W2F Blog

This bait is a fun pick. But it's more than just fun that got it this high on our list of Most Influential Bass Fishing Lures. The Heddon Zara Spook spawned not only a craze of topwater anglers and savage heart stopping strikes from hungry bass, but it spawned it's own swagger on the water. The "walk the dog" technique was born with the creation and perfection of this lure and it was an overnight success.

I can remember seeing Charlie Campbell for the first time on television making this topwater bait zig zag back and forth across the surface, even walking it around a stump before a big bass jumped out of the water to bite it. I was hooked from that moment. Now I can't have enough Zara Spooks or their later imitators in the boat when the water is warm and bass chase forage.

The walk the dog technique became not only an effective way to catch bass, but also search for bass during the warm months in tournament situations. It seemed to call bass from great distances and a lot of times you could get bass to show themselves without ever having to hook them by taking the hooks off the bait.

The original version had hook hangers screwed on the outside of the bait and was silent with a handful of colors. Now there are a multitude of sizes, colors, rattle options, silent options, three hook and two hook varieties and more. Their popularity remains strong to this day.

Even though it's a niche bait, the fact that it spawned its own technique, gave anglers more options and opened up topwater fishing to another dimension, it's still a small window of opportunity and it's influence didn't reach as deep as those in our top 10. But it's still a monumental lure in bass fishing and for that reason we made it No. 11 on our list of 20 Most Influential Bass Fishing Lures.