Photo by Ron Sinfelt.

Why in the world would a bass eat a spinnerbait?

It looks for all the world like a hairy safety pin. It definitely doesn't look like anything natural that swims, crawls or floats on the water.

Yet millions of bass have been caught on spinnerbaits.

Poll the top-ranked professional bass tournament fishermen at any given time and you'll find that they all have lots of confidence in spinnerbaits as fish-catching tools. But no one knows exactly why. Oh, everybody may have an opinion -- but until we can communicate with fish, we'll never know the exact reason.

And fishing lures -- not just spinnerbaits, but many others as well -- are proof that the most realistic or lifelike imitation isn't always the best one to use to catch a fish.

Look at soft-plastic crawfish baits, for example. Over the years there have been numerous imitation crawfish that were virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. Some were even molded from actual crawfish. Their dimensions and proportions were exact, and sometimes the colors were so realistic as to make an angler do a double-take.

But look at what's consistently sold the best through the years: not those lifelike, down-to-the-last-tiny-detail plastic crawfish. It's usually those baits that have a vague passing resemblance to a crawfish that sell the best. And that's because those baits catch fish.

Look at the Larew Salt Craw. It's won numerous big-money bass tournaments, and is a staple in the tackle boxes of thousands of fishermen. Never, by any stretch of the imagination, would anyone look at a Larew Salt Craw and confuse it with a real crawfish. It's about the right length for a medium-sized crawfish, and has a couple of pincers trailing behind it -- but that's about as close as it gets. And the best colors of Salt Craws often don't resemble any crawfish you've ever seen. When was the last time you saw an electric-blue crawfish with hot-pink pincers, or a junebug-colored crawfish with silver pincers?

If you stop and think about it, few lures actually look that much like a living creature in the food chain. Oh, there's a slight similarity -- but what predator in its right mind would actually mistake some of the most effective lures on the market with anything alive?

Confusing a red-and-white topwater chugger with an actual wounded baitfish would be about like you or me confusing a cow with a minivan. Yeah, they're about the same size; yeah, they both move forward; yeah, they might even be of a similar color. But mistake one for the other? I don't think so.