Hey, that's pretty funny! I would like to believe that I was among the first to refer to such a lure as the Picton Special, and that the term has caught on.
Superdad is right, back in the day [early to mid-90's] you would see a dozen or more boats anchored stern to bow along the SE shoreline of outer Picton Bay, anchored along the "weedline" opposite the pumphouse on the narrows. The fish would come in around sunset, and people would cast these lures - and only these lures! - towards the weeds. A school would swim by, and you'd see everyone catching big fish.
My how times have changed.
You could go there now and do the same pattern, and not catch a single fish. A couple years later we found that trolling produced a lot more fish than casting, and we quietly snuck around knocking off fish, mostly between the red and green stakes about a half-mile beyond the pumphouse. About the only lure anyone [including us] ever used was the Picton Special. They used to make a non-jointed model as well, which was possibly even better, but I haven't seen any in years. If anyone has one, I'd love to get my hands on it.
My dad had a silver G-finish Fastrac that caught so many fish, the finish was completely ripped off, and the lure was plain white plastic, and it worked great, and still works from time to time! We used to take off the crappy hooks, and replace them with Excalibur hooks.
A year or two later, we dared to try something else, mostly the Clown Husky Jerk in the 11 or 13 cm size, thanks to Dan Elliot's postings on this board.
It wasn't until around 1999 that we started fishing in the daytime at all. Prior to that, you almost couldn't catch fish in the daytime. Now, it's the opposite - nighttime patterns that killed the fish ten or twelve years ago refuse to work at all!
Does the Picton Special still work today? Absolutely not. Don't even think of trying it, especially off your downrigger in the day, or flatlined off your planer board around sunset when the fish come up more shallow. Also don't bother trolling it slowly at night on Fireline at about 0.6 mph, for that no longer works, either.
_________________ Self-unemployed and available for fishin' mid-week most days.
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