New big-fish baits for 2008, from left to right: Berkley's Gulp! Alive! 3-inch minnow bait bucket; Lucky Craft's Real Bait Premium Trout 110; Lucky Craft's Real Skin Slender Pointer; Daiwa's DB Minnow. A Fish Belly Twitch Bait is on the spinning rod.

My fishing tackle is sorted in clear plastic boxes, labeled and divided in tidy categories. Lake trout, salmon, steelhead, kokanee, rainbows, brown trout, bass and catfish — when I’m packing for a trip, I grab a box and go. But sometimes I wonder if I’m making it too complicated.

I’ve found that a lot of the gear that I used to use for bass, I’m now putting to work on brown trout, rainbows and steelhead. Last month I fished out at Long Hollow Ranch, near Sisters, and after the fish quit grabbing my flies, I switched to my new CastAway spinning rod and a crankbait. I was casting for bass, but I was catching 16- to 20-inch rainbows and brown trout one after the other.

We make distinctions based on what we think the target fish will eat. But the fish is basically asking two questions. ‘Can I eat it?’ Or, ‘Will it eat me?’

Going back through my journals, I find big rainbows that ate my bloodmeal bait when I was targeting channel cats; hatchery rainbows that attacked crankbaits; and grayling that ate plastic grubs. The first time I tried a Body Basics beadhead egg fly for trout, I caught a bass. My friend Bob Pengra landed a big carp that smacked his spinnerbait while he fished for bass on the John Day. Last week, I heard about some guys that caught a sturgeon that grabbed a steelhead plug at the mouth of the Deschutes.

Several years ago, when swim baits were the next hot bass-fishing craze, a few people employed them for big browns and bull trout, with astounding results. We tend to classify lures into neat little categories while the fish look at each bait as a potential meal.

I have always loved big minnow imitations. There’s something about a painted balsa wood or polycarb impostor that speaks to me of the big fish that might eat it.

Last summer I fished a Fish Belly Twitch Bait for the first time. It’s a slender lure with big eyes and sticky hooks. Neutral buoyant, it neither sinks nor rises to the top when you pause the retrieve. Little twitches drive the brown trout and smallmouth wild.

Lately, some new 2008 model lures have crossed my desk and I plan to put them to work at the earliest opportunity. Lucky Craft Lures (www.luckycraft.com) entered the swimbait market with the Real Bait Premium Trout line. These lures have swimming action and liveliness due to eye placement, fin position and jointed body action. The front hook is a blood-red Daiichi to give the fish a target. The weighting system was designed to match the weight of a live fish. The T130 is 136 mm or 5½-inches long and will be available in 10 finishes.

Lucky Craft Lures’ Real Skin Slender Pointer is a thin suspending jerkbait with three red Daiichi treble hooks. This means wherever a fish hits this bait, it gets stuck. And the lure is covered in real fish skin — sewed together and glued to the lure. The thinking is that with each toothy tear in the skin, the lure releases scent that makes the bass (or trout or whatever) chase it, grab it and hold on.

The new baits feature Lucky Craft’s weight transfer system, so even in the wind they cast like a bullet and suspend horizontal in the water, to stay there no matter how long you pause them. Expect an erratic side-to-side action and a running depth of three to four feet.

Another new suspending jerkbait is the Daiwa DB Minnow SP that dives to three feet, and is designed to entice predators holding in the middle of the water column. Realistic scale patterns, 3-D eyes and life-like movement should make it a winner for largemouth, smallmouth and browns.

Growing up with a fishing rod in Oregon and Washington, I never learned how to fish with live minnows. It’s against the law in both states. If you want to stay within the rules, but want to feel like you’re cheating, try Berkley’s Gulp! Alive! It comes in different shapes and sizes. The bucket I have is full of three-inch pseudo-minnows, charged in smelt-scented gravy.

Berkley’s goal for this product is to mimic and literally replace live bait. Scent dispersion creates a ‘zone of influence’ that makes this lure more effective the slower you fish it. Run a single red hook through the back and let it hang below a bobber. Rig it with a small jig head and crawl it through the rocks or bounce it on a dropshot setup. However you would rig a minnow, you can fish this bait. Try it for channel cats, crappie, bass, predatory rainbows and browns.

Here I go classifying again, but the fact is big fish eat little fish and they’re not particularly fussy when the potential protein value is high. Often, a big baitfish imitation is the only thing that will provoke Mr. Big. He’s hungry. Invite him to dinner.