Labor Day Weekend: The Day of Reckoning

Captain’s Log: Fish Date 20070902. The day started as any normal fishing day would have, balmy, muggy & stressful. I’ve yet to understand how you can get so stressed for a nice relaxing day of fishing. Well I do, but we’ll get there. See, I’m a father of three little kiddo’s, a boy and two girls ages 11, 5 and 3 respectively who are all getting really into fishing and I’m loving it! Mom likes to fish but finds more enjoyment watching us during these times, probably watching me frustratingly trying to teach a three year old how to fish and hold my pole at the same time. So the stress comes from all the last minute packing, getting everything and everyone ready and answering all those gosh-darn questions. Which ones mine? Where are we going? How long is it gonna take to get there? Are we gonna catch any fish? Did you get my hat? You know what I’m talking about. No hurries though, sort-of, as it’s Labor Day weekend and we’re heading down for the afternoon/evening bite and stay for a bonfire out in Sargent. Fishing the beach, man I love wading the surf.

Sargent was a couple hours away from the house so it was a nice relaxing drive down. Relaxing because the kids took a nap and the wife buried herself in Sudoku. Ah, peace and quiet and time to think. About an hour into the trip, I was growing anxious as I’d never fished Sargent before (I alway’s like to tryout new spots). Was I ready? You bet. I was coming to town loaded, full metal jacket of a fishing arsenal. When we pulled into town, what a sight. Reminded me so much of my hometown growing up before everybody moved in. Even spotted a local bar & grill that I’ll be checking out next time down as well, the Krusty Pelican. Looked promising. I was ready, had the typical baits and my bandelera of antique fishing lures ready to throw down. You see I love to fish these little buggers and have a few that are absolute dynamite in the surf. Plus, how long has it been since one of these fish have really seen this bait, um, probably never or next to never! Now I don’t use the good ones, I get the ones that definitely need some lovin’ and give them a special touch with a few tricks I’ve learned along the way. I typically pick them up off of either ebay or hit the local garage sales. There’s been plenty of them there. But if there is fish in the area, these will hook’em.

About that time, everyone was waking up. Took us a bit longer to hit the beach as we had to wait on an ol’ float bridge to get back in place after a passing boat in the intercoastal. Crossed the bridge, hung a left, took the first access road to the right and “WAM”one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a while. Surf was flat, green to the beach, birds were working, boats lined up off the second gut, cars lined up on the beach, people standing in the surf waist deep and everyone fishing. “What’s going on?” my boy said. “Lot of fish son, lot of fish.” Something had big shoals of baitfish pressed between guts and I was going to find out. We tooled down to the end of the line as I knew they’d want to play in the beach after a while, but I was here to fish so not too far. Parked, unloaded and setup camp for the evening.

I put on ol’ faithful and waded out to the first bar. Stared down at the crowd and gave them a nod, politely waved to the boats and just stood there. I was ready, but not yet cause I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. I started noticing that nobody was really catching anything so I stood and surveyed. The birds would move down the beach away from me and then start to move back my direction. Over and over this happened. I started seeing flashes in the water and noticed they were mullet, very large school of mullet. Still nobody catching anything, probably just fisherman like me that knows to follow the gulls. I blindly casted on the outside of the gut just over the shoal, lure wasn’t in the water for 3 cranks, fish on! A nice little schoolie trout. Hmm, the trout got the mullet all bunched up. It went on like this for quite some time, I’d throw, catch a trout. Looked down the line, some people were catching a few but there was only a few doing the catching.

Next thing I know, people are starting to get closer, you know inching there way down the line as if I had the only action spot on the entire beach. At one point, I had 2 boats and about 6 people floating and literally standing within 20 feet around me. Shoal would move down but the trout was working them back and forth on the beach. So I stayed put and would wait for them to come back my way. This was by far one of the best trout fishing days I’d had in a while. I literally must’ve caught 50 trout in about 2 hours.

It was about time for a break and a “refreshment” so I strolled back up and played with the kids for a while, with my limit of trout. I had one old boy actually come up and talk with me a while, asked what I was using so I showed him. Actually sold him one too for $20 on the spot, not bad considering that it’d probably cost my about a $1 and 10 minutes of my time fixing it up. The evening went on the same way, all the trout I wanted to catch!

Started getting close to dark, people started leaving, so I cast netted up a few of those finger mullet for later before the trout got all of them. Went and got the driftwood and started our bonfire. Right at dusk, I took out my ambasseuder 7000’s and set three of them out with those finger mullets. Watched the Sun go down and started roasting marshmallow’s. Had the Sirius radio jamming some good old country, not the modern stuff, the stuff from the 60’s and 70’s. My kids love it and so do I. The 5 year old can practically sing every song on there. It was so relaxing sitting there with them, listening to the sing and of my 11 year olds jokes (he thinks he’s a comedian, most of them are pretty funny). Click, click, click, the ambasseuder started to sing and he stopped mid-joke and beat me to the pole! I know, I’ve got to share. Few minutes later he reeled in a nice 25 inch redfish.

It’s started to get late so we packed up, put the fire out and headed homeward. Still, just one of those days that I’ll never forget. I love fishing those antique fishing lures. By the way, the lure of choice was an ol’ 1960’s bingo hump, the red one with the yellow spots, and a few modifications.

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Antique Fishing Lures: Show Me The Money

Collecting antique fishing lures has grown to very large proportions in recent times. The collectible market for these lures is an estimated $1 billion. Ain’t it funny how times change. In the beginning, these lures were mainly swapped and traded by their collector’s, now it’s strictly a cash business for the most part with the occasional trade amongst friends.

“It’s like a commodity market with the peaks and values,” said Dudley Murphy, a founding member of the National Fishing Lures Collectors Club. “The money has been creeping down recently, so now would be a good time for new collectors to get started because the prices are right. The money always goes up and down, but I think it won’t be long before it goes back up again.”

You’ll most definitely find people in this hobby that specialize in one form of it or another. Some will just collect certain brands, others will collect only wooden, still others will collect just certain styles, and so on and so on. Even though these people go down this path, it’s not to say that this is all they will have in their collection, but still it’s good to find and search out these people for friendly advice and such on particular lures you may have or be going to to acquire. Comes down to that ol’ saying “knowledge is king” and holds true in this hobby as well.

“Anything related to fishing, someone collects it,” Joe Courcelle said. “You have your lure guys, your reel guys, your rod guys. Some guys just collect old outboard motors. Sometimes the cardboard boxes the lures come in are worth as much or more than the lures if they’re in good condition. The Japanese (buyers) are really into Ambassador reels. They have women rolling suitcases full of cash up and down the aisles. They’ll buy a reel that cost you $20 over here for $100 or $200, and then take it back home and sell it for $400.”

Now Joe Courcelle has been in this hobby for quite sometime and has an extensive collection to boot. But you still have to be smart if you are in it to collect for the monetary returns as not every lure has that monetary value and most of these lures range in value between $10 and $50 dollars. Now that’s still nothing to sneeze at and is quite a good place to start from. Just remember, quality counts. That’s one of the many things that attracts me to this hobby. You don’t have to be an expert and good finds are everywhere and you don’t have to have a lot to get started. If you have a good eye and pick up on some of the signs of a good antique fishing lure, you can stand to build yourself quite a valuable collection with minimal monetary funding and a lot of elbow grease.

Courcelle “sometimes serves as a broker, like the time he sold a lure for $4,000 for a friend who’d bought it at a yard sale for $1. He recently bought some duck decoys from a Selma, Ala., antique dealer for $250 and sold them that same day for $2,500.”–Jeff Duncan in the article “Hooked By The Allure”

The absolute best thing about collecting antique fishing lures is it’s wide open. There is no age limit, ethnicity boundaries or demographic backgrounds. Simply a desire to obtain the items that you like. Who knows, you might be the next person to find the most sought after lure by collectors, the Haskell Minnow. A 10-inch copper fish replica (see picture below) that sold at auction back in 2003 for a whopping $101,200. Yep, that figure is correct. It’s not a typo. In fact, one of the more famous collector’s known throughout the industry was Clyde Harbin. Upon his death in 2004, his collection was sold to Bass Pro Shops for an estimated $2 million (oh the dream).

As stated earlier, most of these lures typically range in value from $10 to $50 so it’s good to familiarize yourself with this type of information and be sure you know what you are looking at while collecting. Knowledge is power, and it doesn’t matter how you get it, just as long as you gain it. All collectors have value and identification guides for their respective hobbies and antique fishing lures is no different. Know what you’re looking at, know it’s value, and if it’s a great buy, by all means, scoop it up. Happy collecting and until next time, keep your lines wet.

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What Makes Antique Fishing Lures Antiques

Antique vs. Old
First and foremost we should probably define what the “antique” in antique fishing lures means to me. Antique to me in the fishing realm means something that is not readily available for you to drive down to your local Wal-Mart, Target, Bass Pro Shop or personal favorite retail outlet and simply pick the lure off the shelf and put it in your cart. You have to get out and find them as they aren’t in production and readily distributable anymore. Find them at garage sales, estate sales, auctions, in an attic, hand-me-downs from a grandfather or by whatever other means possible. Some collector’s wouldn’t agree with this statement simply because a lure made post 1940’s should be considered “old” and not “antique”. I whole-heartedly disagree with that statement. Just because a lure might be made post 1940, in my book it’s still considered “antique” if it’s not in production anymore and not simply “old”. An “old” lure might be something like a mirro-lure that you got back in ‘85 but can still go and pick it up at Wal-Mart for 3.99 (there are a ton of those if you just look). I think a lot of these type of collector’s like to hold onto that “antique” word just to tag those types of lures that draw the most bang for the buck. I’m not that kind of collector.

Wood vs. Plastic
The other arguement that you will hear a lot from these type of collector’s is wood versus plastic and thus the whole post-1940 comment earlier as around that time is when plastics became a fad in the fishing lure industry and allowed the bigger companies to come in and manufacture cheaper lures and boxes to compete in what was ideally a small-business market. The main issue with this is quality of the plastic lures are simply not the quality of wood lures and thus the “value” of it is simply not going to be there. What a bunch of ho-ey! Let’s face it, for the most part if you are a lure collector, you do it for 1 of 2 reasons. You’re either a) in it for the money or b) to simply enjoy your past-time and collect something that isn’t readily available to you or anyone else over the counter anymore (and if you’re like me, c) because whether or not they are old or antique, they catch fish). Now, I’m not discounting the fact that the older wooden lures in pristine condition shouldn’t draw the price tags placed upon them, as they are well deserved. I just don’t think that the post-1940 plastics should get the rap of not being an antique just because they don’t fit this mold.

The “Golden” Age of Lures
As with anything that has ever held substance in this world, there is a “Golden” age deemed of its usefullness. For lures, this was when bodies were made of wood and eyes were made glass. When small companies like Shakespeare, Heddon and Pflueger competed on the sake of superior quality versus mass production. Back during a period held as historical or revolutionary. Yes, lures produced in this era are getting more and more rare and scarcer to find, but does that make them more of an “antique” than say lures produced in the 70’s that you have to search for as they are no longer available off-the-shelf? Or does it simply make them contain a higher price tag? Which brings us back to the basic question, does antique = price or antique = production availability?

As for me and antique fishing lures, it’s definitely the availabilty aspect. I do have quite an assortment of the old wooden lures in my collection, but they are not the ones that I have the most fun collecting as they tend to quite simply sit on a shelf and gather dust. I prefer to collect what I consider antique fishing lures that I can find and have spares that I can still water test, that’s where the fun begins!

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Antique Fishing Lures: The Purpose

Welcome to antique fishing lures blog! Having grown up “on the water” so to speak, I’ve been fishing for a long time. In fact, it’s not really a past-time of mine, but more of a way of life and being a proud father of three beautiful children am happy that I’m able to pass this great outdoor way of life on to them as it was to me. As part of that, I’ve always had a fascination with lures. What a natural hobby for a fisherman, collecting and fishing antique fishing lures. Not only do I hope this entertains you with new ideas in your fishing pleasure, but it’s my commitment to provide relevant information to you in what’s proven to me both an exciting and thrilling hobby of being able to collect and preserve these lures as well as get them in the water again.

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