Collecting lures for fun and fishing
I didn't realize it at the time, but I started collected fishing tackle when I was 7 years old, a year after I got my first fishing reel as a birthday present.
I spent most of the next year in the front yard practice casting. In those days, Dad took me fishing every chance he got. Fishing was among the most important experiences of my childhood, but the time I spent with my father when we got home was just as important. After we had cleaned the fish, we'd take our reels into the den, Dad would mix a drink, and we'd take apart our reels to clean and oil them.
"Take care of your tackle, and it will last a lifetime," my father would say.
Dad gave me a fishing lure or two every birthday for the next several years. As often as not, those lures were the first ones I tried on our next fishing trip, but occasionally he gave me a lure so special I announced I wouldn't fish with it. Dad would smile and tell me I could do whatever I wanted but to remember that a good fisherman had to be willing to try new things. I think I understood what he was saying but somehow I could never tie on some of the lures he gave me. Within a few years, I started buying my own lures to fish with, but always had an eye out for something special.
When my father died suddenly a few years ago, almost everything stayed with his wife except his fishing tackle, which he had designated for me. After his service, I went to the garage to see what was there. His old tackle box brought tears to my eyes. There was his favorite fishing reel, the one reel he refused to ever fish in saltwater. There was the quarter-ounce feather jig that he was fishing on 4-pound line for crappie when he caught a 23-pound channel catfish - and ended up showing on a local television show.
When I got home with my father's tackle, I knew I could never fish it, so put it in display case to show it. There were several lures I remembered but could not name. I went to the Internet for some help - and the world of fishing tackle collecting sudden got much larger. It was on the Internet that I discovered the National Fishing Lure Collectors Club (NFLCC) and the Old Reel Collectors Association (ORCA), organizations devoted to the collection and preservation of old fishing tackle.
It wasn't long before I started going to garage sales to look for old tackle. It's no fun getting up at 7 a.m. Saturday (unless you're going fishing, in which case you should have gotten up several hours earlier) but I was amazed at what I could find. Here in Juneau, the vast bulk of the lures I find are salmon plugs, and most have been fished hard, but occasionally I find one good enough to display.
A little research helped me discover the history behind the J-Plugs, Tomics and other salmon lures we fish with today. In the 1930s a few people started experimenting with bass lures - particularly the Heddon Basser - in Puget Sound. Salmon seemed to hit these lures every bit as readily as they hit herring but there was a problem: The hooks on those old bass lures were not strong enough to hold salmon.
As fishermen began to experiment with stronger hooks and different ways to attach the hooks to the lure, a salmon lure industry grew up in Seattle. Companies such as Martin, Hansen and Rosegard started to compete for the angler's dollar. Soon Heddon, Creek Chub and other national fishing-lure manufacturers offered lures specifically designed for Northwest salmon anglers.
In the 1940s, more than 80 percent of Puget Sound salmon derby winners used plugs, but by the mid-1950s mooching with herring was the preferred way to fish. What happened? No one knows for certain, but about this time the Puget Sound bait herring fishery developed and tackle shop operators found methods to keep fresh bait on hand.
Then it was just a matter of simple economics: If anglers used plugs, the shops might sell two or three plugs to each fisherman per year. But if they used herring, they could sell a couple dozen baits each time they fishing. And that meant more profit.
Bill Brown is an avid fisherman who runs a reel repair business in Juneau. He can be reached at 789-2448 or wsbrown@gci.net.