Saltwater Classics - Striped Bass Fishing

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Saltwater
(#30 in a Series)
Classics
Don Musso and
Super Strike Lures – Part 3
By Frank Pintauro
A
s promised, Don and Steve
Musso sat with us to detail
Super Strike’s move to
modern plastics. In an
economic climate where it is vital to
be able to reinvent yourself, I think
you will find it fascinating to see just
how important the power of an
innovative product is. For Super
Strike lures have those fish-catching
extras —- a sure, deadly, quality lure.
Put Don Musso up there with Stan
Gibbs and Bob Pond as one of the
great saltwater lure makers of any
generation we have known on the
Striper Coast.
Interview
Frank Pintauro: In the first two articles we did we covered the wooden
era. I guess the big question is why
did Super Strike go to plastic?
Don Musso: I was getting tired of
the wood because you couldn’t
count on every single plug being the
same. That was number one.
Number two was after you used
them for a while, they started taking
water on and they didn’t work properly. Production-wise I knew we
could get out a lot more plugs in
plastic and every plug was going to
be precision-made. Every balance
was going to be exactly the same. If
you took twenty plugs out of a package, twenty plugs would work; compared to if you took twenty wood
plugs out of a package, maybe you’d
get five that were really hot plugs
and the rest would be mediocre.
FP: The problem being wood gets
water-logged and that just affects the
swimming.
DM: That’s exactly right and
even though the wood is sealed, it
will still eventually take on water
A close-up view of the well designed Bullet in
four hard-to-find colors.
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once the hooks start digging into the
body.
FP: For a craftsman like yourself,
to go from wood to plastic you must
have had to really educate yourself
and figure out how to do it. How
did you guys go about doing that?
And the second part of the question
is, Steve, when did you really jumpin in a big way?
Steve Musso: For me it was
about 1987.
DM: In the beginning, both my
sons Donnie and Steve were doing
the wood with me, but as soon as we
went into the plastic lures….Donnie
helped me a lot with the needlefish
assembly work. In fact Donnie had to
spray an emergency order of needles
for Campo when I was away fishing.
SM: I didn’t do so much in the
very beginning of the early plastic
years as those were my teenage years.
Once I started in college I got much
more involved with the business.
The Super Strike Color Chart featuring 34 standard colors.
Hunting & Fishing Collectibles Magazine
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The anatomy of this Bullet highlights its internal structure.
Hard-to-find Clear Darter in transparent color and its packaging.
With only 150 produced, the Bunker Bullet is one of the rarest runs
Super Strike has made.
FP: Did you go to college locally?
SM: Yeah. SUNY Farmingdale.
So since ’86 I’ve been pretty much
steady with the business since then
FP: How long had you been
thinking about the move to plastic?
DM: As far back as 1960 or 1961,
if you remember those plastic pieces
from the last article. It was always in
my mind because I knew the wood
just had nothing but problems.
FP:
So you were basically
researching it for twenty years, from
1961 or ’62 to ’84, What happened in
’84 that said Okay, now’s the time?
DM: When we went up to the
Cape and did such a job on the fish,
I knew I had to get the lure into plastic. I knew I could never keep up
with the demand for the plug in
wood with the way that lure was
catching fish. So I knew I had to get
into plastic, and I knew that the plastic was going to hold up. I also knew
I could design a plug where the wire
went over the top of the plug with a
bigger swivel, being it was so narrow. In wood, if I put a big swivel in,
it was going to be hanging way out
at the bottom and I didn’t want that.
So that was another reason for going
into the plastic. At that point I had to
go to companies that I can find out
prices and get molds made
SM: You did a lot of research?
DM: Yeah, I did. Especially in
regards to specific weights of plastics.
FP: How do you know where to
find the equipment to do it?
DM: Once you design a plug and
you figure out how you want to
make the inside, you make the drawings up then you go to a mold
maker. I met with Ralph Verney, an
engineer with Jameson Plastics in
Baldwin and he had been interested
as far back as 1961 with working
with me on the minnow swimmer.
When I went back with the needlefish, he mentioned a few other companies to go to. I must’ve have gone
to five or six injection mold makers,
and finally I settled on one out here
on the island. The others were actually all from the island. I went to
Mack Plastic, I went to Heller Plastic,
I went to… I think it was J & B
Plastic - they were out in Deer Park
at that time. I went to America Mold
Company - that was another one.
FP: So the needlefish was the first
plastic one DM: Yes.
Two versions of the Little Neck deep swimmer in the
packaging it was sold in.
The Little Neck Swimmer electrode template used to make the 2002
modification of the lure.
March-April, 2009
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The Little Neck Swimmer electrode template used to make the 2002
modification of the lure.
Hard-to-find green-eyed needlefish signifying the lure as a lightweight version, in three sizes.
The simple lead weights used for wood (top) and engineered lead
weights for plastic (bottom). The bottom weights, engineered by Don
Musso, allow precision shape and placement in the plastic lures.
FP: Now on an average year of
wood, how many needlefish were
you able to make versus how many
could you make with plastic?
DM: I didn’t stay in the wood
that long with the needlefish. I went
right into the plastic. I only stayed
with the wood until we had the
molds made.
FP: Could you quadruple the
amount you made?
SM: Oh, you could do quite a bit
more.
DM: The first shot of plastics we
had 24,000 made. And that was three
sizes. That was large needlefish,
medium needlefish and the small
needlefish.
SM: So it was 8,000 shots. A shot
produced three lures, so that’s your
24,000.
FP: Did you have to go to more
retail shops to really expand the base?
DM: More retail shops came to us
wanting to handle the plugs.
FP: So the first year was strictly
needlefish?
DM: We were so busy with the
needlefish we were almost letting go
of all the other wood plugs. It was
really nothing but needlefish that
was going on.
FP: When did the rest of the plastic models make their debut?
SM: The first made were the
small, medium and large needlefish.
That was back in ’84. In 1987 there
was a small popper, medium popper
and the Bullet. In 1990 there was the
darter and large popper. In 1995 we
came out with the deep swimmer.
FP: Gotcha. How many different
models did you come out with the
casting swimmer?
DM: Just the 6” model. We made
The Needlefish electrode, handmade by Don Musso,
used to make the plastic large needlefish mold.
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Mackerel colored swimmers unveiled last month at the L.I.
Recreational Fishing Expo. A limited run; it will not be available as
a standard item.
them in different sizes in wood but
only one in plastic.
SM: Same thing with the Darter –
only one size.
FP: How did the Bullet come
about?
DM: Tim Coleman had called me
up and he wanted me to make a
Stubby Needlefish, which he
designed, what they call the Pocket
Rocket. I told him we did not have
the time, so I sent him to Danny and
Dan made it. But the more I thought
about it, I decided I’m going to make
a Stubby Needlefish also and that’s
when I came up with the design for
the Bullet.
FP: How many different colors
did you guys make?
SM: I have my very first catalogue, which was done in 1988 –
there were 25 colors.
FP: So ‘84/’85 were there 25 different colors already?
DM: Approximately.
FP: How did you pick the colors?
Did guys ask for something special?
DM: Not really. It was just colors
that we just started to paint that I
thought looked good. And then
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Super-rare, purple orange mackerel needlefish painted by Steve Musso.
Only two reverse blurple Bullets were ever painted.
Steve Campo of course wanted certain crazy colors that he wanted for
his crew.
FP: Steve Campo told me he
caught the first bass on your plastic
darter!
DM: That’s right. He said to me,
“Don, don’t change a freakin’ thing
on that plug, because,” he says the
fish were jumping all over it. He
said he never saw anything in his life
like it!
FP: I guess this is going to be a
very difficult question to answer
because you made so many colors,
but did you have any specials made?
Easy to answer in wood - we talked
about the scallop-colored, mackerel
and stuff like that.
SM: The Transparent Series was
probably in 1985. We made the
needlefish basically in all transparent colors, like a red, blue, green, and
yellow.
FP: Is there a certain amount of
colors that you’re using now?
SM: For 2009 there will be 34 colors. But I get special calls for custom
colors from stores and I’ll do that if I
have the time.
FP: When I was talking to a couple of guys, they talked about the
special colors that they were using in
the ‘90’s like glow-yellow, chartreuse, parrot?
DM: Yep, yep. Parrot was one of
the colors - Steve Campo asked us to
Set of ZZ - A close-up of “a shot” which produced three lures.
March-April, 2009
paint the parrot color
SM: Yeah, we still do the parrot
and herring also.
DM: You know how I started the
Herring color? I had an old Nissan
200SX and I had some damage and I
bought some paint to fix up the
damage on it. And it was powder
blue – maybe a little bit deeper than
we’re using now. And we used that
and the color seemed to be very, very
good for catching fish so we continued using it.
FP: Wow. He also said blue mackerel was another special color he did
really well on. White opaque also.
SM: White is a standard color
now. It’s one of our top selling colors.
FP: There was an issue with some
of them filling up with water when
the needles first came out. Can you
tell us about that?
DM: We were gluing the tubes
inside the plug different than we do
now, and the guy that we had working with us was using way too much
of this glue and it wasn’t drying.
What was happening was when the
water started to get at it, it would
start going right through the gluing
process. Today, we use the same stuff
that the plugs are made out of so it
all fuses together.
It didn’t last very long. I remember it was just one year and it wasn’t
in all the plugs.
FP: Has there ever been any
A color collection of Super Strike mackerel needlefish.
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Rare Zig Zag
gold-orange
darter painted by
Steve Musso.
Zig Zag special transparent colored darters given away at fundraisers by Don and Steve.
thought about some other models to
do in plastic?
DM: There’s been a lot of thought.
SM: The lipless swimmer was
something that should have been
done at the same time as the deep
swimmer. It just wasn’t able to get
finished because the mold maker
couldn’t figure out how to do the
front section of it. But the mold is a
good majority of the way finished.
The mold is probably 90% complete.
So that was another one that
would’ve been in plastic and
should’ve been in plastic. Soon,
hopefully.
FP: Anything else?
SM: There was a pencil popper.
The mold maker that made all of our
previous molds retired so we had to
find someone new. After a long
search, I found someone who
seemed to be able to handle our job.
I sent our drawing and samples on
its way. After a few weeks we get
some samples back. I still probably
have them laying around. I looked
at the lure and said, “Whose lure is
this? And thought to myself this isn’t
what we sent you.” I don’t know
what they did but it looks just like
someone else’s pencil popper that is
on the market in plastic. It was totally wrong. And they wound up doing
like three versions before my father
finally said, “Let me make this part
up for you.” We gave them a perfect
wooden model – a lure exactly like
this (showing a carbon electrode).
And they were supposed to digitize
it. And take the numbers generated
into a program for a CNC machine.
As it turned out they never digitized
it, they tried to make the lure based
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solely on the drawings that were
sent. So, my father finally had to
make the electrodes for the pencil
popper after the mold maker couldn’t do it the way we wanted. Each
time he tried the mold maker just
never got it exactly right. After he
made the carbon electrode the molds
were finally on their way. However,
there were small problems with
quality that never seemed to get
resolved that would keep delaying
us from testing the mold. Finally, we
felt that the shape of the new plug
was right and ready for a test run
and but it failed. As it turned out the
mold maker never incorporated
water-cooling into the mold, and it
would never be able to reach full
production run without overheating.
Which meant the injection mold
machine would have to be shut
down every 15 minutes for the mold
to cool…there was no way we could
accept a mold that could not produce parts at the level we needed, so
it wound up being scraped.
FP: Is it safe to say there could be
a pencil popper in our future?
SM: It’s something I hope to do
soon.
DM: I made them in wood in the
beginning! We took a lot of fish on
them so they work good.
FP: The interesting thing about
plastic is that plastic is just beginning
to find a very strong following collecting-wise. We see it with Heddon,
we see it with Creek Club and South
Bend. What can we tell collectors to
look for in terms of specials?
SM: Be around for raffles.
Raffles, any kind of charity things….
that’s where I make up lots of stuff
that’s one or six of a kind. I’ll make
one and I’ll forget what I ever did to
it and the guy that wins it has something nobody else has. There’s quite
a few lures out there like that. I give
away a lot of stuff. Around
Christmas time for the Toys for Tots
that the Striper Surf Club sponsors I
made up about a dozen plugs for
them. The stuff I sell through the
stores, you know, there’s thousands
of. But the stuff that’s for donations –
I always try to make something up
special. The unique stuff I make I
give away.
FP: Anything else rare?
SM: Yeah. The rarest production
run of lures right now is the Bunker
Bullets. There are only 150 of those I
made so far. I may do more of them
this year. And there was the reverse
purple with a red gill slit. That was
something different – there are only
two of them that I made. The
needlefish, bullets, and deep swimmers with green eyes are lures that
were only produced in low numbers.
You don’t find too many of them.
They were– either a lighter weight
version or unweighted.
DM: The green eye needlefish
was made for much calmer water
where you could work the plug
much slower and not have it sinking.
FP: What’s your most popular
plug?
SM: Year after year, the medium
popper 2 3/8” is the best selling,
then the darter. And I would say the
large needlefish after that.
DM: Popping plugs are going to
be the biggest seller because it is a
daytime plug. You got more people
fishing days than nights. And if the
idea is they’re not going to be casting
that many small minnow plugs –
most of these guys that fish wanna
see this plug go way out. And I don’t
think the interest is catching fish
anymore, I think it’s in how far they
can cast really. That’s about what it
gets down to. That’s why the medium popper usually is the best seller.
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Don and Steve Musso on the night of our
interview.
SM: Bluefish blitzes sell lures, too!
FP: And that’s what the shop
owners want.
Guys are asking me how you are
doing with the limited Wadds? Still
sticking to a limited edition of 66?
DM: They are not all finished but
yes, 66.
FP: Other than the Bunker
Bullets, any other limited runs being
considered?
SM: I would like to keep all the
mackerel lures to limited runs. I just
made 150 mackerel of the new
Rattl’n Little Neck Swimmers as part
of a show special. They are the first
ones released as my father just made
up the mackerel template for them.
They will not be available as a standard item…just limited runs.
They’re going to be special.
You know what else is pretty rare,
Frank? Because the production has
completely ceased on it – is the original version of the casting swimmer.
It has a much longer front and the
original ones say “Super Strike Deep
Swimmer” on them. The original
ones ran too deep so we shortened
the front. That’s a rare item!
DM: Yes, the early ones were
only good for the Lighthouse.
Otherwise if you fished False Bar or
North Bar you were bouncing bottom. If you fished the Bluffs, you
were bouncing bottom so we had to
make an adjustment.
FP: And so the ones marked
March-April, 2009
“Super Strike Deep Swimmer” on
the bottom with the elongated top
would be the rarest?
SM: Yes, those would be the
rarest. I like to refer to them as the
first version or V.1. Even though we
sold that version between 1994-2002,
the production was maybe two runs
on those. In late 2002 we modified
the swimmer too, so it wouldn’t go
too deep. This was version 2: the lip
was shorter and the name “Super
Strike Deep Swimmer” was no
longer on the bottom of the lure.
(Lost it in the modification) They
had a fixed weight in them and were
produced between 2002-2007. And
now there is the newest and 3rd version of this lure called the Rattl’n
Little Neck Swimmer V.3. The outside is identical to the second version, but this one now rattle’s no
more fixed weight; only bb’s are
used to weight the lure. There were
green eyes on the first version; I
would say they are very, very rare.
FP: What’s your paint technique?
Anything special for the mackerel
pattern?
SM: Yes we use a specially made
template specific to each model. First
the lure is racked and painted in its
usual way; then it is transferred to a
special fixture that holds the lure in
place and the template is placed over
it. Usually black is then sprayed on
the lure, after drying it is removed,
transferred back to its standard rack
and the finishing touches of paint
are applied. It’s a time consuming
process; that is why I only like to sell
mackerel lures in limited numbers.
If I change my process down the
road I would consider doing more.
FP: Are you serving basically the
Northeast?
SM: The best market for us is
New York, Long Island, then Rhode
Island and Massachusetts. I’m starting to get some very good stores in
New Jersey. I sell to a few stores in
California. I have a little business
I’m doing in Florida.
FP: Guys, you’ve both been great.
Thanks so much for spending time
with us,
DM: Happy to do it, Frank.
SM: Thank you.
(Editor’s note: Readers wishing to
contact Frank Pintauro may do so by
calling 516-741-7044 or emailing
[email protected])
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