There’s a feeling you get when you’re portaging through a long stretch of woods with a canoe on your shoulders, a pack on your back, and a canoe paddle in each hand.

For me, that feeling is not one of peace. It’s hysteria.

It’s hysteria because what should be a pleasant and easy hike through the woods is instead plagued by burning shoulders, an army of mosquitos you can’t swat away, and a minefield of slippery rocks doing their best to put you on the ground.

In these fragile moments, it’s not uncommon for a desperate voice in your head to cry out: “WHY?!”

Why willingly put yourself in such a miserable situation in the first place?

Why deal with the heat, the mud, the sore shoulders, the canoe that’s too heavy, the sweat in your eyes, the bugs in your eyes, the sun in your eyes?

Why deal with the food pack, the tent, the fishing poles, the maps, the tackle, the first aid kit, the sleeping bag, the paddles, the net, the extra pair of socks?

Why torture yourself with such madness?

And then, just at the moment when all hope is lost and you tell your companions, “I won’t go on, leave me here, this trail is my home now…”

Right at that exact moment, the thick trees in front of you begin to break open.

And in that opening, at the end of the trail, lies a body of water, waiting to be explored.

And all previous feelings are suddenly replaced with an immense sense of accomplishment and excitement for what’s ahead.

I, for one, wouldn’t have it any other way.

— Rob Wormley, Publisher

The story of the world's most famous fishing lure starts the way most great fishing stories do: with a man alone on the water, paying close attention.

It was sometime in the 1930s, and Lauri Rapala was rowing slowly across Finland's Lake Paijanne, checking his nets, watching the water beneath his boat. He was a poor man, piecing together a living as a lumberjack in the winters and a commercial fisherman in the summers. Every fish he caught mattered.

As he watched the schools of minnows moving beneath him, he noticed something that most people would have rowed right past. The big predatory fish weren't attacking the school at random. They were picking out specific fish. The ones swimming slightly off from the rest. The wounded ones, with that barely-perceptible wobble that telegraphed vulnerability to everything in the water around them.

He went home and started carving.

Using a shoemaker's knife and sandpaper, he shaped his first lure from cork. Tinfoil stripped from chocolate bar wrappers became the outer surface. Melted photographic negatives became the protective coating. When he dropped it in the water, it swam with that same wounded wobble he'd spent years watching. Legend has it Rapala was pulling 600 pounds of fish out of the lake on some days with that lure.

For the next two decades, the lure stayed mostly in Finland.

By the late 1950s, Rapala lures had been quietly trickling into North America through Finnish immigrants and athletes who picked them up at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.

Rumors had been building among American anglers about a Finnish plug that did things no other lure could do.

Ron Weber had heard the rumors. He was a Minneapolis-based fishing tackle sales representative and an avid angler. In the summer of 1959, on a frustrating Canadian fishing trip where nothing seemed to be biting, his partner pulled out an unfamiliar lure and tied it on. Suddenly, where there had been no fish, there were fish everywhere.

Weber tracked down a source for the lures in Duluth, wrote a letter to Lauri Rapala in Finland asking for 500, and waited. Rapala had to have the letter translated before he could even read it.

In early 1960, the order arrived. Weber and his friend Ray Ostrom began selling out of the back room of Ostrom's south Minneapolis sporting goods store, grinding out sales one outdoor writer and one fishing film at a time.

Then, in 1962, everything changed.

A reporter from Life magazine had come to the Twin Cities to cover the newly formed Minnesota Vikings. He ended up at a dinner party hosted by the outdoor editor of the Minneapolis Tribune, where he met Ray Ostrom. Ostrom had a couple of lures in his pocket and sparked the reporter's interest in Lauri Rapala's story. The reporter wanted to write about it.

The resulting story, "A Lure Fish Can't Pass Up," hit newsstands in 1962. The issue happened to also carry coverage of the death of Marilyn Monroe, making it the best-selling issue in Life magazine's history.

Orders poured into Normark faster than Weber and Ostrom could fill them. Lauri Rapala, the poor Finnish fisherman who started it all, died in 1974.

The lure he carved from cork in the 1930s is still in production today, in more than 137 countries, still built around the same wounded wobble he watched from his rowboat on Lake Paijanne.

A few things worth knowing before you head out this week.

Every week we pull back the pages and feature the legends whose stories, skills, and discoveries still echo in the field and on the water today.

In 1980, Ray Easley of Fullerton, California, had a day that most fishermen only dream about.

He was giving an impromptu fishing lesson to two friends, teaching them how to fish using a live crawdad as bait.

As he pitched his line to the right side of a buoy, the same buoy his friends had been casting toward, his bait was taken.

Ray acted with patience. He didn’t try to set the hook as soon as he felt the prick of tension on his line. He waited. And after he was certain the fish had fully consumed the live crawdad at the end of his line, he made his move.

A feature from the June 1980 issue of Outdoor Life noted that Easley was using 8-pound-test Stren line, a Fenwick Lunker Stik rod, and a Garcia 5500C baitcasting reel.

When the fight was over, Easley would cement his place in fishing history forever, netting a monster bass that weighed 21 pounds, 3 ounces and measured 27 5/8-inch length, 25 ¾-inch girth, and 26 ¼-inch from the tip of the nose to the fork of the tail.

Ahead of every issue we send, we dig through forums, threads, and comment sections so you don't have to, and surface one piece of gear hunters and anglers are actually standing behind.

This week we went looking for the truth about the Whopper Plopper on r/bassfishing. A thread called "Whopper Plopper, superior lure or good marketing?" gave us everything we needed.

The River2Sea Whopper Plopper is a prop bait, meaning it has a spinning tail that churns the surface and creates a sound that bass have a hard time leaving alone. It's been around long enough to have a real track record, and the anglers who throw it regularly tend to be pretty vocal about it.

Here's what anglers who’ve used it had to say:

“The majority of bass I’ve caught have been on a whopper. I like the noisy ones in the fall as the noise brings out those lazy ones.”

“Pike go crazy for them. And I've called smallmouth up from deep water with them. Like anything, the fish have to be keyed up for them.”

“When conditions are right they are a cheat code for bass fishing. Sunrise/dusk/cloudy conditions. It's not a marketing ploy.”

“They do work really well, and require very little technique to be effective. I think that that is the real draw; they are a great way for beginners to start catching fish right away, cementing their interest.”

The Whopper Plopper comes in two sizes worth knowing about. The 110 is the one most people start with. Bigger profile, more surface disturbance, good for largemouth, pike, and open water. The 75 is worth having for smaller fish, clearer water, or when the 110 is getting looks but no takers.

Both run around $12 to $15 and can be purchased from most online tackle retailers.

Getting them hooked

Getting a kid interested in fishing is one thing. Keeping them interested is another. A few tips this week on making those first trips stick:

Skip the lecture.
The fastest way to lose a kid's interest is to turn every cast into a teaching moment. Show them once, then hand it over. Let them figure some of it out on their own. The mistakes are part of it, and honestly the discoveries they make themselves are the ones they'll remember longest.

You'll have plenty of time to teach them the right way. First, let them fall in love with it.

Pick the right water.
A crowded public dock with no fish is a hard first experience for anyone, let alone a kid who's never held a rod before. A small pond, a quiet lake, somewhere with reliable action and enough room to move around without tangling lines makes everything easier. You don't need the best spot. You need the right spot for a beginner. Scout it ahead of time if you can.

The extra fifteen minutes of planning is worth it when they're reeling in their third fish before noon.

Put your phone away.
This one is for you, not them. If you're half-present, they notice. Kids are perceptive about that kind of thing in a way that will catch you off guard. The trips that stick are the ones where the person who brought them was actually there, not checking messages between casts. The fish can wait. So can your inbox.

Give them the whole morning and see what happens.

If you’re new to fishing or looking to get into it, this short video can help you build the perfect starter tackle box for a day on the water.

It'll set you up with a basic but comprehensive kit that covers all the bases without breaking the bank or overwhelming you before you've even gotten to the water.

Northern pike. Water wolves. Snakes. Slough sharks. Whatever you call them, they are one of the most aggressive predators in freshwater. They're built for ambush, wired to eat, and in mid-July they're exactly where you'd expect them to be if you know what to look for. For anglers who haven't spent much time chasing pike, this is one of the best months to start.

Where to find them.
Pike are creatures of cover and cool water. In summer they pull back from the shallows they dominated in spring and settle into weed edges, cabbage beds, and the mouths of cooler tributaries. Look for the transition zones where thick vegetation meets open water. Early morning and late evening they'll push shallower. Midday, go deeper and slower along the weed line. In natural lakes, the north shores tend to stay cooler and hold fish longer into the summer heat.

What they want.
Pike eat things that look alive and move like they're trying to get away. Large profile lures trigger their instinct to kill before thinking. Spoons, large swimbaits, inline spinners, and topwater lures all produce well in summer. The Whopper Plopper 110 is a legitimate pike bait, the churning tail and surface commotion is exactly the kind of disturbance that pulls a big pike out of the weeds. Wire leaders are non-negotiable. Pike teeth will cut through monofilament and fluorocarbon before you know what happened.

One thing worth knowing.
Pike have a narrow strike window in warm water. When surface temps push above 75 degrees, they get sluggish and selective. The best summer pike fishing happens early, before the sun hits the water, and in lakes with enough depth and vegetation to keep water temperatures in a fishable range. Find the cool water and you'll find the fish.

That's it for this week. Get out there when you can. We'll see you next time.

— OUTFIT