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Aaron Martens Lures – The Scrounger

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

By Terry Battisti for the PAA

Aaron Martens has long been known as a lure tinkerer. In fact, of all the professional anglers on tour, most will admit he comes up with more ways to tweak a lure than any of them.

One of the best discoveries by Martens, though, was in his early tournament days while living in southern California. At the time, there was a small lure company that made a jighead with a unique plastic bill on it called a Scrounger head. The bait was manufactured for saltwater species – complete with a cadmium plated hook. The head was different from other heads in that the plastic bill deflected water and made the trailer swim as the lure was retrieved. Martens saw this and instantly knew it would have applications in the freshwater.

In 2006, due to his need for the unique jighead, Martens decided to start a lure manufacturing company with two close friends. The Scrounger was reborn.

In typical Martens fashion, though, he tinkered with the original design. He made three different sized bills for different actions and added a longer shank hook, replacing the original short shank cadmium plated hook.

Recently I had the opportunity to talk with him about the head and his reason for reintroducing it to the market. Here’s what he had to say.

The 2005 Classic:

“The real reason I brought the bait back had to do with the Pittsburgh Classic,” Martens said. “I lost 9 keepers in the last two days on a Rocket Shad and a small stickbait. For fish like those, you want something really small like a 1/8-ounce Scrounger. I knew that bait would have worked wonders but I didn’t have any.

“Right after that event I was talking to one of my best friends and we decided to bring it back,” he said. “No one had actually made one that catered to bass fishing so I came up with the  different sized bills and the better hook. Now you can fine-tune

Applications:

Although the bait was originally designed to be used on a straight retrieve, Martens has found it’s a lot more versatile than that.

“It’s probably one of the best baits for schooling fish ever designed but it has so many more applications,” he said. “In my opinion, one of the best times to use them is when the fish are in a summer pattern and holding on breaks in the 15- to 20 foot range and you can’t get at them with a crank. By using a 3/4-ounce Scrounger and a Fluke, you can get the bait into the strike zone and maintain its depth for a long time. It’s absolutely deadly in those circumstances.

“Another application I use it for is instead of a football head,” he added. “I just drag it on the bottom and the bill gives the bait an action the fish haven’t seen before.”

Bill Size:

“The original bill that came with the bait was what we offer now as the short bill,” Martens said. “The action of this bill is more of a rolling action and it runs shallower than the long bill.

“The long bill gives the bait more of a swimming action and is my favorite bill size because of its action and the fact you can work it really slow and still maintain that action,” he said. “That’s one thing people don’t realize about this bait – how slow you can work it.”

Successes:

“I’ve caught fish everywhere on the bait and it even played a roll for me at the Mississippi River Elite Series event recently,” Martens said. “The fish were chasing these small baitfish up in 6 inches of water and the 1/8- and 3/16-ounce Scrounger heads worked well. I caught around 25 fish a day on the bait rigged with a 3-inch Fluke.

“The 3/4-ounce bait worked well for me at Kentucky Lake,” he added. “I caught a lot of my fish on that bait rigged with a spinnerbait skirt. The water funnels over the bill and gives the skirt a cool action.

“We’ve been selling quite a few of the heads and when people buy them, they always buy more. It’s just an amazingly effective lure.”

With the summer schooling pattern getting in full swing, it’s probably a good choice to try a few of these heads on your next trip to the lake.

For more information on the Scrounger head, go to www.aaronmartenslures.com .