Over many decades anglers have been fed the reasons this or that lure catches fish, the best time to use certain lures and color recommendations.
Do those reasons as well as the logic behind them pass the smell test - especially after you followed the advice given ? Curious what many of your experiences using different lures has shown you.

My experience that MANY lures catch more fishermen than fish. That being said, even the worst lure in the hands of a skilled fisherman will catch fish.
It all comes down to fish behavior and matching the hatch.

I have some shad colored $8 cranks and $4 cranks. I can go all day without a bite with both.

Your the man SenkoSam show us something new. I can use the help.

If several fish are striking your lure but not hooking up then you definitely want to use the same lure but in a different color....find the right color and they will choke it down.....white for sunny blue bird skies...darker for cloudy days...then you have water clarity....I use a secchi disk to determine water clarity...clear for clear and bright for cloudy water..

Reaction ( put it in its face and they hit it) Imitation ( It looks enough and moves enough like normal prey they eat) Curiosity ( A lure that resembles nothing on their normal menu but they bite it anyway) finesse ( dead stick it sometimes and they will finally bite it when nothing else works)

wrong color, no fish in that spot, moves too fast, too big, you're there at the wrong time, too shallow, too deep

Plugs, spoons and spinners have been proven to catch fish long before soft plastics came about. Soft plastics have undoubtedly caught more fish since than any other method. Mainly because when conditions are tough they will still catch them. Some of the new lures like a chatter bait have earned their place with a fish catching reputation. Different lures have their time and place where and when they are the most productive. There's no short cuts in becoming a better angler unless you higher a guide or are constantly fishing with someone better than you and you're learning from them. This is shared knowledge and it's very valuable. You can learn by reading, watching videos and researching past tournament winning patterns for a given body of water. No one lure or technique is going to dominate all the time, as seasons and conditions change so do the fish. To me there's nothing like learning first hand and that's where hiring a good guide is money well spent. Even hiring a top notch pro for a day will allow you to understand their game first hand.

As a boy growing up I threw a lot of H&H spinners or Beetle Spins as they were affordable and would catch fish. Crank baits and top water plugs were more expensive and harder to come by and loose on the pocket book while fishing. Once I was introduced to the Crème worm and built my confidence in it I fished more with it than anything else. The worm's ability to be fished in, around and through heavy cover and catch fish made it a much more desirable way to catch bass. Crank baits and top waters would still catch fish and good numbers at times but I was reluctant to fish them where I thought I might loose one. Once I got my first bass rig and LCD display I started probing the deeper drops of local lakes with my Texas rig with success. For top waters it was a buzz bait, Jitter Bug or Hula Popper as I wasn't a Frog fisherman at the time. Then came the first soft plastic swim bait that I new of the Sassy Shad and I built my confidence in it's ability to catch fish as well. I would still throw spinners and had learned to slow roll them tickling the tops of submerged vegetation bumping along the bottom.

My progression of knowledge seemed to level off for a number of years as I became a family man and priorities changed. Once all my kids were grown and out of school I got heavily into bass fishing like I'd never been before. I started looking for a bargain on a bass boat and bought my first Skeeter then selling my fish n ski. I started researching online and reading every guide report I could find. It wasn't long before I began to see a the same thing over and over on what to fish with if I wanted to catch a double digit bass. That's when Hank Parker's advice on how to learn a new technique or build your confidence I a new to me lure sank in. Up to that point the only jig I'd ever fished with was a crappie jig. I went out and bought some Jigs after doing a little research and started fishing them exclusively on a local lake. It didn't take long to realize that the fish I were catch tended to be larger on the average than those on a seven inch worm. I soon started catching bags over twenty pounds fishing the jig. Yes it was frustrating to get hung up more often on the average but the size of fish was rewarding. Along about the same time I had started fishing with 10 inch or larger worms a lot and had noticed the difference in size of my catch as well. A little over a year after building my confidence in the jig I caught a 13.06 lb giant on the very same color all those old time guides had said to throw.

Then I had the opportunity to fish with one of the best deep water crank bait fisherman in the country for a day and boy was I taking notes. That one day changed the way I fished in a big way. I bought better cranking rods and reels then started spending even more time idling around on key lake structure in search of bass. I had always wanted to improve my deep water game and with the time I've put in since it has really improved. On most days when I am cranking, changing color isn't always important but then some times its the key to boating high numbers of fish.

Fish are like folks and not all wired exactly the same but when we back up and take in the bigger picture we see different productive patterns during any time of year. Bass forage largely on shad but pretty much everything else that swims and will fit down their throat too. Lures work because the bass are predators and opportunists. Every bass fisherman has their confidence lures and that's based on personal experience. Every lure that I fish, based on my history with it, determines where my confidence lies in it's ability to catch fish.

When I was a kid my confidence was in the baits I threw regularly and caught fish on. As I tried other lures and began to catch fish with them my confidence grew in them as well and so on and so forth on down through the years. It's not so much of why a lure catches a fish to me but how many and the bigger the better. Now days if I'm not catching fish three pounds or larger I'm not doing any good. Yeah catching little fish is better than catching nothing but they don't really get me excited.

You can go to a secluded maybe even private lake and catch bass on most anything if they aren't getting much or any pressure. You can then leave that place and go to a highly pressured lake, throw the same lure and never get bit. Bass are creatures of habit unless disturbed on a regular basis. I have proved this to myself on my favorite lake on several of my best holes. in 2018 I could pull in graph over one and slay them if they were there with a crank bait. This past year it proved tougher and I had to learn to use more stealth to be successful even going to a silent crank at times. Some days I had to feed them a flutter spoon or switch to a Carolina rig to get a bite. I try and let the fish tell me how the want it but they determine where every time.

Try things other fisherman aren't doing on highly pressured waters and it can bring great rewards. I started fishing away from shore because it seems that 90% are fishing the bank. That means that the deeper fish probably aren't getting any where near the same amount of pressure as those near shore. The shallow fish have seen a lot of lures during the course of the day on a Saturday on a highly pressured favorite area lake and that's a leading factor why fishing is always better on a Wednesday. I went to Lake Pinkston on a nice cool February day and started idling down through the stumps. Every boat I saw that day was beating the bank so to speak and had been the last several times id been there. Realizing this as I idled along a giant blows up the surface to my left in twenty foot of water. I had an A rig tied on and a jerk bait also so I immediately turn my boat in that direction, kill the motor and start trolling to within casting range. A couple cast later I'm really in a seven pounder on the A rig. I kept catching them for a while on the A rig reeling it slow enough to brush the tops of the timber out there. Then I started catching them on the jerk bait once the A rig bite slowed. I would throw the jerk bait past a stump that had a ball of moss wrapped around it that high winds had previously torn loose from its roots. I would sweep the jerk bait and let it pause beside the ball and a good one would crush it. The boats within sight weren't catching a thing and I was crushing good fish. I've done this on crank baits as well, along with spoons, jigs and a Carolina rig on numerous occasions. Sometimes they're really close and not catching a thing and get mad at you because you are. I've also been the other guy and wondered what I was doing wrong.

I guess where I'm going with all this, it's important to know what lures catch big bass if that's what you're chasing. That's pretty easy to learn through reading and a little research. To me its more about being in the right place at the right time and throwing something that they will eat on that given day under the current conditions. I've proved this to myself on many occasions by checking a spot several different times a day, then they are there and it's game on, even winning tournaments this way. I still need lots of improvement but at least you're never too old to learn. Tight lines!