Buzz Baits and Black Bass – Nothin’s New.
Nothing
is more fun than fishing with top water lures for largemouth bass, and
today buzz baits and “toads” are important and productive lures for
the modern bass fisherman. These lures are usually fished close to
shore or heavy cover that holds bass. The bulge of water and eruption
of a “hawg” largemouth when fishing these lures can result in some
great angling memories. And some of our bass fishermen ghosts of the
past might be enjoying the advertising claims put out by today’s
manufacturers—for this method is one of the oldest in bass fishing
history.
The
technique of working a fast moving top water revolving spinner was
originally called Skittering. The method, tackle and technique is
still used in portions of the south today. It was described by Genio
Scott in his 1875 book, Fishing In American Waters.
“Angling for pickerel among the lily-pads and
pickerel-weed is very exciting sport. The angler should use a rod from
13 to 15 feet long, flexible, but strong. For skittering a
float is not used,
nor is natural bait the best. Use Buel’s or McHarg’s spoons, mounted
with red ibis feather, and white feathers or hair for the under side
of the spoon. Stand near the bow of your punt, and skitter the lure
along the surface of the water, near the margins of the lily-pads, and
if you are on Sodus Bay, or tempting the fish from almost any of the
bayous of Lake Ontario, you will find cause for surprise that will
force you to ejaculate; for it will be questionable which will be the
most astonished, the novice in the boat or that in the water. A most
important essential is to have a man at the stern who can use the
setting-pole and sculls so as to enable you to fish the border of the
lily-pads without scaring the prey into their hiding-places.”
(the illustration above is titled:
Skittering for Pickeral
among the lily pads, as illustrated in Fishing in American
Waters, by Genio C. Scott, 1875)
Today
our rods are shorter, we cast our lures with very sophisticated reels
and the sculling man in the stern of the punt has become an electric
motor in the bow of a 75 mile per hour bass boat. Not much else is
new.
Another early
adventure with a “buzz bait” was reported by a Greenwood Lake, New
Jersey angler using the pseudonym Black Bass. In The American
Angler dated June 30, 1883 Black Bass reported on his use of a
new lure called the Comstock Flying Helgramite. It might be worth
prefacing this report by stating that the Flying Helgramite is highly
sought after by today’s lure collectors and is now valued in the
$3000-$5000 range. Black Bass reported his findings as follows:
“When requested by you to give this formidable looking bait a fair
test, I gazed at it with some incredulous thoughts rambling in my
head, but on hefting the lure, I found him a much lighter weight
champion than expected, and agreed to let the black bass tackle him.
Having a hard braided line, I fastened the “deceiver” on and chucked
him overboard to sink or swim. I was trolling with live bait very
slow, and found the helgramite kept well up in the water; the wings
are excellent spinners, whirling rapidly; requiring but little forward
motion of the boat to make them “buzz”. Now, how does it grapple a
fish?
I
tied the line around my leg, with one rod lying in the boat trolling
live bait and casting with my flyrod when a tug-tug at my leg line
convniced me of a strike, and hauling him in I don’t know which was
most astonished – the bass, myself, or the helgramite.”
(To the
right is: Advertisement for the Comstock Flying Helgramite from the
American Angler magazine, June 30, 1883.)
We
can’t say much for Black Bass’s method of fishing the Flying
Helgramite, but he did mention that the bait buzzed. It should be
mentioned that the body of this lure is made of wood, so it would
float, as claimed in the 1883 advertisement shown here. It also needs
to be mentioned that in the 1880s bass fishermen did not cast from the
reel, except to use live bait – thus the term “bait casting reel.”
By
the late 1800s most of the major tackle stores carried several
spinners that could be successfully buzzed, if the angler so desired.
The bass spinners shown to the left have blades that are quite similar
to some of the lures being manufactured today. These spinners were
advertised in the 1890 Abbey & Imbrie catalog . A&I was sort of the
Cabela’s of the late 1800s and the first half of the 20th
century.
One of
the
first U. S. lure specifically manufactured for buzzing was
the Herb’s Dilly, invented by a Louisiana jewelry manufacturer, J. M.
Herbert, of Shreveport. (More
Information Here) The lure was one of the secret weapons of
early tournament fishermen in Louisiana and Texas. Due to the weighted
spoon type body, the lure almost always lands upright. In fact the
first Dilly’s were manufactured from silver teaspoons. The eccentric
shaped spinner blade produces a gurgling sound unlike any other buzz
bait.
The
rights to the Dilly were sold to the Glen L. Evans Company of Idaho in
the 1950s. The Dilly traveled to the banks of the Columbia River when
the Glen Evans Co. was purchased by Luhr Jensen Hood River, Oregon in
the 1970s. In 2006 Luhr Jensen was sold to Rapala, and the status of
the Dilly is unknown at this time.
Buzz
bait fishing received national stature when Fred Arbogast added the
Sputterfuss to his Hawaiian Wiggler lineup in the 1940s. This Wiggler
featured an aluminum spinner blade very similar to most buzz bait
blades used today. The famous writer from the 1930s-50s era, Robert
Page Lincoln in his book Black Bass Fishing wrote of his
first experience with the Sputterfuss as follows.
“...when I first
saw this lure used I doubted sincerely that any bass would be fast
enough to catch up with it and take it. However, after I had witnessed
Hank Werner take five or six bass on it, operated under these speedy
condition, I had to admit that, like the oldtime skittering method, it
proved its worth in no uncertain manner. For, of course, what this
lure promotes is the skittering method entirely; in fact it is
skittering pure and simple.”
Buzz
baits now come in many sizes, shapes and colors. They come with rubber
skirts, silicone skirts, and even that old fashion bucktail. They are
offered in overhead and in-line versions. These forgotten lures were
the “new” sensation in the 1980s and a multitude of offerings are
available for today’s angler. However, the principle is still the same
as that described by Geno Scott in 1875, and was probably used by
primitive fishermen centuries earlier.
Nothin’s
New.
Phil White
