A Swimbait Story
By Terry Hodges
Reproduced with the exclusive permission of Bass West Magazine, Please Click on the Bass West Enhanced banner to subscribe.
Bass fishing guide Gary Harrison wasn't feeling particularly confident as he picked up his flippin' stick and regarded once again the nine-inch chunk of carved and painted wood tied to his 25-pound mono. But he had asked for it: the huge wooden plug, painted to resemble a rainbow trout.
It was 1993, and Harrison's friends Ken Huddleston and Chomp Josephite had been experimenting with large wooden baits, dreaming of catching large bass on them. Harrison had collaborated with them and had followed their progress with interest. He was particularly interested in the trout pattern they were working on.
Like many anglers who regularly fished Castaic and other Southern California reservoirs stocked with rainbow trout, Harrison had seen trout being pursued by bass. He had watched frantic trout racing full speed and jumping from the water, hotly pursued by big bass. Once he had actually seen a big bass clear the water and snatch a trout in mid-air. No wonder, then, that he was anxious to see a good trout look-alike bait. He had spoken often with Huddleston and Josephite about it, and the resulting prototype trout pattern was now on the end of his line.
It was a calm, windless day on Upper Castaic Reservoir as Harrison quietly maneuvered his boat to within casting distance of a submerged island. He then flung the big wooden bait far out over the water. With him in the boat that day was Steve Quinlan, then editor of the Western Outdoor News. Quinlan looked on with interest as Harrison began a slow retrieve.
Suddenly, the bait simply stopped. Harrison at first thought he had snagged a stump, but then the rod was nearly ripped from his hands as something big felt the bite of steel hooks and lunged for deep water. Line burned off the reel and Harrison collected himself and settled in for the fight. He finally turned the big fish and slowly began working it toward the boat. Slowly, he wore it down. And then he saw it, and the sight struck him like a cattle prod pressed to his heart.
What he saw was a pair of gaping jaws that could have inhaled a mallard, gleaming eyes like silver dollars, and a great, scaled body that Quinlan would later describe as "a green beer keg with fins."
"Get the net!" shouted Harrison, certain he was looking at the new world record largemouth.
Quinlan scrambled for the net and was about to bring it into play when suddenly the great fish made a convulsive gasp and the wooden bait shot from its mouth. The two men then watched in horror as a million dollars' worth of fish slipped silently away into the depths.
Harrison felt physically ill, as though he had been stomach-punched, and he knew that his life would never again be quite the same. Six hours later, when he pulled into his driveway, he still had the look of a man who had just survived a train wreck. His wife took one look at him and said, "What happened to you?"
For Ken Huddleston and Chomp Josephite, the startling news of Harrison's lost monster bass was just one more surprise in a string of surprises that had begun a few months earlier. During a day of crappie fishing, Josephite had showed Huddleston a homemade wooden bait that resembled a muskie plug and the two men had discussed recent, intriguing events in Southern California.
They discussed tantalizing news of huge bass being taken on huge baits. Alan Cole's A.C. Plug, a large, jointed wooden bait, was being used to target big bass, as were giant tube baits that Gary Harrison had convinced a bait maker to try. There were also a few anglers fishing large, rubber, paddle-tailed, jig-headed ocean baits they called "swim baits." All were being used with success, catching trophy-size largemouths.
But these baits were either expensive or difficult to acquire; certainly beyond the reach of Huddleston and Josephite, a pair of struggling, guitar-playing musicians. So they decided to carve big baits of their own and give them a try. Huddleston wanted to create a more fish-like bait than the A.C. Plug, so he drew a design and started to work. His first efforts were carved from a two-by-four he found on Josephite's driveway, and Josephite did the painting. When the first ones were ready, they headed for Pyramid Lake.
They had no luck with the new baits at first. No luck, that is, until they were ready to leave. It was then that an angler spotted the big wooden baits that were still attached to their lines. "Hey, where did you buy those?" he inquired.
When Huddleston explained that he and his friend had made the baits themselves, the guy wanted to buy them. When told the baits were not for sale, the man was persistent.
"I'll give you anything you want," said the man reaching for his wallet. "Here," he said. "I'll give you everything I've got." He cleaned out his wallet, offering $85 for the bait.
Josephite firmly refused to sell his bait, but Huddleston needed the money. He accepted the bills, handed over his own homemade bait, and in so doing he took the first tiny step in what was to become the fascinating journey of his life's work.
Huddleston carved more baits, simply intending to catch fish with them, but when they went to the lake, the same thing happened. Anglers spotted the baits and tried to buy them right off of their lines, offering handfuls of cash. Huddleston and Josephite at first refused, but when the offers went as high as $150, they could no longer ignore what was definitely a business opportunity.
In the days and weeks that followed, they did nothing but make the big wooden baits - refining their methods, and improving their design - and the baits were all sold before they were even finished. Word had spread, and the baits were in high demand. Castaic Lure Company had been born and was learning to walk.
It was about this time that Gary Harrison entered the picture and requested the more realistic trout-design bait. He and Huddleston even visited a trout hatchery and studied live fish so they could get the colors and other details just right. Then came the day that Harrison lost the "beer keg with fins," a story that Steve Quinlan eagerly printed in the Western Outdoor News. The fame of the two bait-carving musicians multiplied, as did demand for their Castaic Lure Company baits.
There followed two intense years during which Huddleston and Josephite did nothing but build baits. They used a power-driven, twin-head, duplicating machine to rough out the baits, but there still remained tedious detail work that had to be done in order to finish them. However, the baits sold as fast as they could make them.
Near the end of the second grueling year, they received a 1000-bait order from Japan, sight unseen, for 500 each of two new patterns they were working on, Baby Bass and Smallmouth. The two men then did nothing but build baits, sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, for over a month. Huddleston was exhausted, loathing the sight of his Dremel tool each morning, and sensing he was near the point of total burnout.
But by then they had already started experimenting with a new design concept, that of combining a carved, wooden head with a poured-rubber body. Huddleston saw great promise in the new "hybrid" hard/soft baits, since they were potentially much easier to mass produce. He sent prototypes to Harrison and a few others to try, and all caught big bass on them. They applied for a design patent on the concept.
About this time (June 1996), an investor entered the picture, wanting to pump money into Castaic Lure Company and expand it. Josephite was all for it, but Huddleston had had enough and wanted out. They discussed the problem and, being friends, they reached a simple solution: Josephite would take the hard-bait side of the company, and Huddleston would get the hybrid soft-bait patent and start a new business.
A few months earlier, Huddleston and Josephite had hired an employee, Jason Scott, to help them build baits. When the split occurred, Scott decided to go with Huddleston and buy in as a partner. They agreed to call the new company Castaic Soft Baits. Josephite chose the name Castaic Hard Baits. Soon, Huddleston had a business license, and the soft-bait company was off and running.
When the first Castaic Soft Bait product hit the market, many were surprised. The early testing of the hybrid hard/soft bait had been with a trout-design bait, but Huddleston threw everyone a curve by first coming out with a sunfish design. But it looked good.
Winter was coming on when Bob Scott, Jason's father, took a supply of the new Sunfish baits to Lake Fork, Texas, perhaps the best trophy bass water in that huge state. The bite at the lake had been miserable, but Scott not only caught fish immediately, he caught big fish, including one over ten pounds. The Texans were astounded. Word quickly spread, and suddenly everyone was clamoring to get their hands on the new Sunfish bait.
So in demand was the Sunfish that Brannon's Bass Shop, in northern Texas, phoned in a standing order: "Send us 500 baits a week 'til we tell you to stop."
Orders for the Sunfish continued to flood in, the demand much greater than Scott and Huddleston could supply. The baits were in such short supply in some areas that guides were actually renting them to each other. Huddleston and Scott hired employees and followed the Sunfish bait with the already-tested Trout design, then a Threadfin Shad, and a Gizzard Shad. All were successful, and the orders continued to pour in. Business for Castaic Soft Baits was booming. Bass Pro Shops was now carrying their products, as were Cabeles and Wal Mart. As production - and thus production costs - increased, Huddleston and Scott made a bold move, relocating their manufacturing plant to Mexico.
But Huddleston, somehow, was not enjoying himself. Having divorced himself from the grueling demands of his previous business with Josephite, he was now once again finding himself caught up in a whirlwind of success that demanded all of his time. To make matters worse, Scott had grand plans for expanding the business yet further, an enthusiasm Huddleston didn't share. So, once again, Huddleston decided to move on, selling his half of Castaic Soft Baits to Scott but intending to pursue his dream of producing super-quality, truly custom, big baits.
He retired to his barn, near Hollywood, and began what would turn out to be two years of contemplation, planning, designing, and problem solving. During these creative years he not only developed the Huddleston Deluxe, a soft-bodied rainbow trout imitation that would emerge as arguably the finest big-bass-catching tool on the planet, but he designed equipment and techniques with which to manufacture it.
One of the first to get a look at the new Huddleston Deluxe was Bill Siemantel, an expert in fishing with all manner of the large bass baits that were more and more being referred to collectively as "swim baits." Huddleston respected Siemantel's vast knowledge on the subject and ran ideas by him from time to time. It was Siemantel, in fact, who suggested a "rate of fall" system that Huddleston ultimately incorporated into the Deluxe.
Upon seeing the prototype bait for the first time, Siemantel was dazzled by it. It looked like a trout, felt like a trout, and he was soon to find that it swam like a trout. Huddleston was looking for a constructive evaluation, so Siemantel took the bait to Upper Castaic. After catching several nice bass on the bait, one of them a twelve-pounder, his only suggestion was that he felt that the tail of the bait could use a little more "kick."
Huddleston made minor adjustments to the design, and then put the bait into production in 2003. In need of cash, he immediately placed the first 100 Huddleston Deluxe baits up for sale on the internet. One of his first customers was J & T Tackle, in Simi Valley. The J & T people bought thirty-six baits, keeping two for themselves and putting the rest on the floor. Soon thereafter, famed big-bass angler Butch Brown walked through the door, took one look at the Huddleston Deluxe, and it was love at first sight. "How many do you want?" the clerk asked.
"I'll take 'em all," said Brown, and the clerk blinked in amazement as Brown wrote out a check for $850 plus tax. The following morning, Brown tried the baits on Castaic and nailed several largemouth, one of them a two-digit monster. That night, he sought out the Huddleston Deluxe on the internet and ordered thirty more baits. Two nights after that, he ordered yet another thirty. He now owned nearly all of Huddleston's initial production run, with the sum total of his purchases approaching $3000.
"My wife about freaked out," said Brown.
Others just about freaked out as well. A number of other big-name bass anglers wanted desperately to get their hands on a Huddleston Deluxe, but Brown had them all. Even Bill Siemantel had to wait.
Brown, in the meantime, had set about learning how to fish the new bait, and the more he learned, the more he was disinclined to use any other bait. Because of the Deluxe's unique rate of fall options, Brown found that he could efficiently fish any water at any depth. Huddleston had produced four versions of the bait based on rate of fall, or the depth to which they would sink in ten seconds. There was a Zero, which was a floater, then a Five, a Twelve, and a Sixteen. Brown had many of each and found good uses for all of them.
Brown immediately caught big bass on the baits, and he began a solid year of fishing the Deluxe almost every day, a year that was to yield a staggering statistic: during those twelve months he caught 121 bass over ten pounds. Word quickly spread, and each day there would be newspaper people and outdoors writers awaiting his return to the ramp, anxious to view and photograph the monsters he would drag from his live well and release.
Among the many awesome five-fish limits Brown caught during that year were two that included two fish over fifteen pounds. He kept Huddleston apprised of his success, sending him photographs. Huddleston, in the meantime, was now selling his super-baits as fast as he could crank them out.
Siemantel was also catching mind-boggling limits of huge bass on the Deluxe; however, in his own unique style, he made a science of it. He could tell you, for instance, how many inches of 25-pound Maxima Ultragreen were being moved with each handle-turn of his Shimano Calcutta 400 at whatever distance the bait happened to be from the boat. He could also tell you the pounds of pressure applied to a hook-set, at the fish, from a mighty sweep of his eight-foot Lamiglas XC 807 Big Bait Special, at whatever distance the fish happened to be from the rod-tip. With his analytical approach to fishing, it's no wonder that Siemantel appreciated so very much the precision and balance that Huddleston had built into his baits. Siemantel noted, for instance, that when the Huddleston Deluxe was allowed to sink to the bottom, it would remain upright like a live fish.
When you ask the big boys like Brown and Siemantel how to fish a Huddleston Deluxe, they seem to agree that slow is best. Even Huddleston himself, who once took six bass over ten pounds in a single day on his bait, will tell you to fish the bait slow.
"When you think you're fishing it slow, slow it down even more," he will say.
Brown, too, will tell you, "Make your cast, lay the rod down, smoke a cigar, drink a cup of coffee, then spend twenty minutes working in the bait."
Siemantel, on the other hand, prefers a slightly faster retrieve.
"Crank at a steady speed, just fast enough to get a life-like tail-kick." But he will also tell you that during the annual post-spawn largemouth feeding binge, you can't crank fast enough.
Both Brown and Siemantel agree that where you fish is equally as important as what you fish, and both advocate fishing "uphill." They position their boats in shallow water and cast to deep water. Their decision as to which rate-of-fall model of the Deluxe to choose is based on where in the water column they intend to fish.
Both men also agree that "trap" hooks are necessary; that is, a second treble hook located somewhere near the bait's tail. They use steel leader material for this purpose and position the hooks according to where, relative to the bottom, they intend to fish. But the positioning of hooks is a story in itself, and it is here where some of the best-kept secrets lie.
What is definitely no secret here is that Huddleston has applied ten years' worth of bait-building experience in order to come up with an excellent product. Brown and Siemantel are open in their admiration and respect for Huddleston, with Siemantel perhaps saying it best when he notes that, "Ken Huddleston is an artist, the best designer of bass baits in the world."
Siemantel and Brown are not alone in this opinion, but Huddleston is quiet about his successes and refuses to take all the credit. A highly spiritual person, Huddleston believes that his inspiration and success with the Huddleston Deluxe was a blessing from God.
Be that as it may, the Huddleston Deluxe is undeniably a blessing to big-bass anglers everywhere, and in the highly competitive game of big-bait design and manufacture, Ken Huddleston, with his superb new Huddleston Deluxe, has hit a long-ball homer.
http://www.westernbass.com/utah/library/view.html?id=2668
By Terry Hodges
Reproduced with the exclusive permission of Bass West Magazine, Please Click on the Bass West Enhanced banner to subscribe.
Bass fishing guide Gary Harrison wasn't feeling particularly confident as he picked up his flippin' stick and regarded once again the nine-inch chunk of carved and painted wood tied to his 25-pound mono. But he had asked for it: the huge wooden plug, painted to resemble a rainbow trout.
It was 1993, and Harrison's friends Ken Huddleston and Chomp Josephite had been experimenting with large wooden baits, dreaming of catching large bass on them. Harrison had collaborated with them and had followed their progress with interest. He was particularly interested in the trout pattern they were working on.
Like many anglers who regularly fished Castaic and other Southern California reservoirs stocked with rainbow trout, Harrison had seen trout being pursued by bass. He had watched frantic trout racing full speed and jumping from the water, hotly pursued by big bass. Once he had actually seen a big bass clear the water and snatch a trout in mid-air. No wonder, then, that he was anxious to see a good trout look-alike bait. He had spoken often with Huddleston and Josephite about it, and the resulting prototype trout pattern was now on the end of his line.
It was a calm, windless day on Upper Castaic Reservoir as Harrison quietly maneuvered his boat to within casting distance of a submerged island. He then flung the big wooden bait far out over the water. With him in the boat that day was Steve Quinlan, then editor of the Western Outdoor News. Quinlan looked on with interest as Harrison began a slow retrieve.
Suddenly, the bait simply stopped. Harrison at first thought he had snagged a stump, but then the rod was nearly ripped from his hands as something big felt the bite of steel hooks and lunged for deep water. Line burned off the reel and Harrison collected himself and settled in for the fight. He finally turned the big fish and slowly began working it toward the boat. Slowly, he wore it down. And then he saw it, and the sight struck him like a cattle prod pressed to his heart.
What he saw was a pair of gaping jaws that could have inhaled a mallard, gleaming eyes like silver dollars, and a great, scaled body that Quinlan would later describe as "a green beer keg with fins."
"Get the net!" shouted Harrison, certain he was looking at the new world record largemouth.
Quinlan scrambled for the net and was about to bring it into play when suddenly the great fish made a convulsive gasp and the wooden bait shot from its mouth. The two men then watched in horror as a million dollars' worth of fish slipped silently away into the depths.
Harrison felt physically ill, as though he had been stomach-punched, and he knew that his life would never again be quite the same. Six hours later, when he pulled into his driveway, he still had the look of a man who had just survived a train wreck. His wife took one look at him and said, "What happened to you?"
For Ken Huddleston and Chomp Josephite, the startling news of Harrison's lost monster bass was just one more surprise in a string of surprises that had begun a few months earlier. During a day of crappie fishing, Josephite had showed Huddleston a homemade wooden bait that resembled a muskie plug and the two men had discussed recent, intriguing events in Southern California.
They discussed tantalizing news of huge bass being taken on huge baits. Alan Cole's A.C. Plug, a large, jointed wooden bait, was being used to target big bass, as were giant tube baits that Gary Harrison had convinced a bait maker to try. There were also a few anglers fishing large, rubber, paddle-tailed, jig-headed ocean baits they called "swim baits." All were being used with success, catching trophy-size largemouths.
But these baits were either expensive or difficult to acquire; certainly beyond the reach of Huddleston and Josephite, a pair of struggling, guitar-playing musicians. So they decided to carve big baits of their own and give them a try. Huddleston wanted to create a more fish-like bait than the A.C. Plug, so he drew a design and started to work. His first efforts were carved from a two-by-four he found on Josephite's driveway, and Josephite did the painting. When the first ones were ready, they headed for Pyramid Lake.
They had no luck with the new baits at first. No luck, that is, until they were ready to leave. It was then that an angler spotted the big wooden baits that were still attached to their lines. "Hey, where did you buy those?" he inquired.
When Huddleston explained that he and his friend had made the baits themselves, the guy wanted to buy them. When told the baits were not for sale, the man was persistent.
"I'll give you anything you want," said the man reaching for his wallet. "Here," he said. "I'll give you everything I've got." He cleaned out his wallet, offering $85 for the bait.
Josephite firmly refused to sell his bait, but Huddleston needed the money. He accepted the bills, handed over his own homemade bait, and in so doing he took the first tiny step in what was to become the fascinating journey of his life's work.
Huddleston carved more baits, simply intending to catch fish with them, but when they went to the lake, the same thing happened. Anglers spotted the baits and tried to buy them right off of their lines, offering handfuls of cash. Huddleston and Josephite at first refused, but when the offers went as high as $150, they could no longer ignore what was definitely a business opportunity.
In the days and weeks that followed, they did nothing but make the big wooden baits - refining their methods, and improving their design - and the baits were all sold before they were even finished. Word had spread, and the baits were in high demand. Castaic Lure Company had been born and was learning to walk.
It was about this time that Gary Harrison entered the picture and requested the more realistic trout-design bait. He and Huddleston even visited a trout hatchery and studied live fish so they could get the colors and other details just right. Then came the day that Harrison lost the "beer keg with fins," a story that Steve Quinlan eagerly printed in the Western Outdoor News. The fame of the two bait-carving musicians multiplied, as did demand for their Castaic Lure Company baits.
There followed two intense years during which Huddleston and Josephite did nothing but build baits. They used a power-driven, twin-head, duplicating machine to rough out the baits, but there still remained tedious detail work that had to be done in order to finish them. However, the baits sold as fast as they could make them.
Near the end of the second grueling year, they received a 1000-bait order from Japan, sight unseen, for 500 each of two new patterns they were working on, Baby Bass and Smallmouth. The two men then did nothing but build baits, sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, for over a month. Huddleston was exhausted, loathing the sight of his Dremel tool each morning, and sensing he was near the point of total burnout.
But by then they had already started experimenting with a new design concept, that of combining a carved, wooden head with a poured-rubber body. Huddleston saw great promise in the new "hybrid" hard/soft baits, since they were potentially much easier to mass produce. He sent prototypes to Harrison and a few others to try, and all caught big bass on them. They applied for a design patent on the concept.
About this time (June 1996), an investor entered the picture, wanting to pump money into Castaic Lure Company and expand it. Josephite was all for it, but Huddleston had had enough and wanted out. They discussed the problem and, being friends, they reached a simple solution: Josephite would take the hard-bait side of the company, and Huddleston would get the hybrid soft-bait patent and start a new business.
A few months earlier, Huddleston and Josephite had hired an employee, Jason Scott, to help them build baits. When the split occurred, Scott decided to go with Huddleston and buy in as a partner. They agreed to call the new company Castaic Soft Baits. Josephite chose the name Castaic Hard Baits. Soon, Huddleston had a business license, and the soft-bait company was off and running.
When the first Castaic Soft Bait product hit the market, many were surprised. The early testing of the hybrid hard/soft bait had been with a trout-design bait, but Huddleston threw everyone a curve by first coming out with a sunfish design. But it looked good.
Winter was coming on when Bob Scott, Jason's father, took a supply of the new Sunfish baits to Lake Fork, Texas, perhaps the best trophy bass water in that huge state. The bite at the lake had been miserable, but Scott not only caught fish immediately, he caught big fish, including one over ten pounds. The Texans were astounded. Word quickly spread, and suddenly everyone was clamoring to get their hands on the new Sunfish bait.
So in demand was the Sunfish that Brannon's Bass Shop, in northern Texas, phoned in a standing order: "Send us 500 baits a week 'til we tell you to stop."
Orders for the Sunfish continued to flood in, the demand much greater than Scott and Huddleston could supply. The baits were in such short supply in some areas that guides were actually renting them to each other. Huddleston and Scott hired employees and followed the Sunfish bait with the already-tested Trout design, then a Threadfin Shad, and a Gizzard Shad. All were successful, and the orders continued to pour in. Business for Castaic Soft Baits was booming. Bass Pro Shops was now carrying their products, as were Cabeles and Wal Mart. As production - and thus production costs - increased, Huddleston and Scott made a bold move, relocating their manufacturing plant to Mexico.
But Huddleston, somehow, was not enjoying himself. Having divorced himself from the grueling demands of his previous business with Josephite, he was now once again finding himself caught up in a whirlwind of success that demanded all of his time. To make matters worse, Scott had grand plans for expanding the business yet further, an enthusiasm Huddleston didn't share. So, once again, Huddleston decided to move on, selling his half of Castaic Soft Baits to Scott but intending to pursue his dream of producing super-quality, truly custom, big baits.
He retired to his barn, near Hollywood, and began what would turn out to be two years of contemplation, planning, designing, and problem solving. During these creative years he not only developed the Huddleston Deluxe, a soft-bodied rainbow trout imitation that would emerge as arguably the finest big-bass-catching tool on the planet, but he designed equipment and techniques with which to manufacture it.
One of the first to get a look at the new Huddleston Deluxe was Bill Siemantel, an expert in fishing with all manner of the large bass baits that were more and more being referred to collectively as "swim baits." Huddleston respected Siemantel's vast knowledge on the subject and ran ideas by him from time to time. It was Siemantel, in fact, who suggested a "rate of fall" system that Huddleston ultimately incorporated into the Deluxe.
Upon seeing the prototype bait for the first time, Siemantel was dazzled by it. It looked like a trout, felt like a trout, and he was soon to find that it swam like a trout. Huddleston was looking for a constructive evaluation, so Siemantel took the bait to Upper Castaic. After catching several nice bass on the bait, one of them a twelve-pounder, his only suggestion was that he felt that the tail of the bait could use a little more "kick."
Huddleston made minor adjustments to the design, and then put the bait into production in 2003. In need of cash, he immediately placed the first 100 Huddleston Deluxe baits up for sale on the internet. One of his first customers was J & T Tackle, in Simi Valley. The J & T people bought thirty-six baits, keeping two for themselves and putting the rest on the floor. Soon thereafter, famed big-bass angler Butch Brown walked through the door, took one look at the Huddleston Deluxe, and it was love at first sight. "How many do you want?" the clerk asked.
"I'll take 'em all," said Brown, and the clerk blinked in amazement as Brown wrote out a check for $850 plus tax. The following morning, Brown tried the baits on Castaic and nailed several largemouth, one of them a two-digit monster. That night, he sought out the Huddleston Deluxe on the internet and ordered thirty more baits. Two nights after that, he ordered yet another thirty. He now owned nearly all of Huddleston's initial production run, with the sum total of his purchases approaching $3000.
"My wife about freaked out," said Brown.
Others just about freaked out as well. A number of other big-name bass anglers wanted desperately to get their hands on a Huddleston Deluxe, but Brown had them all. Even Bill Siemantel had to wait.
Brown, in the meantime, had set about learning how to fish the new bait, and the more he learned, the more he was disinclined to use any other bait. Because of the Deluxe's unique rate of fall options, Brown found that he could efficiently fish any water at any depth. Huddleston had produced four versions of the bait based on rate of fall, or the depth to which they would sink in ten seconds. There was a Zero, which was a floater, then a Five, a Twelve, and a Sixteen. Brown had many of each and found good uses for all of them.
Brown immediately caught big bass on the baits, and he began a solid year of fishing the Deluxe almost every day, a year that was to yield a staggering statistic: during those twelve months he caught 121 bass over ten pounds. Word quickly spread, and each day there would be newspaper people and outdoors writers awaiting his return to the ramp, anxious to view and photograph the monsters he would drag from his live well and release.
Among the many awesome five-fish limits Brown caught during that year were two that included two fish over fifteen pounds. He kept Huddleston apprised of his success, sending him photographs. Huddleston, in the meantime, was now selling his super-baits as fast as he could crank them out.
Siemantel was also catching mind-boggling limits of huge bass on the Deluxe; however, in his own unique style, he made a science of it. He could tell you, for instance, how many inches of 25-pound Maxima Ultragreen were being moved with each handle-turn of his Shimano Calcutta 400 at whatever distance the bait happened to be from the boat. He could also tell you the pounds of pressure applied to a hook-set, at the fish, from a mighty sweep of his eight-foot Lamiglas XC 807 Big Bait Special, at whatever distance the fish happened to be from the rod-tip. With his analytical approach to fishing, it's no wonder that Siemantel appreciated so very much the precision and balance that Huddleston had built into his baits. Siemantel noted, for instance, that when the Huddleston Deluxe was allowed to sink to the bottom, it would remain upright like a live fish.
When you ask the big boys like Brown and Siemantel how to fish a Huddleston Deluxe, they seem to agree that slow is best. Even Huddleston himself, who once took six bass over ten pounds in a single day on his bait, will tell you to fish the bait slow.
"When you think you're fishing it slow, slow it down even more," he will say.
Brown, too, will tell you, "Make your cast, lay the rod down, smoke a cigar, drink a cup of coffee, then spend twenty minutes working in the bait."
Siemantel, on the other hand, prefers a slightly faster retrieve.
"Crank at a steady speed, just fast enough to get a life-like tail-kick." But he will also tell you that during the annual post-spawn largemouth feeding binge, you can't crank fast enough.
Both Brown and Siemantel agree that where you fish is equally as important as what you fish, and both advocate fishing "uphill." They position their boats in shallow water and cast to deep water. Their decision as to which rate-of-fall model of the Deluxe to choose is based on where in the water column they intend to fish.
Both men also agree that "trap" hooks are necessary; that is, a second treble hook located somewhere near the bait's tail. They use steel leader material for this purpose and position the hooks according to where, relative to the bottom, they intend to fish. But the positioning of hooks is a story in itself, and it is here where some of the best-kept secrets lie.
What is definitely no secret here is that Huddleston has applied ten years' worth of bait-building experience in order to come up with an excellent product. Brown and Siemantel are open in their admiration and respect for Huddleston, with Siemantel perhaps saying it best when he notes that, "Ken Huddleston is an artist, the best designer of bass baits in the world."
Siemantel and Brown are not alone in this opinion, but Huddleston is quiet about his successes and refuses to take all the credit. A highly spiritual person, Huddleston believes that his inspiration and success with the Huddleston Deluxe was a blessing from God.
Be that as it may, the Huddleston Deluxe is undeniably a blessing to big-bass anglers everywhere, and in the highly competitive game of big-bait design and manufacture, Ken Huddleston, with his superb new Huddleston Deluxe, has hit a long-ball homer.
http://www.westernbass.com/utah/library/view.html?id=2668
I caught the first fish ever on the Huddleston deluxe. It was a 38 inch musky in papoose lake in Vilas County wisconsin. Caught it while filming TV show with my friend Travis and Adam during the Cisco spawn in November. Caught on the 3rd castname is Michael Ovadal. I am Kenny Huddlestons brother in law. The first 8 baits ever made came to me. Have Caught many, many since
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