Spoons combine sound and vision to attract pike.

As they wobble, spoons displace water. Pike are very sensitive to vibrations caused by moving things in the water through lateral line reception. Research among laboratory muskies indicates that lateral line reception is particularly important in locating things far away, things like a struggling minnow or a trolling motor. Wobbling spoons create what I can best describe as “thumps” as they move through the water. Doing so, they alert pike from a distance that something is moving. Obviously, narrow spoons create less, but more rapid, thump than wider spoons.

Pike also see spoons. An overlooked element of the visual appeal of spoons, I believe, is reflection off the lake or river surface. Particularly on a calm day when the surface, from below, functions as a mirror, the light captured by the concave surface is reflected from the spoon to the surface and then back into the water. As the spoon wobbles, the light reflected from the surface comes and goes. From the perspective of a pike, even one many feet away, the reflected light must appear as a strobe