When it comes to calico bass fishing, Randy Spizer has thought of it all. Location, timing, but most importantly, bait. For Randy, live bait would be too easy. Instead, he set out to create the best lures to trick these fish into thinking it’s the real thing. That’s where his brand Kicker Baits comes into play. Whether you are fishing off your local jetty or out on the open ocean, Randy and his team have the lure for the day. He’s put the last twenty years of his fishing life into these products, and with summer amongst us, why not grab that fishing license and try one for yourself. We recently sat down with Randy to pick his brain on all things fishing, read on for some of his secrets and then cast away. 

 

I was born in Illinois but moved to California when I was three. I grew up in the Cypress area and have been in CA the last 40 years of my life. I bought a house in Santa Ana 11 years ago now. That's kind of what led me to end up starting a business because the house was dual zoned for business and residential. It’s a two-story loft that offers a good space for Kicker downstairs and I live upstairs.

I've always been attracted to fishing and I'm not even 100% sure why. When I was 12 I'd go down to the jetty at Seal Beach and catch halibut off there with frozen anchovies. My friend and I would dig through the trash and recycle cans so we could afford bait every weekend. I grew up a professional rollerblader, and one of my good friends was super into largemouth bass fishing. He taught me how to catch bass at golf course ponds and I've always been finding ways to catch fish one way or another. After rollerblading, I found that fishing was my next passion in life and there was a competitive aspect to it. I started doing saltwater bass tournaments and I like to compete, but I like to compete more against myself versus other people. I feel like fishing offers that because you go out there and it can be tedious when they're not biting, so you get to figure it out. It’s kind of you versus you, instead of you being against other people. That was probably around 2005 when I started really getting into it.

 

Nowadays you have brands like Salty Crew that portray the sport as something fun and it looks cool. Kids that are growing up surfing and skating see these brands that feel similar, and they might see guys that they look up to that are doing it, and that kind of sets the trend. Kids like Lane Kilian are out there showing how fun it can be and making things happy and positive. It's an easy thing to attract to and it's kind of what drives these kids into the sport.

What is the ethos behind your brand Kicker Fishing? 

I like to believe that Kicker looks at the industry a little bit different. We try to pay respect to what we have, and not try to overdo it. We don't take too many fish, we're more of a catch and release brand. I'm not saying we don't eat fish, but we like to keep only what we need. Our goal is to go out there and get bit and all help other people get bit. And it transcends through the brand with the people that we associate with and the people that tend to follow us. We're here to show that fishing can be awesome and positive and accessible. 

As long as I'm out there with my friends and there's fish to be caught and the weather is beautiful, that’s all I need. I feel like catching fish is kind of like the icing on the cake generally. We live in such a gorgeous area. It trips me out that people fly across the world to go visit all these crazy islands, but they've never been to Catalina.

 

What is your favorite pair of Electric frames and lenses for fishing? 

I like the “Oak”, they are styley and the fact that they're polarized makes me excited, I look good on and off the water. The “12” with polarized pro are my favorite fishing sunglasses.

 

What I love about Electric is I feel like we have shared values. I'm a website designer by trade, and the Electric site spoke to me. I could see the lifestyle behind it. The brand has been around for 20 plus years, and I could feel the quality of design by looking at the products that Electric has to offer. I felt that the two brands (Electric and Kicker) feel aligned, so that's why I was really attracted to Electric personally. 

I'm a bass dork, I love to catch calico bass. I'm mostly an artificial guy, I never fish bait. I like to trick them. To me it's more about the hunt of looking around and trying to force them to eat something fake versus live bait. It's not that live bait is cheating but it feels like cheating to me. I like to figure it out because sometimes it's a color way, sometimes it's a specific lure, sometimes they want to eat a swim bait or a crankbait. I really like to fish big swimbaits. I like to fish our 9-inch pickle kick out there at the islands. You generally catch the bigger fish when you do that. You don’t catch as many but I’m a quality over quantity guy. 

 

I love ocean fishing because you never know what is going to happen out there, and something insane always does. We just did a photo shoot this last weekend for Hobie and my business partner Skylar caught an 80-pound black seabass on an A rig that came up and tried to eat a calico that was on the rig. That was a cool thing to see. 

 

I think we will see some cooler lure designs coming out. Things that seem kind of out there but end up working. New lures and techniques and finding fish in places that you never really thought they were at. I don’t really know what the future looks like, but hopefully we can put some better conservation efforts out there so there is a future of bass fishing. 

 

My goal is to make fishing my full-time job. I feel like I’m almost there. Keep making good products through Kicker, I’m excited about the products we have to offer and we’re adding more to the line. Every time we add something to the line you can just feel the growth. We have a couple new lures coming out, so I’m pumped on all that. 

 

Visual Evolution for me is what I see through the lenses while I'm out there on the water. Having those polarized lenses, makes looking through the water so clear and allows me to see structure on the bottom I wouldn’t be able to see otherwise. So that's it for me, it’s my experience of fishing through my glasses.

 

This summer we're planning to get down to Mex a little bit and take some more island trips. It's about to be spawning season for these calicos, so it's about to go nuts. Normally in early July we'll see some crazy stuff go down. When you see calico with orange makeup on their face, you know it's spawn time. They'll spawn for a few weeks. We’ll fish the islands during that time, and you can have 200 fish days sometimes.