Beetlemania becomes popular again – in fishing

COUNCIL GROVE RESERVOIR – Space is limited because gear is aplenty in Fred Agin’s boat. Rods of four or five styles are stacked on both sides. Tackle boxes are packed under the dash and along some sides.

“That’s just a drop in the bucket for what we have,” Agin said as his wife, Audrey, opened a box with dozens of pricey crankbaits. “We’ve got a bunch more at home. I’d say we have to have at least 500 crankbaits, plus the other stuff.”

But when he cast his first line on Monday, Agin was tossing a $1.50 lure usually associated for more than 50 years with simple push-button reels and beginning anglers – a beetle spin. It’s become one of his top go-to lures when fishing the shallows of Council Grove and other lakes near his home near Emporia.

“Last year I was wanting to see if a spinner, and the flash, caught crappie better than a feather jig or plastic grub,” he said. “I remembered we used to catch a lot of fish on a beetle spin, so I decided to give one a try. Lo and behold, it wasn’t long before I caught a really nice saugeye. A little later I caught another and then another.”

On following trips, he used the basic lures to catch a lot of crappie, white bass, wipers, spotted and largemouth bass, drum and channel catfish of up to 10 pounds. Since then, he’s always had a beetle spin tied to his favorite spinning outfit.

“I’m not sure why we ever really quit fishing them,” said Agin, including his main fishing partner, wife Audrey. The lures helped them catch thousands of fish in the past.

A beetle spin is a split-tailed plastic body on a simple jig head, with a small spinner attached on an L-shaped wire. Again said he started fishing beetle spin when he was trying to catch green sunfish and bluegill in farm ponds, to use for set-line bait for flatheads and channel catfish. That was in the early 1970s, when he was a student at Emporia State, and about the time he met Audrey on a college campout.

“I caught a channel catfish and he caught a bass,” she said. “I told him I’d clean his bass if he’d clean my catfish. He was impressed that I knew how to fillet fish.”

What followed was the kind of 41-year marriage where most vacations have centered around fishing together, as have free times during retirement. For Valentine’s Day, Fred Agin got his wife some highly-specialized fishing gear and she was thrilled.

Beetle spins were a regular part of their lives while dating, after their marriage, and when their two sons were young. The little lures were ideal for smallmouth bass and panfish in streams when they visited relatives in the Ozarks, or the streams near where Audrey grew up in rural Chautauqua County. Fred Akin has great memories of all the largemouth bass the family caught from farm ponds, small lakes and other places.

“I know I used to catch a lot of big white bass, 2 1/2- to 3-pounders, in the river at Hartford,” said Agin. “Other guys may have caught more, but it sure seemed to me like the beetle spins were always catching bigger fish than regular jigs. I don’t know why we quit using them.”

One reason is because the Agins enjoy trolling with crankbaits, but these days many trips to Council Grove begin casting beetle spins towards rocky shorelines and points. Often the saugeye and white bass are in four feet of water or less.

Sunday, the Agins spent about three hours fishing Council Grove and he caught two big saugeyes and had another good fish get off near the boat. They also added a pair of saugeyes while trolling, too.

Monday’s conditions looked perfect, and it wasn’t 15 minutes after the first beetle spins hit the water that a white bass was brought aboard. Three more came from the same basic section of shoreline.

Wanting saugeye, the Agins tried casting the lures towards three more sections of shoreline. At each place came stories of saugeye, crappie or wipers they’d fought and caught there in the past.

When an hour of trolling produced no saugeye, the Agins went back to casting the spinners towards shoreline. More white bass came, as well as a couple of largemouths, and some nice-sized drum took the lures. Every time they passed other anglers, including those on shore, in kayaks, trolling or casting from boats, Fred Agin asked of their success. Two or three white bass or crappie was the best they found. The Agins put an estimated 15 fish into their boat. Beetle spins were the bait of the day, though they failed to catch saugeye.

“It’s just not going to happen today, (the saugeye) just are not biting for some reason,” he said as he reeled up his line and headed the boat toward the ramp.

He can now say that with more confidence than ever. When Agin can’t catch fish on his beetle spins, it could be a slow day for everything else, too.

This story was originally published May 8, 2015 at 12:34 PM with the headline "Beetlemania becomes popular again – in fishing."