad, though, it seems they may have finally been on the right track – that is until you, “look under their skirt.”
As soon as you take a good hard look under lure’s nether regions, you discover why the Mepps Bass Killer didn’t hook many bass let alone kill them. They joined powers with Mister Twister and placed Twister’s Keeper Hook on the bait.
Now mind you, I really don’t want to sound too sarcastic, but by design a spinnerbait is fairly weedless. Couple that with the fact that anglers run trailer hooks on blades to ensure they’ll get a good hook-up ratio and it makes you wonder who at Mepps (or maybe it was Twister) wanted this project to bomb. A Texas rigged trailer on a spinnerbait that covers the main hook? Yikes!
And to this day one of the biggest spinner manufacturers still hasn’t made a dent in the bass industry. I guess they have their hands full with the trout anglers.
Past Reader Comments:
Scott Jarvis: Anybody remember the Mister Twister spinnerbait. Good sized had two colorado blades on a 3 way swivel. Came with a set of painted blades and a set of plated shiny blades. I ordered it when I was a kid and it came with cool stickers. But the bait sucked.
Andy Williamson to Scott Jarvis: Scott, I bought that Mr. Twister double-spin also. Caught a few largemouth on it in Geddes Lake, SD in 1976. Had really no complaints, but I seemed to prefer the conventional tandem spinnerbait.
Jojo Norwood: I had good luck w/ the spoons they made…..really fluttered as they fell. Never seen that spinnerbait. Would have been good for “pre-fish’N” LOL
Terry to Jojo Norwood: Yeah Jojo, it would have! Lol
Can’t say I agree with Terry’s assessment that the Mepps company hasn’t had success in the bass market. Mepps spinners have proven themselves to be deadly on both small mouth and largemouth, particularly in the Midwest. In fact, they are responsible for several state record and fishing contest winning bass catches. As for this spinnerbait though, he could be right on the money. I’ve never fished one of their spinnerbaits and have no foundational experience on which to judge them. I asked Mike Sheldon, President of Mepps, a while back about why they discontinued their spinnerbait. He indicated that they sold well enough and anglers reported success with them, but that there were other reasons they stop producing them. I’d like to get one or two and give it a fair trial.
Yes, I’m not referring to their spinners, just their spinnerbaits, specifically this one. LOL
longest bass I have ever seen was caught in Ohio on a plain Mepps spinner around 1960 — an amazing 27 inches!