My magical, homemade pikie minnow

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/05/2018 (3019 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

During the winters of the late 1940s, dreaming of spring fishing brought out a creative streak I didn’t know I had.

In those days a good fishing lure would set me back a couple of bucks, which I didn’t have — so I decided to make my own.

Whittling out various shaped plugs from an old broom stick, I sanded them smooth and gave them a good coat of paint in whatever colors I could scrounge. When dry, I attached a couple of sets of triple hooks and thumbed my nose at Lucky Strike, Heddon, Pflueger and other famous fishing lure manufacturers.

My most creative lure was an imitation of Creek Chub’s jointed pikie minnow. It was made in two parts attached together with screw eyes. When my lures were finished I was impressed — but would they catch fish?

One mid-May my brother and I tested my lures in Sturgeon Creek in the bend below the Woodhaven bridge (which no longer exists).

The spring floodwaters had subsided and the water was clearer though still a bit murky. My brother was using my pikie minnow, which had an enticing, crippled-minnow action, and I was using a red and white plug. Not much happened until late afternoon when my brother hollered “I’ve got one,” and heaved a nice two-pound pike up onto the bank.

We put the fish on a stringer and shortly after my brother not only had another, he lost a few that struck at the lure but weren’t hooked.

As my lure was being ignored I asked my brother for my lure back but he refused, saying “You said I could use it.”

I was enraged. I couldn’t even use my own lure. My brother caught another fish and I insisted that he give me back my lure and again he declined. We argued and struggled for possession of my lure until my brother finally gave it back. By this time the fish had stopped biting and it was time to go home.

On subsequent fishing trips that spring, I had as much or more success fishing the creek with my pikie minnow than I had in later years with expensive lures fishing remote lakes and rivers.
Somewhere back then I lost my lure and though I tried to replicate it, the new lures couldn’t match my original pikie minnow’s performance.

Ron Buffie is a community correspondent for Transcona. Email him at ronbuffie@shaw.ca