While handing over the money, Jaybird muttered, “Boy, you’re a sucker for advertising. This money — a loan, mind you — will be wasted on yet another lure as fish-frightening as the Pearly-Eyed Wobbler you foolishly had to have and that I foolishly loaned you money to buy — just another piece of junk designed to catch fishermen, not fish.”
Ignoring the wise old black man, my boyhood mentor and best friend, I hurried to Clyde’s bait shop, hoping he hadn’t sold all of bass-fishing’s hottest lure: the Big-O. Angler fanatics like myself had never seen anything like it. Made of balsa wood, the body’s top half was green, separated from its ivory belly by a black line. The most innovative feature was a transparent, spoon-shaped, protruding lip, positioned so that a few reel cranks sent it diving to the deep, murky depths where the biggest bass lurk.