A catalogue of the

Lure Lore – Part 12
Lure Lore – Part 12
bizarre
A catalogue of the
Between fishing trips imaginative fishermen have plenty of time to contemplate
more effective ways to deceive the creatures of the ocean. Over the years, these
mental journeys have borne fruit in the form of weird and wacky creations that,
they hope, just might be the perfect lure. Surprisingly, as Jim Rizzuto regales,
some of them have worked extremely well.
This article is provided courtesy of
BlueWater Boats & Sportsfishing magazine.
It originally appeared in Issue 94, 2012
86
www.bluewatermag.com.au
Author: Jim Rizzuto
Photography: Jim Rizzuto; Tom Misek; Stan Ho
Lure Lore – Part 12
The very first skirted trolling lure of the modern era was crafted by Capt
George Parker of Hawaii by jamming a wooden dowel into a chromed
brass plumbing tube and then cutting the face off at an angle.
A
serious text on the history of lures would be
a catalogue of the bizarre and absurd. Right
from the start, the very idea of an artificial
lure must have been a huge leap of the
imagination for the very first luremaker. When you see
the peculiar contraptions that have spun out of creative
(or perhaps just bored) minds going back to caveman
days, you can be assured that fishermen have always
drunk too much. Those earliest lures made from bone
(even human bone), pig bristles, wadded-up spider
webs (they catch needlefish by the teeth) and other
non-aquatic materials eventually evolved from peculiar
to ‘normal’, but only because they proved successful
despite how outlandish they must have appeared when
some eccentric inventor first dared to dangle one in
front of a fish.
The only surprise with lures seems to be that no
matter how insane the device might appear, some
crazy fish will love it enough to eat it or hate it enough
to try to kill it. Indeed, that may be the first rule of
lure-making: all lures do catch fish sometimes.
So no matter how strange the invention, we have
to put away demeaning terms like absurd, ridiculous
and insane in favour of more flattering descriptors
like inventive and original. Luremakers are really
imaginative geniuses who think ‘outside the box’ as the
(already unimaginative) saying goes.
The development of bluewater lures has had its
share of leaps of faith. Back in the mid-1940s when
billfishermen used only live or dead bait, Capt George
Parker rammed a wooden dowel into a chromed
plumbing tube, tied on strips of red rubber and dared
it to catch a blue marlin. Sceptics rolled their eyes. The
day the lure brought him his first blue it silenced many
disbelievers, and when he caught a grander blue on
one it became the prototype for every big-game lure
for the next 60 years. In those few years, that very
un-baitfish-like creation went from being ridiculous
to essential.
WHAT A KNUCKLEHEAD
Luremaker Tada Yoshii made a jointed version thinking
it would wriggle enticingly as it was towed. He must
have felt like a knucklehead when he saw that it didn’t
at all imitate a hula dancer. But that proved not to
matter. By then, his ‘Knucklehead’ lure had caught
many fish in Hawaii and eventually the Atlantic blue
marlin record (810lb – caught aboard Albatross with
Capt Ernie Foster in 1962).
Both Parker’s wooden tube lure and Tada’s Knucklehead
had their heyday before becoming historical oddities.
The fact that a lure was successful never stopped
fishermen from tossing it on the ash heap of history
in favour of chasing newer ideas.
Nothing proves that better than the
big scoop-faced ‘Abreu’ lures of the
1960s. You may not even know what
one looks like, even though the
Abreu style caught the largest blue
marlin ever taken on rod and reel.
So we go ever-forward (and
seaward) looking for the next great
secret weapon. Some simply copy the
same basic designs, slap a new name
on the result and call it their own. But they
are just slight variations of the tube, bullet, pusher,
locknut, Apollo and plunger styles with slightly different
weighting, inserts and decorations. All continue to have
the same circular cross-section and symmetry to a
central axis.
A scoop-faced
‘Abreu’ lure, similar
to these, caught
the biggest marlin
ever landed on rod
and reel. Sadly, the
1805lb Pacific blue
landed off Hawaii
was not eligible for a
world record.
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Lure Lore – Part 12
California’s Tom
Misek created a
truly original lure
with his Marlinstar
’Tomahawk’ range.
He says they swim
like a fish, dive
deeper and stay
down longer before
racing back to the
surface to splash and
grab air, beginning
a new cycle with
a fresh stream of
bubbles.
“Some crazy
fish will love
it enough to
eat it or hate
it enough to
try to kill it.”
THE MARLINSTAR
Luremakers sometimes do come up with true
innovations and some of those are worth looking at just
because they give us a chance to see how innovators
think. To get into the head of someone who broke
the circular-cross-section mould to make something
literally eccentric, I talked to Tom Misek of Marlinstar
lures about his radical-looking innovations.
Tom grew up fishing for marlin with his dad and
studied the way lures acted in the spread.
“I always loved the two-piece Knucklehead lure as it
skated, darted and dived,” Tom said. “It provided only a
low hook-up ratio, but from it I learned that mimicking
a baitfish’s movement was as instrumental in luring a
fish to strike, as was correct size and colour.”
Then he spent a four-year stint fishing in marlin
tournaments aboard a boat with a prop wash big
enough to rival Niagara Falls, where the lures got lost in
the confusion of foam and bubbles. So why not create a
lure that would spend more time under the wash rather
than merely ploughing the surface?
He got more motivation for innovation after an
experience with a 650 to 750lb blue marlin while fishing
the World Cup in Kona. The big lady trailed one of the
standard straight-running ‘Kona’ lures and watched it
for an agonising half-minute with only casual interest.
Finally, she turned slowly and disappeared.
“This really sparked my creative thought process
to design a lure that mimicked a baitfish in panic
mode and could ignite a gamefish’s primal instinct
to hunt, strike and kill,” Tom said. “I believed that
a lure that stayed below the prop wash and in clear
view while swimming in a natural fleeing mode would
be highly productive with marlin that needed some
extra stimulation.
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“Tomahawks dive deeper, stay down longer and swim
from side-to-side like a darting baitfish,” Tom said.
“When it hits the surface, it bursts with huge bubble
plumes and savage surface pops. Even when the lure
does not get the strike, its action draws fish to the
others in the spread.”
In its first year of production the ‘Tomahawk’ won
US$40,000 in a Puerto Vallarta tournament with a
600lb catch. Its credits also include a 972lb blue and a
679lb black in Tahiti. In one week of fishing in Brazil,
one of his Tomahawk-users caught two blues in the
400lb range, another of 500lb, a fourth of 780lb (all
released) and then hooked a 900-pounder that broke
free – all on the same 12-inch lure.
FLATHEAD FOR GIANTS
Capt Kip Taylor’s ‘Flathead’ lure has a story as strange
as its most unusual shape. Kip began making and
selling Flatheads in Kona during the late 1970s,
and they soon became the secret weapon for many
fishermen throughout the islands. They were especially
popular with big yellowfin trollers on Kauai and Oahu,
Kip said, but they caught dolphinfish, wahoo and
gamefish of all kinds, including some very big marlin,
including at least one grander blue.
That giant hit a pearl-coloured Flathead while Kip was
trolling near a weather buoy 200 miles west of Kona
on a multi-day trip to catch yellowfin for market. Kip
was on the commercial vessel St Peter with veteran
fishermen Lincoln Ahlo and Fred Thibault. All have
caught granders and knew what a real one looked like.
After they wrestled the big marlin aboard the boat,
they cut off the head and tail, gutted it and put the
body in the hold on ice. Back at the scales days later,
the dressed-out marlin carcass weighed 739lb. “At that
Lure Lore – Part 12
“That very
un-baitfish-like
creation went
from ridiculous
to essential.”
weight, it is likely that the marlin actually weighed over
1000lb and perhaps as much as 1100lb,” Kip said.
Kip later hooked an even bigger blue while fishing
with Capt Tony Clark on the Kona boat Anxious. I
asked Tony about the event so I could compare the
two stories for veracity (at least as much as fishermen
are capable of) and got the same story with no chance
of collusion. The fish hit an ice-blue Flathead trailing
behind a Boone ‘bird’ teaser. When it jumped, both
Tony and Kip estimated its weight at 1400lb or more
– the biggest marlin they had ever seen or seen since.
Their angler, a non-English-speaking Japanese visitor,
fought the fish for nearly four hours before they got
it close enough to have a fair chance of leadering
and gaffing it. Meanwhile, the activity had attracted a
school of sharks. Just when they thought they had it,
the line snapped. Both Tony and Kip said the damaged
end looked like a shark had bitten it through. If they
had landed that fish, the Flathead lure would have been
as famous as any and become just as much a standard
in many patterns.
Kip said fishermen who visited Kona took some of
these lures home with interesting results. One of them
caught the winning fish in a St Thomas tournament and
a tackle shop on the US East Coast quickly knocked
off the design, although their copy wasn’t weighted
correctly and proved unsuccessful.
Later, on a fishing trip to Australia, Kip brought a
bunch of his Flatheads with him in hopes of selling
them. Kip said he went into a tackle shop in Port
Stephens, took out his
lures and told the shop
owner that he would bet
the guy had never
seen a lure like
that one before.
The tackle shop
owner pulled out a
batch from under
the counter, all neatly
packaged, and said “Ya
mean these?”. Kip’s
lures were already being
knocked off everywhere
and his dreams of fame
and
fortune
with
Flatheads had just
fallen flat.
RIBBED – FOR YOUR PLEASURE
No account of odd offshore experiments would be
complete without at least a mention of the ‘Pinecone’
lure (my nickname for it) and its variations. Honolulu
luremaker Sonny Arita, originator of the ‘Opihi’ shell
lures, referred to these as ribbed alternatives to some
of his standard heads. Sonny has now retired and
turned the production over to Brian Suyeoka, who
continues to make and market the originals plus new
models, so it was Brian who gave me the details on the
action, results and effectiveness of the ribs.
Brian says the multiple edges attack the water and
create a great deal of commotion and smoke through
increased water resistance and drag. The drag also
helps keep the line tight, especially on windy days.
Any great catches to speak of? As with any product,
plentiful reorders say it all – lure buyers from around
the world keep coming back for more.
Remember that first rule of lure success? Every lure
will catch a fish sometimes. But that raises the second
rule of lure success, as demonstrated in the 2012 World
Cup Blue Marlin Championship. The best fishermen
using the best equipment and fishing the best spots
everywhere in the world came up with exactly two
qualifying fish. The second rule: the very best lures
don’t catch fish every time.
Above: These ribbed
lures with opihi shell
eyes were created
by Sonny Arita of
Honolulu but are
now produced by
Brian Suyeoka.
Left: Capt Kip
Taylor’s ‘Flathead’
lure originated
in Kona, Hawaii
during the 1970s
and soon showed
remarkable success
with big yellowfin
tuna and marlin. His
odd design caught
several marlin
over 1000 pounds
and hooked one
estimated at more
than 1400 pounds!
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