Stock Up on These Lures in 2025
Every season, a few lures rise to the top as must-have baits. Sometimes, the demand is so great that tackle shops can’t keep up, leaving anglers with the nagging feeling that they should have shopped smarter before the season started. To help, we’re anticipating a few of the best fishing lures in 2025—a collection of plugs, jigs, and plastics you won’t want to be without when the fishing season ramps up.
(Note: On The Water is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.)
Tuna Poppers
The last few seasons have seen lots of surface-crashing tuna, one of the ultimate thrills in our Northeast fishery. When making an offshore run this season, make sure to have a few tuna poppers. When smaller yellowfin and bluefin are eating small bait, a small but sturdy popper like the 5-inch Rapala Magnum Xplode will generate big bites.
When the tuna and the baits they’re eating are bigger, a larger popper like the 6 2/3-inch Shimano Bomb Dip will set off surface explosions.
Soft Stickbaits
In 2024, surfcasters rediscovered the effectiveness of a straight-tailed, soft-plastic stickbait, proving the lure du jour, like fashion, is often cyclical. Expecting this trend to continue, if you fish the surf, stock up on thicker, soft-plastic stickbaits like the Slug-Go and Super Snax this winter.
For boat fishermen, a combination of rising eel prices and circle-hook regulations sent them seeking alternatives to live bait like the Gravity Tackle GT Eel and JoeBaggs Block Island Eel. Every year, more anglers are discovering they can catch plenty of big bass on these baits without getting their hands slimy.
Mullet Matcher
A strong return of the mullet run from New Jersey all the way to Cape Cod had fishermen searching for a close match to these cigar-sized baitfish in 2024. They found it with the Z-Man Mulletron, a mirror image of a live mullet fitted with a thumping tail that fishes well on slow and high-speed retrieves. Since we expect the trend of improving mullet runs to continue, this is a necessity for 2025.
Bucktail Jigs
The bucktail jig has been a must-have lure since its invention many decades ago, but a new wrinkle in 2025 has fishermen looking for alternatives to their long-held favorites. A shortage of quality deer tails forced a switchover to synthetic materials for the iconic Andrus Jetty Caster in late 2023. Another local favorite, the Tinman Tackle Bullet Head Bucktail, briefly paused offering bucktails over 1 ounce because the tails needed to tie the dense, bushy jigs that make the lures a favorite among surfcasters have also been difficult to obtain. However, those jigs are once again available up to 2 ounces. Always available is the Spro Power Bucktail, which was designed with a forward line tie for a cast-and-retrieve presentation and extra-dense bucktail hair for a slower sink rate.
Fast-Sinking Paddletails
The kicking, rollicking action of a soft-plastic paddletail makes it a tough bait for stripers to pass up. They’ve been go-to baits in the Cape Cod Canal since the introduction of the pre-rigged Swim Shad. In recent years, Canal anglers have favored deeper-bodied mackerel imitations, like the 3.5- and 5.5-ounce Fish Lab Mack Attack Soft Swimbait, over slender sand-eel swimbaits that were popular a few years ago. A bounce-back in Canal bluefish last season led some anglers to fish more durable plastic paddletails, such as the Z-Man Diezel Minnow paired with a 3-ounce or heavier jighead like the Z-Man Diezel Eye.
Boat fishermen have also favored fast-sinking paddletails when running and gunning after schools of stripers in open water, locating suspended schools with side-scanning sonar and getting baits in front of the fish before they move on. Favorites for this approach are the 2- and 3-ounce Z-Man Diezel Eye jighead and Diezel Minnow combo as well as the 2- and 3-ounce Al Gags Skirted Whip It Fish.
Fast-Moving Minnows
While the 2024 albie run left a bit to be desired in the Northeast, the bonito run was at an all-time high. They were being caught from surf and boat beginning in June, with the last few fish caught as late as mid-November. That gave fishermen a chance to refine their techniques, and one of the top baits for bonito was a minnow plug that held its action through moderate to high-speed retrieves, like the Rapala X-Rap and Berkley Juke Saltwater. If the bonito return in similar numbers, expect to see anglers reaching for minnow plugs over epoxy jigs, at least until the albies show up.
Forward-Facing-Friendly Lures
Bass fishermen couldn’t escape discussion over the use of forward-facing sonar last season. No matter how you feel about it on the professional tournament trails, there’s no denying its effectiveness. Lure companies, recognizing the trend, designed lures optimized for use with this groundbreaking technology. Most of them are soft plastics like the Berkley PowerBait Power Switch and Rapala Crush City Freeloader, but there are some hard baits like the northern-style glidebait Berkley Finisher, as well as a category-defying bait like the Jackall Drift Fry, a lipped soft plastic capable of being rigged a variety of ways.
Related Content
Lures for Fishing the Mullet Run
10 Lures for the Cape Cod Canal
7 Striper Lures for Sand Beaches
Three Lures for Stripers on Bunker Schools
Source: https://onthewater.com/stock-up-on-these-lures-in-2025
$post[‘post_content’] .= ‘Source‘;
