Seems to me that there are more than a few sharp people among us that might be able to solve this, at least I hope so. This is going to take more than a couple of sentences.
Many years ago I was faced with a post cold front condition that put the fish I was on really tight to cover with a very short strike zone. This problem is common to all fisherman and always has been. It is especially frustrating for tournament pro's where thousands of dollars can depend on a good day during bad conditions. Anyway..I knew those fish were there and I did manage to catch a few by making multiple casts...dropping a fly in front of their nose over and over and finally sneaking up close to them and flipping a jig in their face. Lots of work and not nearly as productive as 24 hours earlier when these same pre-spawn bass would eagerly run 2 or 3 feet to smash whatever you threw at them. It occured to me that I needed a lure that would "backup". Imagine if you will a lure like a Tiny Torpedo that you could pull forward 12-18 inches then when you stopped it would back up an equal distance because some kind of spring loaded device or mechanism of some sort stored then released the energy created during the forward pull. I could throw it next to a high percentage (stump) and just horizontally "YO-YO" it until that fish couldn't stand it anymore and ate it. I was never obsessed with this notion but I did tinker with it for 5-6 years and ran into many physics problems. Such as...water isn't dense enough to load a spring very well no mater what size or type of spring you use or what type of delivery device your lure employs..also I found that when the spring or whatever you're using begins to "load" it has a tendancy to want to unload way before you get to 12-18" I also found that even under the best of conditions that it was going to be impossible to get 100% energy return...the very best I ever managed to do was get a forward pull of 18" and an opposite return of about 5-6"(30%). Don't get me wrong I caught a lot of fish on these prototypes and had a lot of fun messing around with them. I am not an engineer or a Shoestring DuBois wannabe...I am not trying to invent, sell or market anything. I had actually forgotton about all this until yesterday when I faced the same situation. I was just thinking that someone here might have thought about this as well or might be interested in thinking about it now.
