Bass Fishing: A Jitterbug Is Deadly

The Jitterbug as a dance dates to 1933 when band leader Cab Calloway called a dance by that name. The Jitterbug as a fishing lure dates to 1934, the year I was born, giving the three (dance/lure/Joel) a similar age.

I couldn't Jitterbug (dance) if my life depended on it. But I can Jitterbug (fish lure) with anyone because anyone can. It is perhaps the easiest fishing lure to use with a Jitterbug you don't have to know anything except how to turn a reel handle. The lure does the work. A cup-shaped lip wobbles against the resistance of the water as you retrieve and the lure shimmies like, well, somebody jitterbugging to Calloway and his orchestra.

As a bit of historical trivia, a fellow named Harry Alexander White, a trombonist with Duke Ellington and Calloway, used the word "jitterbug" possibly about someone who was suffering spasms from Prohibition rotgut. Calloway's trumpet player, Edwin Swayzee, heard the word, wrote a song titled, "Jitterbug," Calloway recorded it, it was a hit and from that raucous beginning we now fish a classic lure with a shady name.

Lure Invented by Arbogast

It wasn't until 1939 that Fred Arbogast started selling his burbling invention. The original Jitterbug was hand-carved of wood by Arbogast. Arbogast liked lures that jiggled like a guy with fire ants up his pants (the Hula Popper, Hula Dancer and Hawaiian Wiggler being several others with erratic action).

The early Bugs were red and white, frog-spotted, or yellow with silver stripes. Sometimes you have to bend the lip on the old lures (it then was metal; later ones were plastic) to get the action right. Otherwise the lure tends to stagger off to the right or left as if it had been drinking heavily, perhaps some of that Prohibition rotgut.

Jitterbug bodies were made of wood until the 1950s when they all became plastic, save for the Musky Jitterbug. Incidentally, Arbogast spelled it "Musky," not "Muskie," which is what ill-informed folks do. Muskie was a United States Senator who once ran for president and who lost out when he got bad publicity for choking up at an emotional moment (if I hooked a 20-pound musky and lost it, I would choke up, no matter if I were running for president or not).

I don't know what a Jitterbug looks like to a big fish. Frogs don't swim with a wobble and crippled fish dart and struggle. A Jitterbug swims more like the way I do thrash and struggle, which leads me to consider that swimming in the ocean, where there are sharks they make movies about, might not be a good career choice. I'd hate to be considered as a great big Jitterbug by something 12 feet long that hasn't had breakfast.

For a time my folks lived right across the road from a fine fishing lake and I regularly trudged across the road, carrying a couple of lures and a casting rod. Once it was raining and my mother, who sometimes ignored the obvious, asked with some concern, "Won't your fishing stuff get wet?"

I explained that it was not uncommon for fishing gear to get wet, especially the lures. My father said, "That's nothing a while back I called to tell her something and she said, Oh, are you calling on the phone?'" We both laughed, but my mother served us cold leftovers that night. Not as cold as her glare, however.

Jittery Bass

Once I waded into the shallow upper end where no one fished. I eased through the lotus pads, around a small island, and cast to a bit of open water. The Jitterbug patiently slop-slopped toward me, the way they do, and the water behind it heaved, and I set the hook on a 7-pound bass, still the largest largemouth I've ever caught.

Is it any wonder that I revere the Jitterbug. The fact that I haven't caught a bass of that size since or any comparable fish on a Jitterbug is meaningless. You don't forget your first kiss and that bass kissed me good!