Twelve-plus years is a good run for a plastic plug, but it won’t quit and neither will I!
I’m not sure what year it was, but at some point in the ‘twenty-teens’ I remember there being a craze surrounding this new color from Beachmaster that was dubbed ‘gasoline’ by the plug loving public. It basically looked like when gasoline is dripped onto wet pavement and that subtle, iridescent rainbow appears.
I’ve written before that my feelings on color are fairly simplistic; to me, blurple and black are the same and gasoline would just be another version of black when packing a bag for the night. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t like the color and it certainly doesn’t mean I didn’t want some plugs painted that way!
At some point Steve Musso from Super Strike took these petroleum hues to a new level, elevating the look; painting a clear plastic darter translucent black and adding translucent/pearlescent splashes of purple, gold, green and blue, which captured the look of a parking lot fuel spill perfectly. Then one day, a box from Super Strike came in the mail and there was a gasoline darter in there! What a perfectly amazing surprise, and if my memory is correct, it arrived just ahead of my favorite darter bite!
It’s funny how certain plugs can boost confidence and seem to build mojo before they even get wet. That’s how this gasoline darter felt in my hand, almost radioactive and eager to do battle. From the first night throwing it, the gasoline darter just had the juice. New moon, full moon, it didn’t seem to matter. It’s hard to know if the subtle flourishes that differentiated it from black were the reason or if it had more to do with my confidence in its inherent mojo and my eagerness to throw it first and keep it on longer that made it an instant legend in my bag. I dreaded the day when it might find a lobster pot line or be stolen by a giant bass grubbing in a rock pile for freedom, but somehow that moment never came. And as much as my worry grew with its uncanny ability to draw strike after strike and win battles with bass of all sizes, I never stopped throwing it and it never stopped catching. I couldn’t even begin to guess how many bass fell for it, nor could even wager an estimate on how many times I changed the hooks. But year after year, it held a top spot in my rotation and continued to answer the call.
I remember one night, fishing side-by-side with my longtime fishing partner, Dave Daluz, when the fish were acting strange. There were a lot of those moments when we’d lose contact with the plug for a second or two, but the hits were few and far between. We were both using Super Strike Darters and we’d cycled through several colors. Even the gasoline was pulling mostly zeros. I have always associated these brief disconnections with a fish rushing the plug and then turning away at the last minute, creating a short burst of turbulence that pushes the plug forward. So naturally, when I’m experiencing this, I dig my heels in and try harder.
This was the night I learned to back-drift a darter. I snapped on my confidence gasoline darter and fired it into the night. I’d dig the plug down with a few fast cranks, swim it for a few cranks and then, just as the plug would pass the 12 o’clock positon, I’d stop and lower my rod tip at the speed of the tide, essentially drifting the plug backwards. And suddenly, I had unlocked the secret of the night. A stubborn bite transformed into a steady pick of 20- to 30-pound fish.
A few years later, I saw a post on Facebook from a collector looking to buy a gasoline Super Strike, they were willing to pay $350 for one! As a joke, I posted a pic of my decorated veteran darter saying something like, “I have one, but the fish seem to like it too much.” Only a few minutes passed before I received a private message offering $80 for my war-torn gasoline Super Strike, but our relationship was worth more to me than 80 bucks!
We’ve been through many amazing bites, we’ve seen a lot of nice fish, more than a few sunrises and we’ve traveled together to so many awesome places that I wouldn’t even take my wife! The only thing that darter hasn’t done yet is land a fish over 40 pounds. Maybe this year will be its year.
