COLUMN
NEWELL’S NOTES
ROB
NEWELL
a
12
s a kid I fed my fishing obses-
sion with a steady diet of Jimmy
Houston and Hank Parker tele-
vision shows. And you didn’t have to
watch those productions very long to
see a big tandem-bladed spinnerbait
getting boiled up on by a bass.
Additionally, in the late 1980s and
early 1990s, spinnerbaits were a hot
ticket on the pro circuits.
Back in those days, I bought spinner-
baits by the dozen. I had double-willows,
double-Colorados, tandem-Indianas and
big single-bladed “hubcaps.” I had spin-
nerbaits made by Blue Fox, Stanley,
Strike King, Limberneck, Hildebrandt,
Hawg Caller and Terminator. If it had
blades, I bought one.
And spinnerbaits worked, too. I can
remember my very first trip to Lake
Eufaula in 1989 … spinnerbaits ruled.
To this day I have hundreds of spinner-
baits of every kind, shape and size piled
up in my garage. I collected spinnerbait
blades like coins. I have more skirts
than Katy Perry and more trailers than
U-Haul.
as the blade Fades
Ironically, I haven’t thrown a spin-
nerbait for bass in years – might even
be bordering on a decade.
I know I’m not alone in abandoning
my blades. I watch tournament compe-
tition all of the time and hardly see a
glimmer of a spinner anymore.
I’d be willing to bet that some of our
younger pros have never weighed a
tournament bass caught on a spinner-
bait. And I’m even surer that some of
the young guns don’t carry them at all.
In fact, at the Lake Norris FLW Tour
Invitational last fall, Matt Arey admitted
that he did not even have a spinnerbait
in his boat and had to borrow one from
another competitor.
Say it ain’t so! Jimmy, you might want
to speak with young Matt about that
the next time you guys are in the
Quaker State booth.
So what happened to the bladed
glory?
Well, for starters, a lot of new more
“fashionable” lures came along that
sort of bumped the blades to the bot-
tom row of the tackle box.
First came the swimbait, a more
realistic-looking cast-and-retrieve lure
that has been around for years, but
made major gains in popularity some-
what recently. Then came the swim jig,
which is basically a spinnerbait without
blades.
The spinnerbait really took a hit
when the Z-Man Original ChatterBait
blew up, setting off a whole new cate-
gory of bladed baits. Instead of a
teardrop-shaped blade spinning on a
swivel, a ChatterBait featured a flat, cof-
fin bill-style blade that pivoted back
and forth in the water, making the rest
of the jig body shimmy. For some rea-
son, bass relished this vibration over
that of a spinnerbait.
Perhaps the final blow was the fish-
ing bomb called the umbrella rig,
which, depending on the rig, is basically
a spinnerbait on steroids.
In addition to trendier lures, several
other changes have caused the blade
to fade. I believe the trend toward hold-
ing fewer fall tournaments has caused
the spin to thin. Long ago there were
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