I enjoy a challenge and the intricacies of angling, but I also love to catch fish. My bass bag has been whittled down to about five or six go-to plastics, from the dozens and dozens of worms, lizards, tubes and creature baits I had stashed in it as a younger angler. I’d rather set up, drop the troller, and get down to casting, bumping a jig on the bottom, or ripping a Jigging Rap than cruise around turning a knob looking for piscatorial silhouettes for 17 minutes on the screen of a side scan sonar before wetting a line. And in this time of the year, where the wind chills are touching negative 50 on my phone’s latest weather warning, while it’s fun to mix things up and get into some new fly patterns that have about as many steps as there are degrees below zero outside, I can usually take on just one or two before I turn to something easier at the vise.

Simple patterns for flies and jigs, like the handful of plastics in my bass binder, not only are easier to crank out all winter in these ultra-cold troughs, but in the spring and summer they get the job done for what I pursue. I may not be fishing the most technical of hatches for the stocked trout in the ponds and lakes of the prairie, or be required to adjust my patterns to the rapidly flowing streams of the mountains, but I guess that’s never bothered me as I tie on those favorite flies consisting of a few wraps of pheasant feather, or streamers consisting of little more than bucktail and flash.

The same holds true for my panfish offerings, as one-, two- and three-material options tend to bring out the bite each openwater season. A long tail of krystal flash, or a short one paired with a chenille or estaz body is about all a crappie needs to key in on. If it has a bit of that minnow-like flair to it, it’s going to get hit. There’s no need for added collars of hackle, woven bodies or overdressing. Keeping the pattern light, airy and simple with a bit of sparkle is the ticket for catching big springtime slabs.

Over a discussion at the most recent wildlife convention, the topic of spinner crafting came up, and we got a laugh as one angler in our group revealed his go-to pattern of gold blades ahead of red beads comprised more than half of those lures he had put together in the previous season and stashed in his onboard tackleboxes. When a lure works, it works; and those that do typically are of a basic fish-catching design, whether on a particular water or across lakes and rivers worldwide. Spoons like the Daredevle, the reliable jig-and-twister combo, and other easy-to-master offerings produce the vibe and motion that have caught fish for more than a century now, and likely will for the rest of this one.

In the end, it’s those basic offerings consisting of stamped metal with a treble hook, two-ingredient jigs, a three-material fly pattern or maybe just a crawler threaded onto a snell behind a walking weight, that often get the job done on the water. Those more technical options remain, and the technology that produces more and better fish traps and augmented underwater reality readouts on the sonar screen is great to have, but in time you’ll likely find those simple solutions from the vise this winter or the tackle shop shelf as you restock your spring stash, will be the ones that bring success … in our outdoors.