Somewhere in my brain are two convictions related to bass fishing in Michigan. First, bass season is supposed to start on June 1, not midnight the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend. Second, a Fred Arbogast Jitterbug is the best topwater bait ever invented for catching bass.
As I researched Jitterbugs for this story, I learned that fishing superstar Bill Dance and I have something in common: We each caught our first bass on a Jitterbug, Bill’s came in 1948 when he was 7 years old. Mine was in 1962, when I was 5.
Jitterbugs have been consistent fish catchers since coming on the market almost 90 years ago. Here is a wooden model in the Red Head pattern, which might be 70 years old. The Frog pattern is a modern rendition.
I was fishing on a moonless, dark night with my dad. It was the first day of bass season, June 1, which fell on a Friday. We were on Corey Lake in southern Michigan, where Gramps and Grandma had a cottage, fishing out of Gramps’ 16-foot, grey metal boat. Dad rowed and cast, letting me reel. Of course, he had tied on a redheaded Jitterbug, considered by both Dad and Gramps to be one of the three best lures for bass. The other two were a Heddon Crazy Crawler and a Creek Chub Injured Minnow. All were surface lures, of course. Since we rarely threw anything else, surface lures caught almost all of our bass.
I actually do have some true memories of that evening. It was my first time along on a night bass outing, and it was dark and we had to fish by sound.
Dad rowed slowly along the shoreline, casting the Jitterbug towards shore. After each cast, he’d engage the reel and hand the rod to me. I don’t think he had to tell me to be quiet. As I reeled, we could hear the plop-plop-plop of the lure disturbing the silence and the flat water surface. Dad instructed me to reel faster or slower to keep the lure in its plop-plop sweet spot. The sound was hypnotic and blended with the smell of gasoline from the boat’s outboard and spray-on insect repellent.
Well into the trip (might have been only 10 minutes—remember, I was only 5 years old), I cranked the reel as both of us listened to the rhythmic, soothing plopping. Suddenly, a splash.
“Reel Davy! Reel!”
I reeled. Dad, holding the landing net in one hand and a flashlight in the other, soon scooped a 10-inch bass, which was a keeper back then. Of course, we put it on a chain stringer and ate that fish later.
Perhaps the Jitterbug’s popularity is due to the simplicity of fishing it. You just cast and reel, no rod tip action necessary. Sometimes you can pause the retrieve and vary the speed—nothing complicated about it.
Back before magazines and TV fishing shows convinced me to acquire so much tackle that I now can only find half of it, a Jitterbug was always the top lure for early morning and evening bass forays. Like many other anglers seeking bass back in the 1960s, we only fished for bass in low light and darkness. That is certainly one reason noisy surface lures grew in popularity—it was easy to hear a strike in the dark.
Internet research shows that the Jitterbug actually started as a diving crankbait experiment by Akron, Ohio-based Fred Arbogast, back in the 1920s. Fred installed the metal lip on the bottom of a section of broomstick, but the design didn’t work at all. The original prototype was collecting dust in one of Fred’s drawers when a friend found it and suggested turning the lip over to see if it could be a wobbling surface lure.
What an inspiration! The scoop of a lip not only created a great sound, but also gave the plug an enticing wiggle that mimicked a baitfish scooting along the surface. By 1939, Jitterbugs were on the market, selling for a dollar apiece. In 2026 dollars, a 1939 dollar equals almost 24 dollars. That was a lot of dough back at the tail end of the Great Depression. I’m guessing that most anglers would just buy a lure a season and use it often. They didn’t need 16 different colors back then.
The lures sold well at that exorbitant price because they worked.
A few variations of Jitterbugs occurred over the years. In the first several years, the lures were made of wood. During World War II, metal was scarce, so Arbogast made the lips from plastic, switching back to metal after the war ended. The consensus among anglers was that the metal lips created better action and didn’t melt. Sometime later, Arbogast added a plastic body version, eventually eliminating the wooden bodies altogether. Plastic bodies made the lures more uniform.
PRADCO, the Arkansas-based company that has 17 brands, including Lindy, Smithwick, Heddon, Rebel and Bomber, acquired the Fred Arbogast brand in 1997. Many anglers agree that the newest Jitterbugs work just as well as the classics.
You can tell the difference both from the lips (the older lures have “Akron, Ohio” etched on the lips) and from the way the eyes bug out more.
“You want to catch the biggest bass of your life, go out in front of the marina on a moonless night,” said the old farmer who sold eggs to my grandparents. “Start at midnight and throw an all-black Jitterbug.”
I don’t recall ever trying that, but a Florida angler named L.J. Brasher, regarded as the GOAT of big bass anglers, became famous for the many big bass he caught throwing a black Jitterbug at night. Brasher modified the black 5-inch “Musky Jitterbug” by bending the outside edges of the lip for a slightly different sound, rubberbanding the big lure’s two side trebles to its body and snipping the rear hook’s bottom treble to make it come over surface weeds without snagging. Brasher is credited with tallying more than 500 bass bigger than 10 pounds, one year, catching more than 80 double-digit bass in a single fishing season.
He is said to have stayed on smaller, unpressured lakes in Florida for two days at a time and catching most of those big fish at night.
A Jitterbug stayed in my arsenal throughout the summers I spent at my grandparents’ cottage. Red head with a white body was always the top choice, but I recall also having a jointed yellow one. Dad’s favorite was brown and had a unique, fuzzy “flocked” brown finish to look like a mouse; I saw that lure catch lots of largemouth for him.
I had one of the WWII plastic-lipped Jitterbugs and rue the day it got sold in a garage sale. A couple of years ago, I found a couple of older models at an estate sale, a black one made of plastic and a redhead pattern that’s wood. I paid $5 for the pair. I am more of a lure hoarder than a lure collector, but both of those lures might be the start of a display case. Last fall, I traded a few lures with a friend for a couple of new Jitterbugs, and after thinking about all the fun I used to have fishing them, they’ll be pressed into action.
Starting on June 1, of course.
