Types of Saltwater Fishing Lures: A Complete Guide

Walk into any tackle shop on the NC coast and you'll see hundreds of lures hanging on pegs. Most anglers grab what looks familiar and leave half the inventory a mystery. That's fine if you're after one or two species - but if you want to go from catching fish to consistently slaying them across different conditions, you need to understand the full toolkit. Trolling lures. Spoons. Jigs. Plugs. Soft plastics. Daisy chains. Bucktails. Each one does something different. Each one earns its keep in specific situations.

This guide breaks down every major saltwater lure category - what it is, how it works, when to throw it, and what specs actually matter. From a No. 1 Clarkspoon behind a trolling sinker at 5 knots to a 1oz diamond jig bouncing off a Hatteras pier piling - there's a lure for every situation. Here's the full breakdown.

Quick Reference: Saltwater Lure Types

Before we go deep on each category, here's the summary table. Bookmark this.

Lure Type	Best Species	Typical Size/Weight	Action/Retrieve	Depth Range
Skirted Trolling Lures	Billfish, tuna, mahi, wahoo	4-14 inches, 1-6oz head	6-9 knots, swimming action	Surface to 20 ft
Cedar Plugs	Tuna, wahoo, mahi	4-8 inches, 1-3oz	7-10 knots, darting	Surface to 10 ft
Trolling Spoons	King/Spanish mackerel, blues, stripers	No. 0 to No. 3	4-7 knots, fluttering	5-60 ft with sinker
Diamond Jigs	Mackerel, tuna, bluefish, stripers	1-8oz	Vertical jigging, casting	20-300 ft
Bucktail/Casting Jigs	Flounder, stripers, fluke, cobia	0.5-4oz	Hop, swim, drag bottom	Bottom to midwater
Diving Plugs	Stripers, redfish, snook, bluefish	3-6 inches, 0.5-1.5oz	Casting/trolling, wobbling	1-15 ft
Topwater Plugs	Stripers, redfish, bluefish, mahi	3-6 inches, 0.5-1.5oz	Walk the dog, popping	Surface only
Soft Plastics	Redfish, flounder, trout, snook	3-6 inch body, 1/4-3/4oz head	Swim, hop, drag	Shallow to 20 ft
Daisy Chains/Teasers	Billfish, tuna (as attractor)	4-8 inch squids on 4-6 ft chain	6-9 knots behind boat	Surface
High-Speed Trolling Lures	Wahoo, tuna	5-8 inches, 2-6oz	12-18 knots, bullet dart	Surface to 5 ft

Trolling Lures: Skirted Lures, Sea Witches, and Head Styles

Skirted trolling lures are the backbone of any offshore spread. A hard plastic or resin head trails a skirt of silicone or mylar strands that undulate and flash in the water behind a moving boat. Trolled at 6-9 knots, they look like a squid or small baitfish getting away. Billfish, tuna, mahi, and wahoo all eat them.

Head shape drives how the lure swims. Flat-head lures run with a predictable swimming action, making them reliable for mahi and tuna spreads. The Flat Head 8 Trolling Lure is built for exactly this - steady action at typical offshore trolling speeds. Bullet heads and jet heads are made for speed. The Wahoo Bullet Jet Trolling Lure is designed to be trolled at 12-18 knots - the speed range wahoo actually prefer when they're hot. Run it on a wire leader, flat from the rigger, and let the speed do the work.

Sea witches are a different animal - a bucktail-style head with soft fiber skirts, designed to run ahead of a natural bait or rigged ballyhoo. The Epic Sea Witches cover a range of sizes and colors for different conditions. Pink and white for blue water, black and purple for overcast days, natural for picky fish. Run sea witches on a 40-80lb fluorocarbon leader behind an outrigger.

For a complete beginner setup or as a ready-to-fish spread, the Mahi Tuna Trolling Lure Six Pack (see the product card above) puts six matched lures in your hand at once. If you're new to building an offshore spread, our trolling lures for beginners guide walks through how to set positions and run depths.

Cedar Plugs: Simple, Proven, Effective

If there's one lure that's been catching offshore fish for longer than almost anything else in your tackle box, it's the cedar plug. A tapered wooden cylinder with a hook embedded in the tail. No fancy action, no fancy skirt. Just a dense, compact bait that trolls straight and true.

The Rigged Cedar Plug from Sea Striker comes ready to fish, which is most of what you need to know. Run it on a 40-80lb mono or fluorocarbon leader at 7-9 knots. Cedar plugs work best on the short rigger or in the prop wash where they can skip and dart. Yellowfin tuna eat them. Bluefin eat them. Blackfin eat them. They also pull mahi when the dolphin are thick. If you're only going to have one trolling lure in the spread, a rigged cedar plug should be it.

Sizes run from about 4 inches (3/4oz) up to 8 inches (2.5oz). Smaller for schoolie tuna and mahi, bigger for yellowfin and wahoo. Chrome finish is the standard, but natural wood finish and painted versions work when the fish get picky.

Trolling and Casting Spoons

Spoons are one of the oldest, most reliable lure designs in saltwater fishing - and the reason is simple. That curved, wobbling metal flashes like a fleeing baitfish and puts vibration in the water that triggers strikes. Spoons split into two main categories: trolling spoons and casting spoons.

Trolling Spoons

Trolling spoons are thin, lightweight, and built to run behind the boat. The gold standard on the NC coast is the Clarkspoon Trolling Spoon. It comes in sizes No. 0 through No. 3 - and the size you pick depends on what you're after. A No. 1 Clarkspoon behind a 2oz trolling sinker at 5 knots is the classic Spanish mackerel rig from Beaufort to Hatteras. Run a No. 2 or No. 3 for king mackerel. Step up to larger offerings when bluefish are the target and you want a lure that survives their teeth long enough to catch a few more fish.

Trolling spoons need weight to swim properly because they have almost no inherent sink rate. Run a ball-bearing trolling sinker 18-24 inches ahead of the spoon - 1oz for the surface, 2-3oz to get down 10-20 feet. Troll at 4-7 knots and keep the drag light enough that the fish doesn't tear the spoon free on the strike.

Casting Spoons

Casting spoons are heavier and more compact, designed to fly off the rod and cover water. The LB Huntington Drone Spoon is a classic surf and jetty spoon - heavy enough to cast from the beach into a Spanish mackerel blitz, and the flutter on the fall is what gets the hit half the time. Cast past the school, let it sink 3-5 seconds, then retrieve fast and erratic. Bluefish, Spanish mackerel, and false albacore all fall for it.

Color selection on spoons is simpler than most anglers make it. Chrome is your baseline - it works everywhere, all conditions. Gold is the goto on overcast days or in stained water. After that, the color matters less than the speed and size of presentation.

Jigs: Diamond Jigs, Bucktails, and Casting Jigs

Jigs are the most versatile lure category in saltwater fishing. At their core, a jig is a weighted hook dressed with hair, feathers, plastic, or bare metal. The variety within that definition is enormous.

Diamond Jigs

Diamond jigs are metal, four-sided (hence the name), and built for vertical jigging or long-distance casting. The Ahi Assault Diamond Jigs cover the weight range you'll actually need - from 1oz for pier and surf fishing up to 6-8oz for deepwater vertical jigging. A 1oz diamond jig cast from the Morehead City or Hatteras pier catches Spanish mackerel, bluefish, and bonito all summer. The same jig worked vertically under a chum slick produces kings. At 3-4oz, diamond jigs reach bottom in 60-80 feet of water when jigged vertically - the weight and depth depend on current. When the current is ripping, you need more weight to stay vertical. When it's slack, 2-3oz gets the job done in 60 feet.

Retrieve style matters. For Spanish mackerel and bluefish, a fast straight retrieve works. For stripers and tuna, an erratic jig-drop-jig-drop cadence triggers the predatory response better. Let the jig flutter on the drop - that's when a lot of fish commit.

Bucktail Jigs

Bucktail jigs use deer hair tied around the hook to create a pulsing, lifelike action that nothing else quite replicates. They are the lure for flounder, fluke, and stripers along structure. The Spro Prime Bucktail Jig in 1-3oz is exactly what you want for dragging along the bottom around inlets, jetties, and channel edges on the NC coast. White is the standard color - it matches most baitfish and crab colorations. Yellow is a close second.

Work a bucktail by casting upcurrent of structure and letting it sink to the bottom as it drifts back toward you. Lift the rod tip, let it drop, repeat. Flounder lie tight to structure waiting for bait to pass overhead - the hop and pause gives them time to commit. Tip the hook with a strip of cut mullet or a DOA Shrimp tail and you'll outfish bare bucktails most days.

Casting Jigs

Casting jigs like the Epic Casting Jig are designed for offshore use - long, streamlined profiles that slide through the water at speed. Cast them into a breaking school of tuna or mahi, let them sink, and retrieve at a speed that keeps the lure darting. These are purpose-built for situations where fish are visible on the surface and you need to get in the zone fast. The Easy Wahoo Lure operates in the same zone - a high-speed casting and trolling option built specifically for wahoo, which require speed and a lure profile that can keep up with a 50+ mph fish.

Plugs: Diving and Topwater

Plugs are hard-bodied lures - plastic or wood - designed to look and move like a baitfish. Two main categories matter for saltwater: diving plugs and topwater plugs.

Diving Plugs

Diving plugs have a lip or bill that makes them dive when retrieved or trolled. The depth they reach depends on the size of the bill and retrieve speed. The Rapala X-Rap 10 is a proven saltwater casting plug - 4 inches, around 7/8oz, and it dives 4-6 feet on a cast with 12-15lb braid. It's an outstanding lure for stripers, snook, redfish, and bluefish around structure. Run it along a jetty wall, past a channel marker, or through the white water behind an inlet bar and hold on.

Trolling with diving plugs is also extremely effective for nearshore species. A medium-diving plug trolled at 4-5 knots along a channel edge or rip line covers ground fast and provokes reaction strikes. Colors that work: silver and blue for clear water baitfish imitation, chartreuse for stained water, and red/orange when mullet are thick.

Topwater Plugs

Topwater plugs don't dive - they work the surface film. Pencil poppers, walk-the-dog stickbaits, and chuggers all fall here. When stripers, bluefish, or false albacore are busting bait on top, throwing a topwater and watching a 30-inch fish blow up on it is something that doesn't get old. Work them with short rod tip twitches for the walk-the-dog action - left, right, left, right, keeping the lure in the strike zone as long as possible.

If you're fishing the Outer Banks beaches in fall during the striper run, a topwater pencil popper at dawn is about as good as it gets in saltwater fishing. The same technique works for mahi offshore when they're lit up on bait - throw a small popper into the school and the hits are explosive.

Soft Plastics: Paddletails, Shrimp, and Grubs

Soft plastics dominate inshore saltwater fishing. They're cheap, effective, and incredibly versatile. Three styles matter most for NC coast fishing.

Paddletail swimbaits are the most popular. A soft plastic body with a paddle-shaped tail that thumps when retrieved. Rigged on a 1/4 to 3/4oz jig head, they're the standard rig for redfish, speckled trout, and flounder in the sounds and estuaries from Core Sound to Pamlico. Size 3-4 inches for trout and slot reds in shallow water, 5-6 inches for bigger reds and cobia. Slow roll along the bottom for flounder, fast retrieve in the middle of the water column for trout. Color selection is simpler than people make it: white, chartreuse, or natural in clear water; louder colors (pink, electric chicken) in stained water.

Shrimp imitations like the DOA Shrimp are an inshore staple. DOA Shrimp come pre-rigged with an internal weighted hook and swim tail. The action is realistic enough to fool redfish in clear, shallow water - conditions where more obviously artificial presentations get refused. Work them with a twitch-pause-twitch on a free-floating retrieve or under a popping cork. Redfish, trout, and flounder all eat DOA Shrimp without hesitation. They're also effective on cobia when those fish are cruising the beaches in spring. For more on cork rigs, see our live bait vs. artificial lures guide.

Grubs are the simplest soft plastic of all - a soft body with a curly or twister tail. Rigged on a 1/4oz jig head, a 3-inch white grub catches more flounder and redfish than any complex rig. They're also a solid backup when you run out of other presentations. Keep a bag of white and chartreuse curly-tail grubs in the box and you'll never be totally without a fish-catching option.

Daisy Chains and Teasers

Daisy chains and teasers are attractors, not hook baits. A daisy chain is typically three to six squid or fish-shaped lures strung together on a mono or cable leader, often with only the last lure carrying a hook. They're designed to simulate a school of fleeing squid and create visual excitement in the spread. Billfish - especially white and blue marlin - will often come up to investigate a daisy chain before committing to any bait in the spread.

The setup: run a daisy chain from the rigger 30-50 feet back at 6-9 knots. When a marlin or sailfish comes up and starts hitting the chain, drop back a hookbait or pitched bait to the fish. The chain pulled the fish up - now you close the deal with something rigged.

Teasers without hooks are also run as bird rigs (a plastic bird on the surface with a chain of squids behind). The bird creates a surface splash that mimics diving bait, which pulls curious fish up from depth. They work particularly well for wahoo and tuna. No hooks on the teaser itself - the goal is to pull fish into range of your actual hooked lures running on nearby lines. For more on offshore wahoo tactics, see our wahoo fishing guide.

Spinnerbaits and Bucktails: Surf and Structure Fishing

Spinnerbaits in saltwater are most commonly seen in surf fishing and around structure. Unlike bass fishing spinnerbaits with multiple blades on a wire frame, saltwater versions are generally simpler - a jig head with a single spinner blade and bucktail or soft plastic trailer. The blade puts out flash and vibration that triggers strikes in stained water or at night when visibility is low.

Bucktail jigs (covered under jigs above) deserve extra mention here for surf fishing applications. From the Outer Banks beaches during striper and bluefish runs in fall and winter, a 2-4oz white bucktail cast into the wash and worked back through the trough is a producer when nothing else is getting bit. The Spro Prime Bucktail Jig holds up to the abuse of repeated casts in the surf - which matters because cheap bucktails lose their hair fast in saltwater conditions.

For flounder around structure - bridge pilings, channel markers, jetty rocks - drop a 1oz bucktail straight down and bounce it off the bottom. Flounder lie flat and ambush from below. A jig dropped vertically into structure gets eaten more reliably than a jig cast and retrieved past the same spot.

Matching Lure to Condition

The right lure matters less than fishing the right lure right. A few rules that cut through the noise:

• Speed tells. Fast fish (wahoo, mackerel, albies) want fast lures - spoons, diamond jigs, high-speed trolling lures. Bottom fish (flounder, drum) want slow presentations - bucktails, soft plastics, dead-drifted jigs.
• Depth drives weight. For every 20 feet of water depth in current, add roughly 1oz of jig weight to stay near bottom. In slack water, you can back that off significantly.
• Clear water = smaller and more natural. Stained or rough water = bigger, louder, brighter. This applies across every lure category.
• Match the forage. If the water is full of glass minnows, fish a small silver spoon or 2-inch paddletail. If mullet are running, go bigger and darker. Watch what's getting eaten and mimic it.
• Offshore spreads need variety. Don't run all the same lure. Mix head shapes, skirt colors, and sizes. The fish will tell you what they want on a given day.
• Gotcha Plug for surf blitzes. The Gotcha Plug is a specialized surf lure - metal-bodied, designed to cast far and drop fast into breaking schools. If you fish the NC beaches in spring when Spanish mackerel and blues push bait into the surf zone, keep three of these in your surf bag at all times.

The full mahi trolling spread breakdown - including how to set positions, run distances, and coordinate with teasers - is in our mahi mahi fishing guide. If you're building out an offshore spread for the first time, start there.

Building Your Lure Kit

You don't need every lure type to fish effectively. What you need is one solid option in each category that covers your primary fishing situations. For most NC coast anglers fishing a mix of inshore and offshore:

• Inshore kit: Paddletail swimbaits on 1/4-1/2oz jig heads, DOA Shrimp, 1-2oz bucktail jigs, Rapala X-Rap 10 for structure plugging
• Nearshore/mackerel kit: Clarkspoons in No. 1 and No. 2, Ahi Diamond Jigs in 1-2oz, Gotcha Plugs for surf, LB Huntington Drone Spoon for distance casting
• Offshore trolling kit: Rigged cedar plugs, Epic Sea Witches, Flat Head 8 Trolling Lure, Mahi Tuna Trolling Lure Six Pack
• Wahoo kit: Wahoo Bullet Jet high-speed lure, Easy Wahoo Lure, wire leader

If you're not sure where to start, call us at 888.453.3742 and tell us what you're fishing - inshore sounds, nearshore reef, or offshore blue water - and we'll point you at exactly what you need. Email works too: help@thetackleroom.com. We fish this stuff ourselves and we're not going to sell you something that doesn't work.