Connecticut fishing gear and plug makers: A History

[DarkSkies]

Sent in by Rip-plugger, thanks!

This confirms Jac-Pot Lures and L Cooper and Co as coming to be one of the premier plug manufacturers of their time.


Many of these images and descriptions have been collected over the years by Tom Clayton of

www.shorelinebt.com in NJ

He has put in thousands of hours into maintaining and growing his collections. In addition, he is most generous in identifying and defining unknown plugs from that era. So if anyone posts up things that came from his site, he has graciously asked that we post the link up instead so the traffic will be directed to his site.

I thank all members here for your cooperation.

Rip-Plugger sent me the page and a few pics, but instead I'm posting the link below to the informative page Tom has prepared on Goo Goo eyes plugs. Great stuff! When you go to his site be sure to check out the other pages, you could spend hours wandering through there. Make sure you have a napkin to catch the drool coming out of your mouth.

http://shorelinebt.com/id33.html

[DarkSkies]

This auction was thought to range from $100-150, and featured the 7 plugs below. From liveauctioneers.com

[albiealert]

I went to that shoreline site, dark. It's like the Encyclopedia Britannica for the plug making world, amazing! Good deal, thanks for the link.

[DarkSkies]

Albie, as far as collectors go, Tom of Shoreline is an avid collector, maybe bordering on obsessive, even.
The thing that has impressed me the most is his passion for fishing, and memories of how good things used to be. You can't fake a passion like that.


**************
Rip-Plugger and Monty also put a thread together called the Glory Daze... where they talked about the old times fishing, and posted some nice pics of older goo goo eyes and some other L Cooper plugs.

I think the pics are posts 4, 5, 15 and 16, something like that. Check it out for some good stories.
http://stripersandanglers.com/Forum/...ght=glory+daze

[DarkSkies]

Roddy doesn't seem to be able to post right now, so until we get it straightened out I'll try to post a few things for him. He e-mailed me this.....

[wow,this is great seeing these lures here,brings back some wonderful
memories.

I remember slinging the Big Daddy goo-goo's across the rips and riding
the surface back and having them get smashed by some of the worst
alligator choppers I have seen.

I have taken choppers on the big mackeral goo-goo eyes plug all of 45
inches and over 20 pounds.

my personal best was 22.5 pounds inside of 100 yards of where my
friend[like a brother] Steven J. Franco took the Ct. state record bass.
there were no bass around in those days.

there were not many kinds of wood around then.

we knew about dannys,goo-goo's and atoms,that was pretty much it.

there were some custom guys around but,just 3 or 4.
funny thing too because the very few custom guys used scew eyes and not
through wires,never really made a difference to anyone back then.

maybe thats why I like using them myself,one thing thats very important,I
NEVER saw one or heard of one pulling out,thats a fallacy,if the correct
type is used,just FYI.

man,those were the days for real.if you didn't have some strong gear you
lost!]