INNOVATIVE LURE MAKERS OF THE WEST
Back when bass fishing really got into high gear in the late 1960s, it seems that most of the anglers were using plastic products that were made in the Eastern U.S. The big names in those early days were led by Mann’s Jelly Worms and Creme lures, perhaps the most notable of the early plastic worm makers. As the story goes, it was probably Nick Creme who first thought of the plastic worms with his imitation of the popular live bait known as nightcrawlers. But there were a few Western anglers who also were making inroads into the bass fishing lure market, most notably as I remem- ber Doug “Rip” Nunnery, Dick Miller, Bud Walsh, Earl Mathews, Bobby Garland and Gary Yamamoto. These Western anglers were busy designing leadhead jigs, spin- nerbaits and various soft plastic innovations long before some of those eastern and southern bass anglers were discovering the jigs. Rip Nunnery of Huntington Park made one of the first leadhead jigs I ever used…and I caught a lot of bass on them in our Southern Cali- fornia lakes. Rip built his Bandit bass lures, those leadhead jigs with vinyl skirts, in blue, black, purple and brown. His other claim to fame in those days was that he went down south and fished a BASS tourna- ment at Lake Eufaula in Alabama. I think it was the only BASS tourna- ment he fished, but he recorded the all-time BASS record one-day catch of 96 pounds in his tournament debut. Of course, the limit was 15 bass in those days, so with today’s 5-bass limit that’s a record that will never be broken. Rip also made the first “twin spin” jigs I ever used, affectionately known as the Double Bass Boober.
You’d cast it towards the shore, let it sink a little, then give it six or eight quick turns of the reel handle and stop. Usually the bass would attack on the “sink.” It particularly worked well for me at San Vicente. Then there was Dick Miller of South Gate, who was among the pioneers of the spinnerbait in the West with his White Tornado spin- nerbait. He and his father, Mike boated a lot of bass on those tan- dem spinnerbaits. Actually, the first spinnerbait I ever used was made by my good friend, Don Butler of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His lure was called the Okiebug for obvious reasons and might have been the first lure of its kind. Don parlayed his lure into winning the second Bassmas- ters Classic at Percy Priest Reservoir near Nashville, Tennessee. I got to see him in action there as I was paired with him one day as part of the event’s press corps. Another Southern California cre- ation was the Matt’s Bass Trap lure, designed by Earl Mathews of Tustin. It was a small bladed spinnerbait that worked great in shallow waters. I believe he developed it at Lake Elsinore where it was a great lure to toss parallel to the fence lines that ran about 30 feet from land out into the water. It was a bass killer. My fel- low writer George Kramer was a strong advocate of this lure, which he says Mathews developed as he repackaged the double-hooked H&H spinnerbait. Along came Utah angler Bobby Garland of St. George, UT, who fash- ioned his own version of the lead- head jig and came up with the Spi- der Jig, plastics tails that fluttered, and the Gitzit tube, one of the most popular lures ever among Western fishermen. The late Garland went on to win many Western Bass tour-
naments. Some of those Bobby Gar- land creations are still being sold in the line of Gene Larew lures in Mis- souri. I think Bobby’s brother, Gary, still carries on the family tradition of Garland Lures, now known as Canyon lures. But the biggest contribution from the West had to come from Gary Yamamoto of Page, Arizona. When he first started fishing our Western Bass tournaments at Lake Powell, Gary was running a KOA campground at Page. But he was so successful at marketing his prod-
in his tackle box? It was said Gary designed the Senko in the shape of a ballpoint pen; whatever he used as a model, it works great! You go into most bass fishing tackle shops these days and there will be dozens and dozens of packaged Yamamoto plastics creations of all sizes, shapes and colors. The skirted Hula Grub fished on a football-style leadhead is still deadly at Lake Mead, home to the U.S. Open. Yamamoto is a for- mer champion of the event, an achievement that really gave his lure company a push. And don’t forget to give credit to Dee Thomas for the development of jigs. He didn’t invent them, but he sure knew how to use them! Everyone knows the technique of flippin’ and it was Dee who pio- neered that, along with Dave Myers of Fenwick. It even developed into the rod market with specialized Flippin’ Stiks from Fenwick, and sim- ilar models that now are produced by many manufacturers. But it was a West Coast technique at it’s start, and a technique that’s practiced far and wide. In the later days, probably in the early 1990s, the Drop Shot tech- nique was developed. I think it originally came from the Japanese anglers who fished the U.S Open, but Westerners caught on to that one real quick and it’s a technique that is also practiced worldwide now. Give credit to the Western anglers for developing that into a sure-fire fishing method. So the next time some southern bass angler tells you bass fishing was developed in the South, you can explain to him he owes a lot to Western fishermen for the most successful techniques being used today. — BILL RICE
Gary Yamamoto’s innovative approach to lures and fishing resulted in a very successful business.
ucts, especially to his many Japan- ese friends, that he became a world- wide phenomenon and he now has his home in Texas, complete with private bass ponds. Yamamoto plastics innovations are found far and wide now and he’s probably the biggest exporter of fishing lures in the world. What fisherman doesn’t have a few Senkos or other Yamamoto designs
It was a long time before the Poe’s Super Cedar arrived in the early 1980’s and a true western original hit the scene. Plastic worms were pretty much a Southern import until the hand-pour guys brought us the “green weenie” and reapers (a much more effective bait than the Mar-Lyn original, injection model). And it wasn’t until the late 1970’s or early 1980’s that plastic got very “Western” with Bobby Garland’s creative Gitzit (tube) and Spider Jig. Of course, there were others that came our way, and some like the Berkley
Power Worms of the late 1980s continue to the present, but the scent/taste concept saw a big breakthrough in the mid 1980s when Gene Larew introduced the patented Salt Craw. When it comes to jigs (and no one knows who created the first one—sort of like the wheel) there was an original in the Brawley Bug, brought to us by members of that historic Brawley clan around Lake Camanche. They devised a method of at- taching the “live rubber” that according to
sources was both patented and created a jig with “short” whiskers pointing forward in addition to the trailing skirt. According to Dee Thomas, this distinctive Brawley characteristic is actually what led Frank Hauck, Thomas’ early team partner, to decide to sell live rubber as a component along with jig heads, so anglers could make their own. It was Thomas’ contention that except for very cold water (where deer hair jigs were king) live rubber was a superior material. Hauck sold this material nationally for years.
July 2011 _ SILVER EAGLES 37