Like a lot of anglers, I have been collecting old lures for many years now and have never even once tied one on to see how it worked.

I was pondering this just this morning and came to a conclusion: why not put a modern lure head-to-head, mano a mano with a vintage bait? Since I'm not one to sit on my ass and over-think these things, here we are.

I have had an old South Bend Jointed Pike-Oreno sitting on my shelf next to my paint station for a couple years now, so this was the first bait to come to mind. I wanted to show how little basic bait design has changed over the last decade. Sure, there have been many innovations – don't get me wrong, so I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find a worth competitor that was similar in design and size. I started lookingaround and there sitting on another bench shoved in a pile of swimbaits between a couple broken Castaics and a few early Snack Size Trouts and behind my rod wrapping machine was a brand new MS Slammer. As happens so often at times like this, a light bulb went off in my head.

This was to be the Pike-Orenos adversary.

Here's the basic plan: I will take the South Bend Pike-Oreno from the mid 1950's and the MS Slammer from October of 2008 and repaint them with the same pattern to even out the competition a little.

I will then plan a couple trips – probably one on the Delta and one on Clear Lake. At this point a friend and I will fish the baits head-to-head and see what the outcome is in sort of a war of the ages.

So stay tuned  – my next post will be the tear down restoration and repaint of these two baits.