Ed Chambers creates the green pumpkin plastic for Zoom

Zoom Baits Geen Pumpkin Worms The start of it all

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wouldn’t have any of them except for dedicated researchers, working long hours in search of something

else, who realized that what they found instead

had real value. And in these cases, it was

value far greater than what they were

hoping to find in the first place.

Luckily, happy accidents are

not restricted to the medical and

industrial fields. They happen in

fishing, too, and if you’re a bass

angler you’ve already benefitted.

Maybe the best example of a happy

accident in the fishing world occurred in the

late 1980s at Zoom Bait Company in tiny

Bogart, Georgia. Today, Zoom is the

largest manufacturer of soft

plastic lures in the American

Another Zoom staple – the 6“ Brush Hog

bass market, but in the 1980s,

shown in Green Pumpkin Candy

the company was still making a

name for itself.

“We had finished with

Zoom was the brainchild of Ed

watermelon and had started to run pumpkin,”

Chambers, a gaming machine salesman and avid bass angler Chambers told me a few years ago, “and the batch in

who couldn’t find the designs he wanted to fish with, so he between looked pretty good! Rather than throw it away, I

took matters into his own hands and started making lures

took it fishing. It looked really natural in the water, and the

himself.

bass loved it.”

Chambers was a design genius. In fact, I’d argue that

He called it “Green Pumpkin.” Chambers knew he had

he’s the greatest designer and developer of soft plastic baits a fish-catching color on his hands, but he couldn’t have had

in history, though some might make a pitch for Nick Creme, any idea just how valuable Green Pumpkin would become to

who create the first soft nylon baits in the late 1940s. It

Zoom or how successful it would be in the bass industry.

was Creme who built the canvas, but it was Chambers who

Today, Zoom is the bass world’s number one

created the masterpieces.

manufacturer of soft plastic baits. They’ve grown from

Through the years, Chambers designed hundreds of

Chambers’ garage to a 40,000 square foot facility with

different bait styles, including many that have become staples state-of-the-art equipment manned by over 100 full-

in the bass market. He designed the industry’s standard lizard, time employees who make 74 different lures in about 500

the Finesse Worm, the Trick Worm, the Speed Worm, the Fluke, different colors.

the Brush Hog and the Horny Toad. These baits define and

Yet Green Pumpkin makes up more than half of their

mostly created their categories, and they’re just some of the

production and sales.

highlights of Chambers’ amazing career.

That’s amazing, but it’s not just Zoom. Among bass

But his most far-reaching and enduring contribution

tackle manufacturers, Green Pumpkin is more ubiquitous

to bass fishing and the tackle industry was the result of a

than black, and it’s the most popular color of virtually every

happy accident.

soft plastic manufacturer in North America. Coast to coast,

If you’re not familiar with the injection molding process, border to border, largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass

know that molten plastic is forced through tubes and into

love Green Pumpkin.

molds where it cools and hardens to the consistency we use

So, too, do the best anglers. I’ve polled them through

for soft plastic fishing lures. A production run could create

the years, usually asking Forrest Wood Cup or Bassmaster

tens of thousands of baits or just a few, but it generally

Classic qualifiers, “If you could only use one color of soft

consists of a single color or pattern.

plastics, what would it be?”

When you finish running one color and start the next,

More than 90 percent have said Green Pumpkin, and in

there will be a batch of baits that combine the two hues as the past six Classics the champion has used a soft plastic

the machine clears itself. For example, if you finish a run of lure for at least part of his winning catch. In each case, the

black baits and start a run of white, the batch in between

color of choice was … you guessed it. And Green Pumpkin

will contain a bit of black, a little white and a lot of gray.

doesn’t stop with soft plastics. Over the past two decades

Ordinarily, this concoction is discarded or gets thrown into a it’s made inroads with skirted lures like jigs, bladed jigs and

bin and is later used to create black lures.

spinnerbaits. Many manufacturers are now making hard

In the late ’80s, two of the most popular colors in Zoom’s baits — like crankbaits — in Green Pumpkin. They catch

catalog — in the entire bass chasing world, for that matter bass, too, and all have their origin in the happy accident at

— were watermelon and pumpkin.

Zoom Bait Company.

Summer 2019

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