The Zell Pop Has Gained Weight
August 26, 2009
The sky was already blue but my fishing partner’s profanity was about to make it a shade darker.
“Dammit,” he grunted as he picked at a backlash, “I wish they’d make a larger version of this thing.”
“I know where you’re coming from,” I replied. “I can handle that bait after a fashion with my bait caster but I usually wind up throwing it with a spinning outfit.”
The “thing” that caused our discussion that morning was a Zell Pop XZ2 bass lure. Don’t get me wrong. We weren’t complaining about the productivity of the bait itself. We had both caught our share of fish on these lures. But like some other bass anglers we knew, we both sometimes wished it came in a larger size so we could handle it more easily on a bait casting outfit.
Well, friends, somebody must have been listening.
One of the new lures that grabbed my attention at the American Sportfishing Association’s ICAST show at Orlando this summer was exactly what Charlie and I had been talking about that morning. The folks who market these lures have added the Zell PopXZ3 to their lure lineup.
If you know bass baits from that portion of your anatomy due west and slightly south of your bellybutton, you’re familiar with the name of Zell Rowland. Zell is recognized being as knowledgeable as they come where top water bass baits are concerned.
It was Zell who designed the little original Pop-R as well as the first Zell Pops. It was he, of course, who also came up with this new larger job. I’ve already had a chance to fish this lure. My guess is topwater anglers are going to love it.
So what’s the big difference in this new Zell Pop and its predecessor? The answer lies in its length and weight. As you may know, the original Zell Pop XZ2 was brought to market for the first time in 2005. It was 2 5/16th-inches long and weighed ¼-ounce. The new Zell XZ3 is almost 3-inches in length and weighs 3/8th of an ounce. It has all of the other stuff that made the original versions so popular.
Just how good can either of these Zell Pop baits be? Don’t take my word for it. Ask the guy who walked off with all the marbles at the recent Bassmaster Elite Series tournament at New York’s Lake Oneida. I’m talking about Chad Griffin, the Texas pro who topped many of the world’s best bassers with a 65-pound, 10-ounce weight total over four days of competition.
I didn’t get a chance to attend that tournament. I did get a chance to see one of the TV interviews Griffin did following the event. If you had the same good fortune you’re aware a Zell Pop played a major role in his success.
If you watched that show, you heard Chad say that he wound up losing his Zell Pop right when the school of smallmouth he was on were hitting it like crazy. After he lost it he could hear the fish that got away with it jumping and attempting to throw the lure. He never did get it back.
From then on he had a devil of a time hooking fish. He continued to raise fish but they just wouldn’t take hold of the other lures they way they had the Zell Pop. The color of the one that he did so well on was bone & chartreuse.
Griffin felt color played a role as well as the way he manipulated his lure. He says the color of the one he’d caught so many fish on came closer to matching the color of the baby perch the bass were feeding on than others he tried.
The retrieve the prize-winner used with his Zell Pop brings up a point I’ve emphasized again and again over a lifetime of bass fishing and writing about it. Never---repeat never---get so set in fishing a given lure in one certain way that you fail to try something different with the same bait if the fish aren’t responding.
I mention this in part because of my introduction to Zell Rowland’s original Pop-R. At the time I had a friend who had done well in tournament competition. I had just got my own supply of Pop-Rs. I was curious how my friend who’d already used these lures was fishing them.
“Always,” he said, “throw one up next to cover and then just leave it alone. Wait as long as you can stand to, then give it a pop. Then wait again. Do that all the way back to the boat.”
That approach does work---sometimes. But is that what Chad Griffin did at the New York contest? No way! He did just the opposite.
Here’s what Chad told my friend Lawrence Taylor. Lawrence works for the folks who market the Zell Pop. “I worked it quick (his bone & chartreuse Zell Pop) like a Spook and really made it spit. It was spitting so hard it was like peacock bass fishing. Every now and then I’d stop it, and most bites came right when it stopped or just after I started the retrieve again.”
I like something else that Chad had to say because they echo my own sentiments where the new Zell Pops are concerned. “I love that bait,” he says, “it’s my confidence lure. I can’t believe more people don’t use them.”
Well, partner, with your recent big time success I expect that now more probably people will. I understand Griffin would not divulge exactly where on Lake Oneida he’d found those schooling smallmouth. He might have been better off not telling his competition what he caught ‘em on!
The guy who made of all this possible, of course, is Zell Rowland. I was there when Zell qualified for his first Bassmasters Classic. Since then he’s been to a bunch of them. Along the way he’s earned well more than a million bucks putting bass in the boat. The last I heard he was 16th on the list of all time BASS money makers.
When Gary Yamamoto talks about his famed plastic lures I listen close and careful. I do the same when Zell Rowland discusses surface baits. I expect Chad Griffin undoubtedly feels the same way.
If you want more details on this or other products Zell Rowland has designed you can find them at www.lurenet.com.