A Few Exceptionally Noisy Ones: (A) The Muskie Mania Tackle “Doc” may be the loudest surface lure in existence. (B) The Creek Chub Knuckle Head has interior BBs that rattle and a head that, well, knuckles and knockles around besides. (C) The Pop-A-Long from Ambush Lures “click-clacks” head-against-body and also has interior BBs. (D) A curious Carolina rig, the Carolina “Mag Rig,” from Lunker Lure Products, consists of a pair of magnets that click together on a rod-tip pull, then click back as the magnets repel. (E) The Prowler Lures “Glass Tube Rattle” features a large steel ball in a vacuum-sealed tube that slips into tube lures. (F) The Precision Tackle “Cajun Thunder” float calls fish with a combination of brass and plastic beads that “rock rattle clack and roll” when the float’s popped. (G) The dean of rattling baits, the original Bill Lewis Rat-L-Trap.

George L. Herter, one of the earliest entrepreneurial mail-order sales masters of outdoor gear, advertised a “fish call” in his catalog in the 1950s. The call was, as I remember it, basically a can with BBs in it, attached to a string that allowed lowering the can into the depths. The call was activated by shaking the can once it was in position below.

In the 1950s and into the early 1960s, I often accompanied my parents or more often my grandparents, to the Iowa Great Lakes. We were shore anglers, and one of our favorite spots was a public dock on the East Okoboji side of the bridged narrows connecting that lake to West Okoboji. A man who frequented the dock over the course of a couple years when we fished there had a Herter’s fish call. I was convinced that the call worked. When fishing for perch and sheepshead would slow, the man would yank on the string, shaking the can below, and sure enough, fish would bite again. At least that’s the way I remembered it for a time.

Later, growing older, as I began to read the astute fishing magazines of the day, I began to doubt that what I had believed had really worked. Fishing was a calculated affair, men like Buck Perry and Bill Binkleman were writing, quite correctly. There was no “magic” involved. No easy way to “call fish” to you. You went to the fish by calculating where they held relative to structure. Case closed. I became a calculating angler.

I remember too, though, the first time some years later that I held a Bill Lewis Rat-L-Trap and shook it. “Fish call,” I thought to myself. Here was a sound not so dissimilar to George Herter’s can full of BBs, only on a much more subtle scale. Needless to say, the Rat-L-Trap works—works best, too, when you bring it in a calculated way to the fish, just as Perry suggested.

Today, anglers continue to argue the merits of using certain sounds to attract fish. We can’t settle the discussion here, but we can tempt you with a parting shot of a few of the noisiest fishing lures and devices of this age.