Hey, Keith here. Have you ever wondered why a brand-new lure seems to catch everything the first season it hits the shelves?

I've been chewing on that question for a while, and a conversation at a fishing camp finally pushed me to test it.

My theory is simple: bass bite harder on lures they've never seen before.

That's what I believe is behind the urchin craze, and it's why one of my most productive baits is a combo you'll almost never see on anyone else's line.

Today, I'll share the rig I put to the test, explain what the science says, and teach you to build your own.

A few weeks ago, some friends and I made a trip to Vermilion Bay here in south Louisiana. We were there to chase speckled trout, but after a long day on the water, the conversation around the table at camp turned to bass fishing.

One of the gentlemen at the table told me that his most productive bass lure, hands down, was a Zoom plastic lizard with a spinner blade attached.

He wasn't talking about a spinnerbait. He meant the kind of blade that snaps on like a safety pin, which most folks call an elbow spinner.

I've had similar success with a plastic worm on an elbow spinner, and I wondered why a combo that simple would produce so well for both of us. 

I kept landing on the same answer.

Bass never see it. Almost nobody throws a lizard or a worm with a blade clipped to the front, so the fish have no reason to be suspicious of it.

When I got home from the trip, I planned a morning on a lake near my house to put that theory to the test.

I tied on a purple Bass Pro Shops Squirmin' Lizard and clipped a gold redfish elbow spinner onto it, the same style of blade we throw for reds in the marsh.

I started in a cove where the wind was pushing straight into the bank, since that's where baitfish get stacked up and the bass set up to ambush them.

On the third cast, I felt a solid bump. I swung and missed the hookset clean.

I kept working the same area, and a few casts later the rod loaded up again.

I don't know if it was the same fish, but this time I connected with a solid two-pound bass and brought it up onto the bank.

From there, I walked the lake slowly and made my way around the shoreline, and by the end of about an hour, I had put seven bass on the bank.

What impressed me most wasn't the number. It was the way they hit it.

These weren't those light tap-tap-tap bites where you can't tell whether a bass is mouthing your bait or a bream is picking at the tail.

These fish were tracking that lizard down and inhaling it. They liked what they saw, and they weren't the least bit shy about it.

This isn't just a hunch from the camp table. Researchers have actually tested it.

At the University of Illinois, scientists stocked several ponds with bass that had never been caught and fished them over a series of outings.

When they switched to a new color of the same lure, they caught more fish at first, but the catch rate fell steadily as the bass learned to recognize the bait.

When they threw something radically different, a spinnerbait, the number of fish caught shot straight up. Then, within four fishing sessions, it dropped off again as the bass caught on.

Berkley ran a similar test in its lab tanks. The first time a lure was pulled past a group of bass, every one of them hit it.

With each pass, the strikes dropped off. Three months later, those same bass still wanted nothing to do with that lure.

But when a different type of lure went into the tank, they struck it just as hard as they had struck the first one at the start of the study.

For me, that says it all. Bass learn from being fooled, they remember it for months, and they can tell one lure from another.

The way to beat that is to keep showing them something new.

And for bank anglers who fish the same small ponds and neighborhood lakes over and over, that matters even more because those fish see the same handful of baits all year long.

You don't have to wait for the next urchin to hit the shelves. Some of the best lures you'll ever throw might be sitting in your tackle box right now in two separate pieces.