Legend of Our Sport: Bob Carnes
May 20, 2009
Bob Carnes prototyped the first rubber bass jig using elastic threads unraveled from a woman's girdle. That was forty years ago in Springdale, Arkansas. Springdale is just a loud holler from fabled Arkansas lakes like Table Rock, Beaver and Bull Shoals.
Carnes also pioneered the hook-protecting fiberguard, and he designed the most remarkably snag-resistant and versatile jig head shape ever thrown at a bass, the Arkie® jig. Bob's company, Arkie Lures, still builds them. Arkie® is their registered trademark. One version or another of Carnes' Arkie® style jig shape is also offered by most manufacturers that makes bass jigs. Used worldwide by practically every bass angler, it's a safe bet you have one of Bob's Arkie® style jig versions made by one manufacturer or another in your tackle box.
Carnes (who's in his mid-sixties now) started to sell home-made chenille crappie jigs to local tackle shops while still a teenager. A local tackle shop owner suggested he try making bass jigs, and challenged young Bob to come up with a more snag-resistant bass jig.
Other local people made jigs of some type or another then. Fishing was pretty much a local thing about forty-five years ago, says Carnes. There was not much wider regional or national awareness of fishing back then. The fishing world went no further than the local boys, and home-made lures like Carnes' original jigs stayed in the local area.
Bucktail Jigs, Pork Eels and Twin Spins
About the only jig head used in the area at that time was a banana head shape. The banana head is still used today as a striper jig. Back then for bass, it could have a hank of deer tail lashed on it. You'd impale a salty nine-inch pork eel on the open hook. There was no concept of a weedguard yet. Those darn jigs either caught you a fish or you didn't get to cast one too many times before you snagged it, says Bob.
But the crude banana jig was effective. Back then, it seemed everybody had incredible stringers tied to their boat docks with bass up to five, six, seven pounds hanging in the cool water, waiting to be dressed for dinner.
A twin spin was the second lure used back then, says Bob. This was a bucktail-dressed lead head molded midway onto an extended hook shank. A thin wire form was poked through the hook eye and the wire was twist-wrapped securely onto the extended hook shank in front of the lead head. The two ends of the wire stood upright, out the hook eye. Each arm had a crude swivel and spinner blade on the end. This twin spin was the forerunner of today's modern spinnerbait, says Bob.
Aiming for a Better Bass Jig
Without anything else to aim for, I set my goal for a "better" bass jig to mean a balanced jig. That's what I called my project over the several years it took to develop it - an effort to develop a "balanced" bass jig, says Carnes.
I did not have anything to follow in making the Arkie® jig, says Bob. There was nothing to imitate. Nothing to compare and contrast a "better" bass jig to, except the banana jig. I had $38 dollars to invest in molds, and a local service station had given me two buckets of used tire weights I could melt for lead.
I ran into a gentleman from Kansas City. He had a tool and die shop. I asked him to make a jig mold for me. Then I asked him to modify it, and make another mold and so on. He took a liking to me, and an interest in my idea to make a balanced bass jig. Together, we tried this, that, the other thing over a period of about two years. Unfortunately, we had nothing else to copy. So we didn't know what to do. We started with the banana jig head, which was narrow and rolled over on its side so it snagged often. We widened and flattened and shortened the banana shape, making it snag less and less with each incremental shape change. We wanted it to stand up, to keep the hook up, to keep it from getting hung up even when in contact with something. It wasn't even obvious to us that something as simple as the hook eye should be out on the front of the head. Over time, we crept the hook eye out onto the very point of the head, which also helped our "balanced" jig snag less.
We got our hands on a jig head being made with a wire weedguard. It was almost a square jig head shape that was not very snagless. But the wireguard, now that was something we'd never seen. We had barely begun to experiment with a wireguard on our own balanced head, when a TV fishing show out of St. Louis began to show a jig with a fiberguard. Because of the exposure of TV media, almost overnight it seemed that everyone wanted a fiberguard jig head. So that practically dictated we go to the fiberguard, and we never got too far with a wireguard.
Today, fiberguards come in the perfect length to fit a jig mold and fused on one end so the fibers form a fused bundle. But back then, fiberguard material came in four foot lengths. You had to cut it yourself and somehow keep the cut loose fibers together in a bundle to get them into a mold.
Despite the early difficulty of molding a fiberguard into a jig, the fiberguard worked incredibly well. We now had a good way to protect the hook from snags. That let us focus our remaining efforts on the head shape. The head shape could still get hung up, and after several years of working on it, it simply came down to trial and error, cast after cast, determining what head shape would result in the highest preservation of our baits, says Carnes. There are lots of sunken cedar trees in the lakes here, and our jig development simply came down to designing anything that could best go through that kind of cover.
Flipping was Unheard of Then
Unlike today, no one flipped jigs at shoreline cover back then. Flipping was unheard of. We fished jigs through the crowns of sunken cedar trees, and fished drop-offs. Instead of fishing down drop-offs, we'd put the boat on the shallowest part, and fish uphill. Between banging the jig into trees and banging it into the drop-off ledges on an uphill retrieve, we began to refine the jig's face to make as much shock vibration as possible when it bashed into anything on the way uphill or hit a limb on a tree. You can think of that as a lure action - a sudden impact action - we began to design into the jig face because that impact, it was a strike triggering effect. So we began to optimize the jig head to do that.
All the original jigs were bucktail with the fiberguard, and dressed with a salty pork frog. We developed the original colors for fishing Table Rock at night. Back then, the sections we fished were gin clear water. Black/blue, black/red, black/orange, black/yellow or all red bucktail would work better than all black on different moon phases. Overall, black bucktail with a colored hair strip tied into it, that was the ticket for fishing on Table Rock and the same thing on Bull Shoals, says Bob Carnes.
Goodbye Deer Hair, Hello Rubber
The original Arkie® bass jigs were all bucktail. We first got the idea for a rubber jig when we saw a Gilmore lure company spinnerbait that looked like cut-up rubber bands were used to make it. Of course, it probably was not that, but they were colored strands, and they looked like rubber bands to us. It was the first time we had seen anything like that.
We wanted to try it on the Arkie® jig, but didn't know where to get rubber like that. It came down to the fact there were elastic rubber threads in underwear waistbands, and especially in a woman's girdle. So we unraveled all the elastic threads from a woman's girdle, enough to make the first rubber jigs. It definitely felt like good material and looked good on a jig underwater.
At that time, forty years ago, we traced back where the girdles were being manufactured, and found it was the East Hampton Rubber Company.
Most all of their rubber strands were going into underwear, and it was all white. We negotiated where if we bought so many pounds worth, they would color it for us. We came up with 42 strands as being ideal for a bass jig, and the rubber came in a fifty pound box of one 42-strand wide continuous strip all the way throughout. We'd clip six inches off this huge fifty pound roll to make a 3/8 oz jig, and all had to be physically tied onto the jig head.
In a nutshell, those are the two key things, the presence of the fiberguard and living rubber that have made it such a productive bait, says Carnes.
In the early days, because of the difficulty of molding the fiberguard and hand-tying the rubber, not that many people wanted to make rubber jigs, or were good at doing it. So that eliminated widespread competition in the early days.
Today, with the ease of molding pre-cut fused fiberguards and with pre-assembled silicone slip-on skirts, it's much easier for most anyone to make a good jig.
Achieving National Popularity
Bob Carnes' Arkie® jig got its first big jump outside the local area around 1974. That's when anglers outside the local region came to town to compete on the Poor Boys Circuit, a bass fishing tournament series with anglers from several surrounding states. The local boys blew everybody away with the Arkie® jig and pork, and the Arkie® jig began to travel back home to other states. Soon, tournaments were being won out of state on Arkie® jigs, and a demand began to grow.
Bob's jigs began to be carried in the very first Wal-Marts too. There were only about twelve original Wal-Mart stores limited in the local area then, says Bob, not the hundreds of Wal-Marts there are nationwide today.
As word spread, Bob Carnes began to get calls for his bass jigs from people on the fledgling B.A.S.S. tour. I'd send them jigs, but they were trying hard to keep it quiet. One season, there were five B.A.S.S. tournaments won with my jigs and no one said anything. Finally one pro got up on stage and said he won with a black/blue Arkie® jig with brown pork. The media immediately got hold of me, and over the next two to three years, the Arkie® jig just took off. Fast forward to today, and most bass anglers worldwide probably have an Arkie® style bass jig in their tackle box.
It's to the point today where most bass jigs are now silicone, and hand-tied living rubber is going the way of hand-tied deer hair. Although silicone does catch fish, Bob Carnes doesn't care as much for it. Silicone has more flash, more color options than other jig skirt materials, but Carnes still gives rubber the nod for its flat rather than flashy appearance (of silicone). You don't see too many craws or minnows that flash bright neon colors, says Carnes.
The choice of skirt material should be according to what you are trying to accomplish. Flipping, by far the the most popular type of jig fishing done today, works best with living rubber, says Carnes. Flipping a jig at shallow shoreline cover, you don't have a lot of time to impress the fish. Your jig needs to immediately stand out and make a big presentation, which is what rubber does; it make a big bulk of a bait on the way down. When it hits bottom, the rubber springs out all around the bait, moving away to clearly reveal the jig trailer, which is what the bass wants. At that point, your flip is over, and rubber does the best job during that brief moment, claims Carnes.
Surprisingly, Carnes always has fished more bucktails than he ever did rubber jigs. I'll have a 1/4 oz bucktail tied on 8 lb test all the time. It's just my bait, says Bob. Bucktail is hollow hair. It floats and flutters because air is trapped inside each strand, and has more subtle quivering movement than other materials.
The minute I hear a frog croak on the bank, I start to use a lot of pork baits on the bucktail. Carnes also uses plastic craw or twintail trailers, but he's still partial to pork, especially when swimming a jig.
One thing I would tell a young man today is that when flipping the shoreline gets tough, go to a bucktail and move offshore to the drop-offs. Anglers have gotten away from fishing drop-offs. No one is swimming a jig any more over open water cover and tree tops. You rarely see it, says Carnes.
On the 1/4 oz bucktail I throw so much, I always work up a drop-off instead of down it, says Bob. Where bass are suspended in the crowns of flooded hardwood stands, or simply schooling over structure, I'll tend to position the boat toward the shallowest spot, and cast toward deeper, open water. The key is how far to let the jig sink at first, says Bob. When I let it get down to where I think the fish are, I'll give the jig one flip. This is an attention-getter. It signals something is not quite right. It's just like a shad in trouble that flips up on its side, making an attempt to right itself. I then let it fall again and give it two flips. Then let it fall again. All the while it is coming back to me in a pendulum arc, and give it three flips. Carnes just pops it quick, to give it a short, erratic, struggling movement. It moves at most one foot when you flip it. It's just an attention-getter that shows bass something is not right. I basically let the jig swing back to me, through the fish, through the cover, and pop it once, twice or three times.
On its way back in, it's advantageous if the jig bumps into a limb or anything else. That impact is a great strike trigger designed into the Arkie® jig. More often than not, the "balanced" bass jig built by Bob Carnes forty years ago will still get nipped as it bounces off and work its way through snaggy spots without getting stuck.
And there you have the story of the Arkie® jig, an innovation in its day. It worked well then and always will. Virtually unchanged, the Arkie® jig remains one of the best bass lures ever made.