C. Boyd Pfeiffer, The Examiner
2008-07-25 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

BALTIMORE -

What are your choices for the top tackle innovations of the past 75 years? That was the question asked and answered by the American Sportfishing Association during its Las Vegas ICAST tackle show, which introduced new tackle to dealers.

With consultants, industry members, fishermen and stakeholders, it put together a Top 10 list of tackle introduced since 1933. ASA has an interesting list, although some of the dates of initiation of products seem wrong to Vern Kirby, a Glen Burnie tackle collector and industry historian and consultant.

Kirby was the principal researcher for the 1999 book “our Fishing History: Tackle & Equipment,” published by North American Outdoor Group. Kirby also has co-authored articles on tackle history. He has a mind like a steel trap when it comes to arcane details of tackle history.

The ASA list includes the Rapala Floating Minnow of 1936, although Kirby notes that the Swedish lure was introduced in this country in 1960. It gained fame in an article in a 1962 Life magazine that also included some movie actress. I think her name was Marilyn Monroe.

Questionable as to origin was ASA’s inclusion of the ubiquitous spring-loaded plastic bobber of 1947 by the Nibble Nabber company. Most of us remember it as first made by Dayton Manufacturing.

The list includes the Mitchell 300 that originated in France in 1938 and debuted here in 1949. It was the first highly successful reel of the new spinning design.

Nick Crème was making plastic worms in his kitchen, selling them here and there in 1949, then announced his invention at the 1952 Cleveland Sport Show. The rest is history with soft plastics today in virtually every tackle box.

The Zebco closed face spinning reel is an obvious choice with its 1949 debut that brought easy casting and fishing to millions. The basic Zebco 33 is still a popular model.

The little green box Lowrance Fish Lo-K-Tor of 1957 was prescient of the graph and computer-screen models to find bottom and fish, as was the Minn Kota Trolling Motor. Kirby thinks that ASA might have the date of 1958 wrong, since he remembers ads for trolling motors as far back as the very late 1930s or early 1940s.

DuPont monofilament on the list was not introduced in 1958 as stated, but in 1939. That’s when this new funny stuff of nylon was being played with at the Delaware DuPont plant. A lab worker spooled some on his reel and tried it fishing Brandywine Creek in back of the lab. The rest is history.

We all agree on the ASA listing of the Fenwick high-modulus graphite fishing rod of 1972 along with the Shakespeare 1976 Ugly Stik. Both were innovative designs — graphite for faster, more responsive rods, and the solid fiberglass tip Ugly Stik as almost unbreakable.

Think back, or read old magazines. What would you include in a list of the top items of the past 75 years? My list — if allowed more than 10 — would include all the above along with the following:

» AFTCO aluminum Unibutts that made commercial and custom construction of big-game rods easy, sturdy, simple and popular.

» The Abu Garcia 5000 casting reel of 1954. As Kirby said, “It saved bait casting.” It was the first freshwater bass reel with star drag, free-spool casting and a good drag. Similar reels from all companies followed.

» Magnetic cast control reels, which debuted in 1981 with models from Abu Garcia, Daiwa and Shimano to make casting easy while eliminating backlash.

» Spider line, along with later gel-spun lines, with high strength, thin diameter and low stretch for maximum sensitivity.

» Plastic tackle boxes by Plano and now others, which changed the industry. They were introduced in 1952 and changed to worm-proof models in 1973.

» Fly lines that were changed in 1952 by Scientific Anglers from a complex, expensive and slow braiding process to one with a uniform core and tapered PVC coating. Scientific Anglers also began the use of microscopic glass bubbles in the PVC coating for flotation.

Our list would also include ceramic ring guides that eliminated grooved metal guides and the resulting line wear. The hollow fiberglass rods originally by Conolon and also Shakespeare — with a slightly different woven Howald process — were precursors of almost all rods made today.

I am sure that some major innovations have been left out. And any such listing is somewhat subjective. What would you include or remove from the above listings?

C. Boyd is an internationally known sportsman and award-winning writer on fishing, hunting, and the outdoors. He can be reached at cbpfeiffer@msn.com.