Port St. Lucie Couple Nets $85 in Rescued Lures from River Trees

Jean Bruun spotted it first — a near-mint Heddon One-Knocker Spook dangling from a tree branch above a seawall, right where her husband had been searching for one for weeks.

The couple had ducked under a roadway bridge along a tidal river winding through Port St. Lucie to wait out a thunderstorm. When the rain cleared, they freed the 4.5-inch, $9.99 topwater lure from the branch and kept fishing. What began as shelter from a squall became the first chapter of a two-trip lure recovery that eventually totaled $84.93 in rescued tackle.

Over the course of two recent outings on that same Port St. Lucie waterway, the Bruuns pulled snagged lures from branches, submerged roots, willow stalks and drooping live oaks — a Berkley Choppo, a pair of Larry Dahlberg Whopper Ploppers, a blue-chartreuse Westin BassBite crankbait from Denmark, a Strike King KVD Square Bill Shad Crankbait and a clear saltwater Super Spook among them. Most were in nearly new condition.

Veteran Treasure Coast angler Paul Bruun — who fished South Florida piers and Biscayne Bay seawalls as a kid and has been working local tidal rivers and freshwater marshes for decades — credits his wife with the best eyes on the water. Jean is a hawkeye at locating abandoned snagged lures along the small Florida tidal rivers and freshwater marshes they fish together, he said.

The practice is practical, not just frugal. Super-braid fishing lines, now near-universal on the water, make snagged lures and dangling rigs into serious hazards for birds and wildlife — a reason beyond the savings to retrieve what other anglers have lost, Bruun notes. On the Port St. Lucie river, he observed that new property owners who have cleared old-growth bank cover — oak, palm, bottlebrush and willow — have opened casting access but stripped the habitat that made those pockets productive in the first place.

The recovered gear also doubles as a free scouting report. Bruun has long used what he sees tied onto rods and what's missing from tackle shop peg boards as one of the most reliable indicators of what's actually working in local waters. Empty lure pegs don't lie.

For Treasure Coast anglers heading out this season, the lesson is straightforward: look up. What's hanging in the willows along the North Fork or the C-23 canal might be exactly what the fish are hitting — and somebody else already paid for it.

The two-trip haul remains the most rewarding Easter egg lure hunt Bruun and Jean have had on that river, he said.

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