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Fishing lures are a lovely invention which dates all the way back to 2,000 BC, when the Chinese and Egyptians individually developed them at roughly the same time. A fishing lure is what draws a fish onto your hook and line, so that you can catch it without having to use a net or a spear to get your fish. While this was definitely a neat invention, it has undergone a variety of different changes over time. For instance, the materials used, the methods by which a lure is jigged or trolled around in the water, and even the various types of looks that a fishing lure can take on based on the type of fish that you are trying to catch. There have been some pretty intriguing changes made to what lures do, how they look, and even their floating and sinking characteristics.
Some types of lures are made to resemble the insides of spoons. They are typically shiny, and when they are moved around in the water their movements attract fish by simulating prey species. In a great many other cases, such as with spinner bait, the movements themselves (and the sounds that they make in the water from making those movements) are very useful at attracting the fish to your hook. These different types of movements can be further used by a skilled angler to attract all different types of fish, by varying the movements that they use to get the lure moving around in a style that will attract a particular type of fish.
A great innovation that was developed by the Romans was to use bronze as a lure material. Before that point, previous lure users had crafted their lures out of bone or stone. While these were fairly useful, they were very heavy and tended towards being a bit brittle. In the times since then, all sorts of materials, from steel to non-corroding steel, to titanium and even forms of carbon and plastic have been used to make lures with all sorts of flotation, shape and movement characteristics. They are great for catching fish.
