Fishing the Heddon Tadpolly Spook for Game-Fish Success

I'll share with you information on this lure and my personal review of this all-time classic fishing lure. You will see why you need to add this to your tackle box.

Best of all we have them for sale here when they haven't been made in a very long time. Shock your buddies, win your tournament, and do it all "old school" with the classic Heddon Tadpolly Spook.

Running a vintage bait shop you get a real good idea what lures actually produce the best over the last 100 years. I can tell you hands down I get more calls from fishermen looking for a Heddon Tadpolly Spook to fish than any other bait. Why? First is they produce fish. Second, they aren't as easy to find as some other high producing baits like say a Helin Flatfish (another all-time great). I'll be honest up until last year I had never personally fished a Heddon Tadpolly Spook. Sure I had a bunch in my collection and I sold hundreds if not thousands of them in my online store. Well after so many recommendations from customers, last year I decided to to add a few marked up Heddon Tadpolly's to my personal tackle box and give them a shot during the fishing season. I've done very well on other vintage baits and I thought, why not.

My Results:

Well, what were the results? The Heddon Tadpolly Spook was easily my number one lure of the year for me. It wasn't even close. It outfished every other lure in my boat all season. We caught northern pike, muskies, walleyes, largemouth bass and a just a ton of smallmouth bass on them. Heck we even caught a few crappies and perch and a lone gigantic bluegill.

We fished a variety of colors and all produced. My favorite though and the one and I kept going back to was one in Bull Frog color. Not sure why it was the best color as where we primarily fish, this isn't normally a very good color pattern for us. For whatever reason, this color was hot.

I fished it pretty straight forward. A basic cast and retrieve on medium spinning gear. Nothing too fancy. There was some slight stop and start to vary the retrieve a little but overall a pretty basic cast and retrieve. Something you could even give to a kid or someone new to fishing. The side to side wiggle action of the lure took care of the rest. I was very happy and impressed with just how easy and productive the Heddon Tadpolly was to fish.

Heddon Tadpolly in mouth of Northern Pike

The Lure:

Introduced in the 1952 catalog Heddon described the lure as follows: "You'll marvel at the action of this new Heddon creation. It is a floating-diving lure, so well balanced that the slightest motion of the rod tip or the barest perceptible current will start it dancing. A normal speed retreive will cause it to run just below the surface, and at a fast retrieve it will go to a depth of 5 or 6 feet. Field tests have proven it a killer for bass, muskellunge, pike, walleye and large trout."

The Heddon Tadpolly would be made off and on (mostly on) until 1983. After PRADCO acquired Heddon it would be made for awhile but hasn't been by PRADCO now for quite sometime.

The Heddon Tadpolly was made in a variety of sizes, you can learn about them on our Tadpolly Lure Lore page. They also made them in hundreds of colors. In fact we have an entire Heddon Tadpolly color chart page devoted to the colors of this lure.

Heddon Tadpolly in Perch Color

Where to Buy:

Well, these haven't been made in long time so your local tackle shop likely won't have one of these Heddon Tadpolly's in stock.  Don't worry though, we have you covered.  We are constantly scouring our sources looking for used and old stock Heddon Tadpolly lures to offer to fishermen and collectors here on My Bait Shop.  While we sell a ton of these we are always adding new lures that we find.  You can see our current selection of Heddon Tadpolly lures for sale here.  Grab some for your collection or better yet, your tackle box and fish them this year.  Let us know what you catch and send us your photos to share on our Fishing Photo Board.  We'd love to see how you did.  Good luck fishing!