COLUMN
FOR THE RECORD
COLIN
MOORE
I
16
a Different Sort of therapy
t didn’t take Chris Turner long to
determine he wasn’t cut out for
tournament fishing. In 2016 he
fished two T-H Marine FLW Bass Fishing
League Okie Division events as a boater
and weighed in a grand total of one fish
that tallied 3 pounds, 2 ounces.
Truthfully, bass derbies were a has-
sle for Turner, who’s actually a pretty
fair fisherman under the right circum-
stances. But something about the tour-
nament regimen reduced him to a
nervous wreck: Be here for takeoff; be
there for the weigh-in; watch the clock;
all those people looking at you; who’s
the guy in the back of the boat?
Most of us wouldn’t make such a big
deal out of it, but then, most of us were
never blown out of a Humvee by an
improvised explosive device planted by
an Iraqi guerilla fighter.
The happy-go-lucky Texas kid that
joined the Army in the late ’90s never
came home. At some point during his
two tours of duty in Iraq, Turner was
replaced by a sadder, but wiser version
of himself with post-traumatic stress
disorder. In his case, it manifests by an
unease when he gets around groups of
people, an inability to relax in public, a
smoldering anxiety.
He left the service in 2004 with 100
percent disability status and landed in
Hindsville, Ark., where he married a girl
named April and in due course became
the father of three girls. Turner, who
was an M1A1 Abrams tank commander
during his overseas stint, also met up
with Dwain Batey, a kindred spirit who
liked to hang out at the same tackle
shop and talk fishing. Batey, who owns
Bait Werks Custom Lure Painting, was
also one of the best custom lure
painters around, and eventually he and
Turner became best buddies and
decided to partner up and sell custom-
painted baits.
The result is Skirmish Baits, a series
of lures that has caught on with the fish-
ing public, including FLW Tour pros such
as Greg Bohannan and Jeff Dobson and
a slew of Costa FLW Series and BFL
anglers. The company is small, but it’s
provided Turner with a way to occupy
his time and to heal.
“Some stuff that you see and expe-
rience in a place like Iraq stays with
you long after you leave there,” he
says. “When I got back I told myself if I
didn’t get into something connected to
fishing I was going to die or do some-
thing that I’m not supposed to do. So
I’m doing what I love, and it takes my
mind off some bad thoughts that
never went away.”
When Turner left the Army, he had
plenty of cash in his pockets, mainly
because there weren’t a lot of places to
spend money in Iraq. After discussing
the idea with Batey, he bought some
unfinished baits that the latter painted
with popular colors. Turner put them on
Facebook for sale, and they sold out
within a few hours. As the story goes,
Turner then told Batey, “Wow, let’s buy
200 bodies, paint them and see how
they sell.” Again, the lures were scooped
up quickly.
That’s how it all began for Skirmish
Baits. The rest was pretty much repeat
busi ness and word-of-mouth sales,
which is how every lure maker from
James Heddon to Cotton Cordell got
started. Turner takes care of marketing
and sales and various odd jobs, his
wife and oldest daughter handle ship-
ping, and Batey is the airbrush guru
who also shares website duties (skir-
mishbaits.com). Depending on how
many different colors go into the fin-
ished product, Batey can paint about
400 lures a day.
The pair has been able to capitalize
on a common belief among bass fisher-
men: Certain colors work better in
some lakes and rivers because of water
clarity and how predators see forage,
and certain combinations of colors trig-
ger aggressive responses in bass dur-
ing certain seasons of the year or pho-
toperiods of the day, even if the bait’s
shape and size don’t match the pre-
dominant forage.
Turner is convinced there’s some-
thing to it; that color is part of the
three-legged stool – along with action
and presentation – that compels a bass
to grab a lure that’s not really what it
seems to be. Beyond that, he and Batey
think that certain color variations are
FLWFISHING.COM I auGuSt-SepteMber 2017