Bubblegum And Grape

About a year ago, Terminator came out with two new spinnerbait colors: pink and purple. That seemed a little odd, but then again, it was Jimmy Houston's idea. Here's the story behind Houston's (or his wife's) discovery of these unusual colors, and some tips on how to make them work for you.

Bubblegum

"It's not pink," he says about the pink skirt. "I'm not on the pink team (laughs). It's bubblegum, and I've been using that color for a long time.

"I use it in real clear water, like in situations where you have spotted bass and largemouths, and smallmouths really like them too. Any real clear-water- type lakes. It seems to work better in fall than in the spring, but it works in the spring too.

"The very best time to use it is clearwater situations in the fall if you have a lake that has spotted bass and/or smallmouths in it in addition to largemouths."

Houston says he's been using a bubblegum spinnerbait skirt "for a long, long time," and recalls the first time he realized its potency. "I was fishing a BASS tournament at Lake Sidney Lanier at the end of December, probably 12-15 years ago, and (in practice) I was catching a few fish on a spinnerbait. Chris, my wife, put that bubblegum-colored skirt on and immediately started catching more fish. Being the astute bass fishing pro I am (laughs), I changed to that color and ended up doing really well in that tournament."

Since then Houston has continued to use that color. "There aren't many clearwater lakes here in Oklahoma," he notes, "but I've used it on Lake Tenkiller before in the fall, when the lake gets to its clear stage."

As to why bubblegum works, he says: "It's a color that sort of glows in the water. It looks like it glows, like chartreuse, and it's a color the fish can see a long way off. When Dr. Loren Hill (Color-C-Lector inventor) did studies on bass at the University of Oklahoma, he had a 30-foot-long tank. In clear water, fish could identify that color that far away and perhaps more.

"And the sight part of the spinnerbait is a big part of it. Vibration of course is important, but if you've ever looked at a spinnerbait on an underwater camera with the blades turning, you know that the blades put off far more flash than we realize. So being able to see the bait is a big part of it."

Even though bubblegum isn't a natural color, he notes: "There's nothing really out there that swims around and looks like chartreuse. Most basic colors are red and blue. Bubblegum might trigger in bass whatever that instinct is -- they might not necessarily eat the bait, but they don't like it being around them.

"We catch a lot of bass that have no intention of eating a lure. To catch crappie or other fish, they need to be hungry. But for bass that doesn't seem to be the case. They strike out of aggression or territory protection or something. I think the bubblegum color (provokes) that."

Grape

The color isn't called grape, but rather "purple with silver fleck," which is "for exactly the opposite color water -- really muddy water," Houston says. "So muddy that you can run a spinnerbait on top of the water and you can't see the skirt."

The discovery of the effectiveness of that color also was pioneered by his wife. "We used to go over to Lake Dardanelle on the Arkansas River and fish in the spring every other day for 3-4 weeks, from late March into April," he says. "On one trip the water was particularly muddy. The river had got up and was running real hard. It was all chocolate mud, terrible.

"We were back in there fishing one day, and it was about 11:00 and we hadn't had a single bite all day. Chris said she was going to drop the Color-C-Lector into the water and see what color it recommended. I told her that she didn't need to. Fluorescent red, yellow or orange is what we use in muddy water in Oklahoma.

"She said the Color-C-Lector said purple. I said it was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard, especially since the band for purple (on the Color-C- Lector) is extremely narrow. In other words, to get the needle on that band is pretty unusual.

"Well, she put a purple skirt on, and on the third cast she caught a 4- pounder," he says. "I figured that was just lucky. Ten or 15 minutes later she caught a 6-pounder. Then I put a purple skirt on my bait, and we just slammed them."

Since then he's added purple to his many fishing rules of thumb. "In really muddy water, move to purple. It has worked time and time again. It's also a good clearwater color, but in muddy water it's just amazing how well it works."

Soon after that, Houston developed the Red Man spinnerbait, and "sold tons of them in Oklahoma. We sold Wal-Mart Red Man spinnerbaits back when Sam Walton had 13 stores," he says. "One of the stores was in Fort Smith, Ark., right on the bank of the Arkansas River, and we couldn't build them enough purple Red Man spinnerbaits. It was amazing.

"In today's spinnerbait world, it wasn't that many baits. We were selling 20 dozen spinnerbaits a week, and 15 dozen were purple. And how got started in Fort Smith was me telling my buddies about that day (with Chris). In those days there was no internet, no TV, no magazines. It was just word of mouth."

Equipment

> Houston fishes spinnerbaits with a 6' 6" Jimmy Houston Signature Series medium-heavy Shimano rod, a Shimano Chronarch EMG reel, and 14- or 17-pound green Trilene XT.

> On line, he says: "I've also been using IronSilk quite a bit. And some people argue that when you're spinnerbait fishing, the color of line doesn't make a difference. But if a camera can't see (green line), I figure it's more difficult for fish to see."

> "I fish a trailer hook 100 percent of the time during tournaments, but I don't use one when I'm not fishing tournaments. In fact, when I'm not fishing a tournament, the majority of the time I fish with the barb mashed down. That damages the fish less, and it's easier to unhook them."

> The bubblegum and purple colors are only available in Terminator's Jimmy Houston Speed Bead Series of spinnerbaits. The Speed Bead refers to a quick- change blade system. For more on these baits, click here.