Give 'Em The Spin
By Charlie Ingram
Most propbaits look like stickbaits with a propeller at one or both ends. These topwaters are among the noisiest surface lures, and, like buzzbaits, they trigger reaction strikes from humongous bass. My favorite is the Gilmore Jumper.
Use a propbait when fishing specific targets such as logs, stumps, weed patches and boulders. Fish the lure on a stout bait-casting outfit; I use a 7-foot pitching rod with 20-pound-test mono. Cast close to cover, not way beyond it. And rather than jerking the rod so the lure gurgles and "slushes," try moving the tip gently-just enough to make the propellers barely turn. Big bass will really eat a propbait retrieved in this slow, teasing manner.
Propbaits are the best surface lures when it's windy or stormy. In such cases, jerk the rod harder to make the lure spit water with more gusto.
Double trouble: When bass are chasing schools of shad to the surface, fish a propbait with a chaser lure attached. Make a 21/2-foot leader from 30-pound-test mono, attach one end to the propbait's rear hook and tie a treble hook to the tag end. Stick one hook of the treble into a 5-inch soft jerkbait and then cast the tandem rig into a surfacing bass school. Chug the propbait once or twice and let it sit still. Often you'll catch two bass at a time
Outdoor Life Magazine
Happy Glmore
The Gilmore Jumper, Originally introduced in the early 1970's, was credited with 29 tournament wins in one summer on the Arkansas River.
Written By: Steve Price
If you had the chance to use a topwater lure that once won 29 bass tournaments in one summer, would you use it? Would you fish it if you knew the same lure also helped win a Bass Masters Classic worl Championship, and that now it's also taking big peacock bass in South America?
Of course you would - if you culd get it. But until recently the lure, known as the Gilmore Jumper, has not been readily available. It is now, after years of gathering dust in the Arkansas Warehouse. It's being re-introduced by Dennis Gilmore, the son of the man who developed the lure nearly half a century ago.
The Gilmore Jumper is a 4" long torpedo-shaped surface lure with front and rear propellers and three treble hooks. It appears similar to a number of other top-water lures currently on the market, but ther is one difference.
"I'm making the lures by hand, just like my father Luney Gilmore did years ago," explained Dennis, from his shop in the small Arkansas town of Pelsor. "Each lure is also water tested before we package it for shipment.
"if it isn't the way I think Luney would have wanted it, the lure doesn't go out the door."
Quality control is only part of the story of the Gilmore Jumper. It's made of sugar pine, which allows it to sit higher in the water than a similar plastic lur, and it has over-sized, reversed propellers so it makes more commotion than normal but doesn't roll. The lure can be retrieved at any speed or combination of jerks and pauses; a nuber of pros faver the Jumper over a buzz bait ecause it can be paused beside a target without sinking.
"My father did not put propellers on the first lures he made," continues Dennis, "but soon fishermen began asking for them. He fished a lot around Table Rock and Beaver Lakes in Arkansas and occasionally down on Grand Lake in Oklahoma, and it didn't take him long to realize the advantages of propellers."
"You can make a lot more noise with props but because the lure floats, you can stop it and still keep it in the strike zone."
Again, that is only part of the story of the Gilmore Jumper. The story really begins in the late 1940's after World War II when Luney Gilmore was working as a clerk for Montgomery Ward Company. He had always been an avid angler, and one week he enrolled in a class to learn to tie artificial flies. He soon became so good at it that he had to spend virtually all of his free time tying flies at the request of his friends. In 1949, when he was 39, Luney left Montgomery Ward and opened his own fishing tackle company.
The beginning wasn't glamorous, to say the least. He'd returned to Lurton, Arkansas, his family home, and opened his shop in the basement of the towns one hotel.
"You have to remember, there weren't many lure manufacturers around in those days, and practically no topwater lure makers," says Dennis. "One of the first lures my father made was named the Stick Jumper, and it was a slim plug that sat vertically in the water. Each time you twitched your rod, the lure jumped in the water like a baitfish."
"That was the lure that started my father's business. He always said if he could have made enough Stick Jumpers, he could have retired."
The company grew rapidly, even thought each lure was still being made individually, turned on a lathe, hand-painted, and tested. Soon Gilmore moved out of the hotel and into his aunt's house. Then around 1970, he built his own 110 foot long building where he eventually employed as many as 26 people. Next came the Hoodler, which was similar to Heddon's famous Lucky 13 with its slightly concave face, but with a rear propeller. Again, Luney's belief was that the prop not only added noise but also allowed the lure to be kept longer in the strike zone.
The famous Gilmore Jumper followed shortly thereafter. Luney was extremely particular about the Jumper because for it to truely be effective, it had to sit at just the right height in the water; if it sat too high or to low, the propellers wouldn't perform properly.
Continuous testing and development on Table Rock and other clear water lakes also convinced Luney that reversing the props so they would spin in opposite directions would prevent the lure from rolling when the plug was jerked quickly during a retrieve.
"The thing my father wanted in the Jumper was a lure that could be buzzed, twitched, jerked or just simply retrieved straight back to the boat," remembers Dennis. "He found that most big bass he caught with the lure hit when he fished it with short four or five inch jerks, because it seemed to make the fish mad."
In the mid-1970's Luney even made Jumpers with a real snakeskin coating. Of course, there's a story there, too, which goes something like this:
"Some fisherman was having a pretty good day on the Buffalo River catching bass on a brown-painted Jumper," explains Dennis, "but on one particular fish his line broke and he lost the lure. He was so upset he got into his truck and was headed back to Lurton to get another brown lure when he ran over a copperhead snake on the road.
"He immediately noticed the copperhead's brown coloring, so he skinned the snake, glued the skin on another Jumper, and went back to the river to fish some more. When my father heard the story, he started doing it and offering the lures for sale. His own favorite colors were solid black and what we know today as 'Christmas Tree,' a white body, silver glitter, and green back."
Luney Gilmore remained in lure business until 1987, and kept active as a fisherman and hunter until his death three years later at the age of 80. Bill Norman Lures later marketed the Gilmore Jumper for a year or so but without the success that Luney had had with it. Eventually, the lure was all but lost to history.
A few professional anglers who knew about the Jumper and how to use it managed to keep a handful to themselves. George Cochran used the lure in winning his Classic on the Ohio River in 1987, and Tommy Biffle won the 1993 B.A.S.S MegaBucks tournament with a Jumper.
About a year ago, Luney's son Dennis re-opened his father's famous company and, you guessed it, the first lure he started with was the Gilmore Jumper. It's as close to the original as he can make it, and from a growing number of reports around the country, the new ones catch fish as well as the old ones did.
They're available from Gilmore Mfg., INC., HC 30, Box 98, Pelsor, AR 72856, tel. (870)294-5337
Anglers Choice Magazine
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