I know that if i tell you , this is a MUST read material for and surfcaster and give you a link, some of you will click, most of you wont. So instead and I am featuring the Surf Plugology on the Blog here and urging you to visit bassdozer site at http://www.bassdozer.com/. Particularly the Saltwater Article section. Russ “Bassdozer” might be a bass master these days in Arizona but at one point he was part of Campo’s Crew I believe that wreck havoc on beaches from NY to Cape. You might not be a history buff but there is a WORLD of information within these descriptions.
Enjoy and visit Russ site at http://www.bassdozer.com/
Surf Plugology
Metal Lip Swimmers, Plastic Lip Minnows, Needlefish, Darters, Topwaters and More
By Russ Bassdozer
This story provides information on striper surf plugs that were used during the heyday of striper surf fishing in the Northeast. Striper surf fishing hit its peak from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties, which is about how long these plugs have been in storage. Many of these plugs are over twenty-five years old. Most are no longer made. This is a collection of plugs that you cannot normally buy off a tackle shop wall any more. I have guarded these closely, but feel it’s time to open the treasure chest, the spoils of saltwater campaigns, and share the booty with other surf anglers and plug collectors who may appreciate hearing about some of these legacies, thereby keeping the fascination of surf lore and surf lure collecting alive and handed down from generation to generation.
Before we get on to the actual lures, let’s tarry a bit upon what was happening with surf fishing back then. It was the heyday, the golden age of this sport. There was great fishing all up and down the striper coast, and there were great striper anglers dispersed along the coast also. These were guys who plied sections of New Jersey, the west end of Long Island, the western Sound, the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound, Montauk, and Point Judith and Jamestown, Rhode Island to name a few of the more proactive angler areas. Even the Cape Cod Canal was a different culture and group than the Cape Cod Outer beach gangs, of which there were several. There were maybe 2-3 dozen key guys – point persons shall we say – who came into play. In most cases, these guys were the proactive agents in surf clubs or the heavy hitters among gangs of surf anglers. Usually, they were associated with a group, held a high reputation within a region, even if they were only known to a bunch who fished together within that region. Mostly, these were isolated theaters of bass fishing, yet some of the top guys traveled around or got to know their peers in other regions. A few truly became luminaries, legends, shining stars of surfdom, and had camps of followers, almost entourages. So when I say 2-3 dozen guys up and down the coast, they are really like the representatives of 2-3 dozen clubs or gangs or tribes of guys.
Now, the Cape – Cape Cod – was a Mecca, a magnet that attracted the best and brightest – and most all of the hot shots strung along the coast line – these guys made pilgrimages to journey to the holy sands of Cape Cod. The Cape always had great fishing – but it never reached mind-blowing proportions until the mid-seventies, and it truly became the surf fishing equivalent of Camelot for a brief and shining moment in the late seventies. But prior to the mid-seventies, the Cape was more of a casual thing, more of an avid angler’s vacation retreat – and more of an individual or family thing versus a large group or surf clan kind of thing.
By the mid-seventies, when the sand eels and the super-run of cows came to the Cape, all that was to change. The run of fish on the Cape beaches in the late seventies was unprecedented. It had never been seen on the Cape beaches before nor since. All of the disassociated surf fishing groups up and down the coast, they all tightened up, all started coming up to the Cape in hordes to get in on that run. The Cape beaches for the spring and fall runs in the late seventies, all the East Coast’s best surfcasters were shoulder-to-shoulder on the Cape. The network and information flow tightened up in the bass world of that time. Down the coast, there were 2-3 dozen guys up at the top of the striper kingdom. They knew what was going on, they had the connections in the Cape from their earlier trips or vacations, but they also had groups, clubs or gangs they belonged to, and the word would go down the grapevine within hours. As soon as guys got off the beach and aired up their beach buggy tires, the calls were going out, down the whole coast. Western Union telegraphs couldn’t transmit information that fast. By nine in the morning, people who didn’t know you, never met you, they knew what you caught that night, even before you had breakfast – and they could be on the beach shoulder-to-shoulder with you by dinner time. If you made a good catch somewhere on Thursday night, there’d be an armada of buggies that drove up from every state on the coast to be there Friday night. In time, it all became intertwined, it became massive – because the fish were huge and available in large quantities. Guys who maybe didn’t know each other, they knew about each other. They knew what each other was doing in terms of fish and tactics. It became intense, fanatical. Hundreds of the East coast’s best surf anglers were there. Forties. Fifties. Fish of a lifetime were being caught by the hundreds every night during the peak of the run. The Holy Grail was achievable to almost anyone who made the trip. Everyone wanted in on it.
It was short-lived and lasted only a few seasons. It has not happened before or since – except at Block Island. At the same time as the epic run of super-cows was to abruptly come to a halt on Cape Cod, there was equal or better fishing discovered on Block Island. Unlike Cape Cod, Block Island was not a traditional mecca of pilgrimage for surf anglers. Historically, the Cape was famous whereas the Block was unknown. However, the presence of locust-like swarms of sand eels and an abundance of huge super-cows literally encircling Block Island was discovered by myself and two friends as we journeyed home from the Cape one fall. The Cape fishing had been cut short by a powerful hurricane that flattened the sand bars, points and bowls that were holding bait and bass on the Cape’s beaches. The hurricane blew all the Cape’s cow bass out to sea. There was no way we could know it then, but that was practically the final curtain call for the Cape Cod super-cow run. Sure, the cows came back to rally for one last hurrah or two. But by and large, it was the end of Cape Cod’s legendary run. Not even a shadow of a run of such magnitude has happened on Cape Cod since then. Of course there was no way we could know that then. All we knew was that season ended way too soon for us, due to the hurricane. We were just not ready to quit yet.
We journeyed to Block Island and stumbled off the ferry into an incredible run of super-cows. The first few seasons of this run were by far the best and the peak years of this run. At first, Block Island was largely undiscovered and unfished by the crowds. There were a handful of island residents, a handful of mainlanders coming over, and us – a handful of close-knit, tight-lipped New Yorkers. Few others ever got wind of what was happening on Block Island until years later. The main focus up and down the coast continued to be the run at Cape Cod, which was petering out (although no one wanted to admit that was what was happening). Everyone kept going to the Cape, hoping it wasn’t over, anticipating the cows would come back. The cows never did.
Meanwhile, the run of super-cows on Block Island was incredible, and few anglers ever got clued into it. Within a few seasons of our fishing Block Island with only a handful of residents and mainlanders, the Block Island run became widespread knowledge among many of Rhode Island’s mainland surf anglers. Hordes of Rhode Island anglers started to spend as much time as possible on Block Island. A few were mavericks or independents. The majority of Rhode Islanders fishing Block Island were associated with two to three large surf gangs of twenty to forty anglers each.
Within another season or two, cadres of Montauk anglers became aware of and started to make the journey to Block Island, since there was a ferry connection, as Block Island is only thirty miles offshore from Montauk Point. At first, it was only a skeleton crew of pioneering Montauk anglers. From the cliffs atop Southwest Point on Block Island to the parking lot below the Montauk Lighthouse on a clear night, furtive CB radio reports could be transmitted from beach buggies on the island to beach buggies across the water. Soon, more and more diehard Montauk anglers would make the trip across to Block. Except for these two main contingents of anglers from Rhode Island and Montauk, other angler factions up and down the coast never really got in on the Block Island run to the same degree that they capitalized upon the run in Cape Cod. In fact, many surf anglers who became coastal legends on Cape Cod never made it to Block Island at all. By the mid-eighties, Block Island was petering out also. The super cows disappeared back into the sea from whence they came, and have never been seen in the surf again.
Between the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties, between Cape Cod and Block Island, it was the heyday of striper surf fishing. Now let us proceed on to the striper surf plugs which were legendary in that day. Please enjoy.
Surface Swimmers
VINTAGE Danny Pichney Surface Swimmer Sr.
No longer made. Metal lip swimming plug. Body length: 7-1/2″ (excluding lip). Weight: 3-3/4 to 4 oz more or less based on hook configuration, the particular piece of wood it’s made from and subtle manufacturing differences. No two wood lures weigh (or fish) precisely the same (especially weighted ones).
This is the largest and heaviest of the three sizes of Danny’s Surface Swimmer. To me, it was the most productive of the three sizes, due to its magnetism to pull large-sized bass to the surface.
In terms of Danny’s plugmaking timeline, the Surface Swimmer was one of the earliest of Danny Pichney’s plug styles, along with the Conrad and Danny’s Darter. Those three were among Danny’s earliest and most successful plugs.
Danny’s Surface Swimmer was best for me leaving a wake right on the surface. It left quite a disturbance in its wake, and many large bass would take it right off the surface, ranging from hardly-visible slurps to voracious end-over-end surface explosions. This lure was a very stable swimmer and would perform equally well under a variety of conditions ranging from calm to high surf and from weak to strong currents.
Of course this plug would work at night. What was of great value with this plug, however, was its ability to raise sulking fish during daylight. Few other lures could raise fish as well during the daytime. If fish were known to be in an area, waiting for the night to feed, you could repeatedly throw Danny’s Surface Swimmer Sr. over them and ultimately draw tumultuous strikes from non-feeding fish. Such daytime situations were when Danny’s Surface Swimmer (and not much else) was at its very best.
This is truly a topwater lure. Tuned properly, it was hard to drive it under the surface, and it would not stay submerged too long. It stayed right on the surface. At times it was most exciting to see fish follow behind it and give their presence away by subtle swirls on the surface behind it. I felt they stalked it sometimes. If you were attentive and knew what to look for, it was characteristic the moment immediately before a strike to see the dorsal spikes and tail go erect, rising through the surface like the conning tower of a submarine. If you could see the the spikes come up, it was almost always a sign of commitment. Very rarely would they go back down. In that instant, the explosive strike would come as the fish unfurled all its raw power at the plug.
At the end of a long night at first light, when a flurry of daybreak action started to wane on most other lures, you could switch to this one and keep on catching into the mid-morning hours. It was “the” lure I’d go to after daybreak in order to keep on catching.
After sleeping all day, awaking in the late afternoon with the golden light of the sun going down, this was a great plug to begin the new night, using it to cover expansive flats as bass filtered up to raid bait pods in the shallows every dusk, often in only a couple feet of water. During the mullet run, this blue mullet color was exceptional on the shallow beaches, jetty pockets and bayside flats where huge bass would come right up onto shore to get at mullet pods harbored in inches of water.
Danny’s Surface Swimmer Sr. behaved a bit awkward and flighty when thrown on conventional gear. Although passable on conventional, it cast exceptionally, like a football rifled deep into the end zone, with heavy spinning gear. Whatever unbalance and waffling occurred casting on conventional, it all got ironed out and it acted like a rocket launched on heavy spinning gear.
Danny Pichney was a machinist and mechanic by trade, working for Con Edison power company. He was an incredible striped bass angler. Danny could not get the plugs with the actions and durability he desired, which inspired him to create his own plugs – so he could fish with the exact plugs he desired. In the beginning, Danny faced many obstacles – getting the lips correct, discovering how to through-wire plugs correctly – and shaping and weighting them to appear natural in the water. Obviously, Danny surmounted all the obstacles he faced, and Danny became one of the greatest plugmakers of all time.
Working in wood, Danny Pichney’s craftsmanship normally displays manufacturing, finishing and natural blemishes in the wood. These small manufacturing and natural marks in many ways enhance the appeal of the lure, making it more like custom-crafted fishing folk art (which I feel they are) rather than having the look of mass-produced commercial items.
The lures listed here were acquired directly from Danny Pichney approximately twenty-five years ago, more or less.
Special Supplement of Danny Pichney Plug Photos: Click here to see a showcase of nineteen models and eighty-four unique color/model instances in one of the largest remaining Danny Pichney plug collections in the world. There are at least a dozen more models and other paint patterns by Danny are not part of this particular collection.
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VINTAGE Donny Musso Surface Swimmer Sr. STRIPER PLUG
No longer made. Metal lip swimming plug. Body length: 7-1/2″ (excluding lip). Weight: 2-3/4 oz more or less.
Donny made at least two sizes of his Surface Swimmer. This is the largest and heaviest size. Its surface-thrashing commotion worked like a a magnet to draw large striped bass to the surface.
Donny’s Surface Swimmer was best for me leaving a wake right on the surface. It had more of a struggling, flopping, helpless movement versus many other brands of surface swimmers. Whereas other surface swimmers could at times be hustled along as if a healthy albeit disoriented baitfish waking the surface, I tended to present Donny’s Surface Swimmer Senior more as a wounded baitfish not able to right itself flopping on the surface. This often meant a more subtler and slower presentation than other surface swimmers – just lingering there, gills gasping in its last moments before being engulfed into a cavernous maw.
Donny’s Surface Swimmer had more of an antagonizing slow-motion, wide-swinging action. More of a baitfish that couldn’t swim – just flop and thrash on the surface. That was the action I’d try to cultivate with this wood puppet. It was often the surface swimmer I opted for on calmer daybreaks or when there was rippled water as opposed to white water.
I’d often use other, faster-moving surface swimmers when bass were up, roaming and actively feeding. In between or after such flurries, bass would go down to regroup, re-energize, gain their composure, maybe stop feeding. As surface feeding frenzies tailed off and stopped, bass below would not come back up for more active surface plugs – but they would come up for slower, subtler ones. I raised a lot of bass, sometimes dozens more, by applying this tactic at the end of feeding sprees with Donny’s Surface Swimmer whereas other anglers could not raise another fish.
In order to bring out the action I desired in this plug, I’d do something different than with other surface swimmers. In this case, I would bring out longer, slower movements of the plug, and I desired to see the entire side of Donny’s Surface Swimmer roll and come out of the water on every zig or zag. I’d use the rod tip to help swing the tail of the plug as far forward as the head on each swing. This takes some practice, and an adept rod tip held high. Line tension to start the side roll momentum, and slack to let the tail coast forward. I would try to make this happen in slow motion so Donny’s Surface Swimmer kind of hangs there between each zig or zag. The whole plug should move side to side – not just the nose or tail as with other surface swimmer presentations. It looks very much like a dying fish. This slow, sweeping tactic keeps Donny’s swimmer just hanging helplessly pinned on the surface. It draws sulking bass out – just hanging there so long it infuriates bass to come up top to belt it.
Fish tended to violently explode on it from underneath without warning as opposed to following or trailing it. This unexpected and violent explosion unnerved many anglers who would choke on the hookset by reacting sharply – pulling it away from the bass. You had to have nerves of cold steel. You need to pretend absolutely nothing is happening – that it’s an uneventful walk in the park. Meanwhile your swimmer is under a hail of deadly fire. Never stop the zigzag action of the plug even when a bass is cartwheeling all over it. When bass hit a surface-thrashing bait, they often miss it. That’s part of the reason the initial strike may be so unexpected and explosive. The bass is just lashing out blindly, hoping to shock, stun and wound the bait. If it gets a grip on it, fine. If not, the bass intends to wheel around and continue the attack until successful. I do not think the bass can clearly see it because of all the surface disturbance. They usually miss it. If you keep zigzagging, they will belt you two, three, four times until you finally feel solid weight on the rod tip…and the bass is on! If you can do this, and not pull on the bass until it pulls on you, you will be in for a fight. The bass won’t stop until it has the plug in its mouth – unless you swing first. Then you will fan and put the fish back down.
Working in wood, Donny Musso’s craftsmanship may display manufacturing, finishing and natural blemishes in the wood. These small manufacturing and natural marks in many ways enhance the appeal of the lure, making it more like custom-crafted fishing folk art (which I feel they are) rather than having the look of mass-produced commercial items.
The lures listed here were acquired directly from Donny Musso approximately twenty-five years ago, more or less.
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VINTAGE Danny Pichney Surface Swimmer Jr.
No longer made. Metal lip swimming plug. Body length: 6″ (excluding lip). Weight: 2-1/4 oz.
Danny Pichney made at least three sizes of Danny’s Surface Swimmer as shown. This is the middle, most commonly-used medium size. Most all swimming plugs of this approximate “medium” size were tagged in the vernacular of the beach as the Junior (Jr.) size, no doubt a slang reference to similarity in body length to the Atom Manufacturing Company’s Atom Junior swimmer. The colloquial naming convention was that most all swimmers of any origin that were of the medium Atom Junior size were referred to as Junior (Jr.) model sizes.
In terms of Danny’s plugmaking timeline, the Surface Swimmer was one of the earliest of Danny Pichney’s plug styles, along with the Conrad and Danny’s Darter. Those three were among Danny’s earliest and most successful plugs.
Of Danny’s three Surface Swimmer sizes, his largest size Surface Swimmer Sr. excelled for jumbo bass 15 lbs and up. On the other end of the spectrum, his very smallest size Surface Swimmer was relatively rarely used, except in a back bay, estuary or light tackle beach environment. It appealed best to pre-migratory schoolies predominantly under 5 lbs and was a light tackle plug.
This medium-sized Surface Swimmer Jr. caught everything in between the other two sizes. I’d say this medium size Surface Swimmer is the single most well-known and famous of all Danny Pichney plugs. In the years since Danny’s passing, I’ve seen several commercial and fine hobbyist versions of this plug yet I dare say few perfections. This lure is the classic surface swimmer color too – all white. I’d argue an all white topwater (by day) can work equally well as any other topwater color most of the time. There was rarely an incentive for me to tie on other than all white topwaters most days. Proper action with an all white could usually command attention. Danny Pichney was a strong proponent of adding a reddish pink splash under the chin as a strike enticement.
There were a multitude of brands and models of swimming plugs that all worked well under cover of darkness. I generally preferred such other subsurface swimmers at night. Danny’s Surface Swimmer Jr. is a true topwater lure, used most often by me between false dawn and first dark. Few other swimming plugs could perform daytime duties like it. Most often I would use it for close-in infighting tight in heavy cover – jetties, sand bars, weed beds, shellfish beds, rock beds, piling, piers, sunken barges, wrecks – anything and everything that could hold a bass by day. If I had confidence a bass was there, repeatedly waking Danny’s Surface Swimmer as close as possible practically touching the cover would eventually raise a fin for me. Even after several dozen repeated casts over the same piece of cover, I had high confidence that the next cast could be the one when Danny’s Surface Swimmer Jr. would raise a bass to the top. Whether the plug just became irritating after a while or what, it worked that way. Persistence on my part as a plugger was paramount to success with this plug for me. Almost every piece of cover could and would have bass sulking on it, and it was just a matter of not giving up casting too soon. To say Danny’s Surface Swimmer Jr. holds a special place in my heart is true. It’s rewarding after forty-five minutes of plugging the same piece of cover, to see a bronze back crest the surface behind the plug.
Tremendous eye-to-lure orchestration was important to breathe life into this wood puppet. Every infinitesimal nuance of flow and ebb tugging at the plug had to be instantly addressed and played to the hilt – all visually. You needed to lose yourself in the visual contact and become the plug you saw. Like seeing yourself in a dream. Maximizing the time caught rising up the curl of a wave, shooting the tube was a high percentage strike point. Often body-surfing bass would materialize behind or beside the skittering plug, backlit by the sun in the see-through translucent curl. There’s nothing like a sheening majesty suddenly poked a third it’s body, head and shoulders out of a curler to the side of a plug, eying it up with a one-eyed glance as it surfs the wave’s force in beside the plug, bending it’s body around halfway out of the curler ahead of it, as the curler brings the plug toward the marvel now waiting suspended ahead, with only its powerful broad tail balancing it in the wave. Otherwise, you had to get the plug to climb on top of the whitewater and riding forward, like a surfer, so it didn’t wipe out, toss and tumble, which was a low percentage strike point. If you could keep it surfing, you could scuttle it across the creamy pure white topping as a wave broke, gusting the smell of freshly-churned sea foam at you as the wave collapsed in a heaving uproar on the berm.
In a crashing surf, I’d often wait for a foam carpet to cast into. By foam carpet, I mean a wave that breaks and bubbles for a distance as it comes in, essentially transforming the surface momentarily into a creamy carpet of foam. Keeping in mind, this was cover fishing, I’d wait till the wave and therefore the foam was just about to begin to carpet the outer edge of the cover. I’d have the cast in the air and the plug land just when and where the carpet began to be pulled over the cover, then wake it through the milky foam carpet, which was often the most productive moment to raise a strike under cover of the frothy foam carpet. The carpet did not last long, but dissipated in under a minute – and only one out of every so many waves produced such a foam carpet. So timing was essential.
Tuning a Danny Surface Swimmer was more trial-and-error and more time-consuming than most other plugs. You had to evaluate bending both eye and lip up and down over a wide range of angles with Danny’s Surface Swimmers, seeking the exact eye and lip angle that most made the plug look alive. Each plug came down to a judgment call. The angles you were satisfied bending one could vary noticeably from another. Bending the eye down and the lip down created a shallower, wider wallowing roll, skating across the surface. Bending the eye up and the lip up created a quicker side-to-side bustling wake, head down bulging barely under the surface, pushing water in a tight vee wake. Best action would be when the plug looked the most natural and alive as opposed to swimming mechanical and wooden. Often, the plug was pre-tuned in calm, slow water when not fishing, and final tuning was based on water and sweep during actual usage.
Usually a pair of 2/0 #35517 trebles were put on the belly. On plugs that wouldn’t tune well, a 3/0 head hook needed to be tried too. Since bass have a habit of missing a surface swimmer, and often crash it from behind, I liked a 2/0 #35517 tail treble enhanced with sparse bucktail as opposed to a single hook at rear.
Forties
VINTAGE Danny Pichney Forty Swimmer
No longer made. Metal lip swimming plug. Body length: 7-1/2″ (excluding lip). Weight: 3-1/2 oz.
This is the largest and heaviest of at least three sizes that Danny Pichney made of this wood swimmer. In the vernacular of the beach, it was dubbed “Danny’s Forty”. No doubt a slang reference to its similarity to the Atom Manufacturing Company’s Atom Forty Swimmer.
To me, it was the most productive of the three sizes that Danny made of these swimmers, and accounted for a lot of large-sized bass in its day. By adjusting the line tie and metal lip angle, this plug could be made to swim from right under the surface in calm, flat conditions to approximately 6 feet deep (or more) in rips. Many large bass would take it. This lure was very stable and would perform equally well under a variety of conditions ranging from calm to high surf and from weak to strong currents. Worked as well by day as night.
Danny’s Forty came standard with 4/0 #35517 trebles, but 5/0′s all the way around were not beyond consideration when cow bass were the quarry. The preferred tune on this plug was to bend the line eye slightly up and to slightly bend the lip upward also.
A favorite method of super sharpies was to tie an eelskin completely over it, lashing it down onto the metal lip plate where it went into the wood body, bigging up the two belly hooks to 5/0′s for swimming stability and leaving the tail hook off. Most guys wouldn’t make the effort to do this, yet the eelskin cloak accounted for some of the very largest bass caught on this plug.
Some of Danny’s other plugs – Surface Swimmers, Darters, Trollers, Conrads and Slope Heads – had been around a long time before Danny first made any of these Forties. I recall when Danny Pichney’s Forties were considered to be “new” model lures by the beach crowd – about twenty-five years ago. So these Forty swimmers are not as old or classic models as some of Danny’s other plugs (Surface Swimmers, Darters, Trollers, Conrads, Slope Heads).
Speaking of Danny’s established lure models, Danny’s “signature” color pattern as far as I recall it are:
WHITE - All white. Pink chin splash.
HERRING - Pale blue back. Pink sides. White belly. Danny Pichney was the first (as I recall it) to make a herring pattern. Other plug makers duplicated the herring pattern in time.
MULLET - Royal blue back. Silver sides. White belly. Pink chin splash. Danny Pichney was a strong proponent of a red or pink chin splash as a strike inducement.
RAINBOW - Royal blue back over silver over orange over yellow sides. Cream white belly.
The above four are Danny’s “classic” colors I recall. Not all Danny’s plugs were common in every color. For instance it would be rare to see Danny’s Surface Swimmer in Herring color. Why not? I do not know.
Yellow with red chin splash was a fifth staple color produced by Danny, but preferred more toward the east end of Long Island and Montauk as opposed to other areas. Of course, being a custom crafter, Danny Pichney would make special runs of any requested color. From one season to the next too, Danny would get into his own changing trends of seasonal run color patterns – but the four above were Danny’s time-tested and classic stock signature colors. It’s reasonable to say, however, that any other original Danny Pichney plug colors you may come across are less common colors – and fewer plugs were produced by Danny in colors other than the above four.
The white color pattern is arguably the most productive wooden surf plug color of all time. I do believe all-white surf plugs (with or without secondary color accent markings) produce more bass than all other colors combined together. Second place behind all-white as an all-time producer are blue/white wooden surf plugs. The blue/white category includes: 1) medium, dark, royal or navy blue, and 2.) light, baby, steel or powder blue (with or without optional secondary color accents).
White was the primary productive color for many bass trips. Yet Danny’s other blue-backs (Herring, Mullet, Rainbow) each held their own. Since white was so good – and blues were also good – it was often difficult to determine which one would be the preferred color for any given trip?
They’re all top fish catchers and I found that I’d always be experimenting, switching back and forth between the four colors, looking for it to make a difference. So I’d be using say the mullet and doing well with it, yet still wanting to try the white or herring or rainbow to see if I couldn’t entice an extra fish or two into bashing that.
At times it didn’t seem to matter at all. Other times, it appeared as if one would be favored over another. Many times, it wasn’t clear whether this favoritism was real on the part of the bass – or was it just my own confidence or luck on a particular color on a particular day? Keep in mind, white was the overall long term primary producer.
So, on one hand, Danny Pichney provided four great confidence colors. On the other hand, if I was constantly juggling and judging which color was best, that could potentially distract me from other more important aspects of my presentation…so I came up with the idea of “whiting over” the other three colors, thereby putting two colors (white plus herring or mullet or rainbow) together into one plug. Now I could simply use them both at the same time in the same plug. With the white over, I could focus more on the more important aspects of my presentation, and I wasn’t as concerned whether bass preferred white versus mullet, herring or rainbow. You see, whichever one they wanted, I had confidence I was using two plug colors at once…and scoring well!
Whiting over was usually done to a rainbow or herring or mullet that had been scraped up by some bass, bashed on the head by jetty rocks, hook swing grooves worn into both sides and other perils that befall a plug. So after an alcohol rub-down, tapwater rinse and then allowing a haggard warrior to dry out before whiting it over also help re-seal the open wood pores. I really did not want the white coat to stick well, so sanding was not done to deter good adhesion of the white coat. As seen in the photo at right, the white over color was intended to wear off, exposing the underlying original blue pattern too – effectively two patterns (white plus another) in one. Many nights, the white over pattern was the one to be throwing into the endless ocean where bass waited in the darkness to pounce on it. The white over pattern looks like nothing you would ever want to pay good money for at a tackle shop, but bass often heavily favored such nondescript derelict patterns over the squeaky-clean sparkling new ones.
There were other grungy patterns too, such as the blue drip discovered accidentally and to his great dismay by one of our dear departed partners, Teddy, when the nozzle of his blue spray can malfunctioned and spew a sneeze of blue drips running atop and down the sides of his metal lip swimmer. Talk about spit hitting the fan. It appeared as if his plug had been ruined. Yet a fresh tide was starting to pull, we had to catch it, and Teddy used the blue abomination anyway – and caught bass from his first cast to last on it.
Although we had all painted “proper” neat-looking blue backs on our plugs, Teddy outfished us for the entire tide like we we worthless losers. We could not wait until the tide slacked to get off the water, mutilate the spray nozzles of our blue paint cans, and emulate the bizarre blue drip pattern before the water turned direction. What was an unpredictable mistake paint became a pattern to emulate thereafter. The blue drip held up as an awesome productive pattern ever since, kept secret. As with the white over, the blue drip would not be something you’d ever plunk down bucks to buy at a tackle shop. It was butt ugly.
But bass are dumb as rocks and don’t know they shouldn’t hit the crappy mutant-looking white over and blue drip colors harder and more often than they hit the handsome, well-kept and spotless glamour-puss plugs.
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Juniors
VINTAGE Danny Pichney Junior Swimmer
No longer made. Metal lip swimming plug. Body length: 6″ (excluding lip). Weight: 2 oz.
Danny Pichney made at least three sizes of this wood swimmer. This is the middle size. In the vernacular of the beach, it was dubbed Danny’s Pichney “Junior”. No doubt a slang reference to its similarity to the Atom Manufacturing Company’s Atom Junior.
This lure was very stable and would perform equally well under a variety of conditions ranging from calm to high surf and from weak to strong currents. Worked as well by day as night. Many striped bass would take it. It is one of the surf’s most classic lure shapes and sizes, originally popularized by the legendary Atom Manufacturing Company’s Atom Junior and the many plugs patterned along those lines.
Some of Danny’s other plugs – Surface Swimmers, Darters, Trollers, Conrads and Slope Heads – had been around a long time before Danny first made any of these Juniors. I recall when Danny Pichney’s Juniors were considered to be “new” model lures by the beach crowd – about twenty-five years ago. So these Junior swimmers are not as old or classic models as some of Danny’s other plugs (Surface Swimmers, Darters, Trollers, Conrads, Slope Heads).
Importantly, however, the relatively late introduction of this plug filled a niche between Danny’s topwater Surface Swimmers and deeper Conrads and Slope Heads. Therefore, Danny’s Junior plug was eagerly embraced by surfmen, particularly due to its versatility within the shallow to deep medium diving range that had previously been missing from Danny’s product line.
The blue swirl color pattern was not seen in wide use by me before the introduction of Danny Pichney’s Forty and Junior plugs, which appeared later in Danny’s plugmaking timeline. Danny popularized his blue swirl color pattern (as far as I know) with the debut of Danny’s Forty and Junior swimmers. I had not seen Danny’s blue swirl pattern in wide use before this. However, once blue swirl became popular with his Junior and Forty, then the blue swirl also appeared more commonly on his other plug models too – surface swimmers, Conrads and Slope Heads are examples where I’ve seen a few blue swirls. Still, blue swirls were scarce relative to Danny’s four “signature” paints – white, herring, mullet and rainbow.
Danny made no less than three different hues of blue swirl – dark, medium and light blue swirl. Shown are two of Danny’s three blue swirls – the dark and the light. Danny’s blue swirls seem remindful of Atom Manufacturing Company’s Forty Swimmers blue swirl color, which was made with hollow molded plastic bodies at that time.
Danny’s Junior was versatile. By adjusting the line tie and metal lip angle, this plug could be made to swim from right under the surface in calm, flat conditions to approximately 6 feet deep (or more) in rips. Bending the eye down and the lip down created a shallower, wallowing roll on or under the surface. Bending the eye up and the lip up created a deeper side-to-side hunting movement. Uncovering the best action in each Pichney Junior could take some time test-swimming each one. Some of these plugs worked best when tuned shallow. Others achieved their best potential when tuned to go deep. Best action would be when the plug looked the most natural and alive as opposed to swimming mechanical and wooden. Once a plug’s prime action was unlocked, it helped to mark an S for shallow or D for Deep in black marker on the metal lip plate. This way, even though the eye may be adjusted otherwise on any given trip, you’d have a mark made on each plug designating how it truly swam best. Usually a pair of 2/0 #35517 trebles were put on the belly. The tail was enhanced with sparse bucktail, either a 2/0 #35517 or a downward-pointing 5/0 to 6/0 stainless Siwash #9510X3S single hook.
A favorite method of super sharpies was to tie an eelskin completely over it. Most guys wouldn’t make the effort to do this, yet the eelskin cloak accounted for some of the very largest bass caught on Danny’s Junior. There were actually few plugs that could ideally handle eelskins. The best skin plugs needed a consistently straight body – not curved, bulged or elliptical – but straight plug bodies. Danny’s Junior had such straight body. On Danny’s Junior, the eelskin could be secured by lashing it right to the metal lip plate where the plate protruded from the wood body, bigging up the two belly hooks to 3/0 #35517 trebles for swimming stability and leaving the tail hook off.
During early development of his Junior, Danny evaluated both a 6″ (bottom photo at right) and a shorter 5-1/2″ model (top photo at right). Overall, there were very few of the shorter 5-1/2″ Juniors ever made (if I am not mistaken) and Danny’s main path continued with only the 6″ model being made. However, as evidenced by the bite marks on both sizes shown at the right, the bass liked them both.
Astute students of plugology will recall in the history of the Atom Manufacturing Company that Atom had made two sizes of the Atom Junior – the 54 and a shorter 54B model. Mere coincidence then that Danny experimented with two sizes comparable to the 54 and 54B? Methinks not.
Original Atom Juniors were not always favored by some diehard surfmen since they were made of something like an injected plastic foam mix, which could tend to be fragile and prone to breakage. On the other hand, Danny’s wood Junior was almost indestructible. Countless formidable bass tried to destroy Danny’s Junior, but mistakenly faced the relentless steel of my gaff instead.
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RARE Danny Pichney Jointed Junior
No longer made. Metal lip swimming plug. Body length: 6-3/4″ (excluding lip). Weight: 2-1/4 oz.
Danny’s Jointed Junior (third in photo) bore a similarity to Danny’s Junior swimmer (bottom). Other traditional jointed eels (top and second) were slender-bodied and effective mainly in slow-moving water or gentle surf. Danny’s Jointed Junior was not typical of other jointed eels in that Danny’s Jointed Junior was wider-bodied and more robust to handle moderate surf and stronger flows (although the Jointed Junior also had its limitations).
Stronger and rougher water was generally not the domain of jointed eels nor the Danny Jointed Junior.
It is my impression which may be mistaken, that Danny’s Jointed Junior plug model is very rare.
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Pines
VINTAGE Donny Musso Pine Sr.
No longer made. Metal lip swimming plug. Body length: 7-1/2″ (excluding lip). Weight: 3 oz.
This lure is a wood Donny swimmer. Donny Musso of Super Strike Lures made at least two sizes of it. This is the larger Pine Senior size.
The Pine Senior was turned to the same 7-1/2″ wood stock shape and same belly hanger positions as three other Donny metal lip swimmers:
Surface Swimmer Senior
Troller Senior (version 2)
Maple Senior (deep diver)
So the same base wood stock and hangers shared among four Donny Senior models. Differences were in the weighting, wood used, and the Troller Senior (version 2) had a planed head. The Surface Swimmer Senior wore a smaller metal lip but the other three (Pine, Maple and Troller) shared the same lip.
The Pine Senior was the perfect size for 15 lb plus bass. It swam in the 3 to 6 foot range most often. So it was applicable under most any conditions or off any shoreline. It was a very stable swimmer. Due to its larger size, it tended to inspire larger bass to belt it. Overall, a great Senior size plug with few equals in the medium-shallow range.
Donny’s Pine had a more fluid, supple S-shaped motion than most other metal lips. It tended to pivot more on its mid-point and exhibited a balanced, symmetrical and sinuous movement. A brace of 4/0 #35517 trebles hung off the belly. Almost always a sparsely-dressed bucktail single stainless Siwash enhanced the action better than a treble on the tail.
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VINTAGE Donny Musso Pine Jr.
No longer made. Metal lip swimming plug. Body length: 6″ (excluding lip). Weight: 2 oz.
Donny Musso of Super Strike Lures turned four different models using the identical wood shape (photo at right). These four models were referred to on the beach as:
Top: Donny Surface Swimmer
Second: Donny Pine (Medium Diver)
Third: Donny Maple (Deep Diver)
Bottom: Donny Troller
All four were referred to as the “Junior” size when necessary to distinguish them from their four bigger brothers in the “Senior” size. Each of the four Junior models were turned to the same shape, same lip, same hangers. The differences were in the lead weighting, the wood composition and the line tie pull point (plus the planed Troller head).
Donny’s Pine fished in the 3 to 6 foot level much of the time, based on tide, current and sweep – and the angle of the line tie eye and lip, which both were bendable.
Donny’s Pine, being a medium-shallow diver, you could say it was one of the most useful plugs to most surf anglers under most conditions. Few other junior-sized (approx. 6″ and 2 oz) plugs of the day worked as well as Donny’s Pine Jr. in the 3 to 6 foot depth range. It was a very stable-swimming plug. Once tuned properly by the angler, it continued to hold its tune well under stress of catching many heavy bass. It produced equally well under all conditions from calm, slow-moving through rough, fast-moving water, swells, sweeps, you name it. Overall, a great plug with few equals in the medium-shallow range.
Donny’s Pine had a more fluid, supple S-shaped motion than most other metal lips. It tended to pivot more on its mid-point and exhibited a balanced, symmetrical and sinuous movement. Almost always a sparsely-dressed bucktail single stainless Siwash enhanced the action better than a treble on the tail.
Working in wood, Donny Musso’s craftsmanship may display manufacturing, finishing and natural blemishes in the wood. These small manufacturing and natural marks in many ways enhance the appeal of the lure, making it more like custom-crafted fishing folk art (which I feel they are) rather than having the look of mass-produced commercial items.
The lure(s) listed here were acquired directly from Donny Musso approximately twenty-five years ago, more or less.
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VINTAGE Danny Pichney Bootleg
No longer made. Metal lip swimming plug. Body length: 6″ (excluding lip). Weight: 2 oz.
In respectful kidding, this lure was dubbed by the beach crowd as Danny’s “Donny Bootleg” or simply the Bootleg. Danny made only one size I know of it.
The Bootleg (shown third) as well as Danny’s Junior Swimmer (shown second) were both relatively later productions (as I am aware) by Danny. They plugged an important gap in the water column between Danny’s earlier metal lips.
The Bootleg and Junior swam at shallow to medium depths in between Danny’s topwater Surface Swimmer (top) and Danny’s deep-diving Slope Head (fifth) and deep-diving Conrad (bottom). The Surface Swimmer went on to become Danny’s most legendary and well-known swimmer, albeit limited to topwater applications. The Slope Head and Conrad had few equals (except Donny’s Maple) – but they dove too deep for many shallower beaches common to New York and New Jersey for example. Hence, few anglers routinely used Slope Heads and Conrads, except off jetties and deep beaches such as in Massachusetts for example.
Danny’s Troller (shown fourth) was also a medium diver that excelled in fast, strong flows. But the Troller needed a fast flow or rip to truly activate it to its top potential, and was not a favorite plug for slow water beaches.
Getting back to the Bootleg, it became a medium-diver most suited for medium flows, and Danny’s Junior Swimmer became a general purpose shallow to medium swimmer. Both the Bootleg and Danny’s Junior swimmer were produced later (as I am aware) in Danny’s plugmaking timeline. In hindsight, you could say medium-divers are most useful to most surf anglers under most conditions. Both the Bootleg and Junior were versatile and adjustable medium-divers that (via the lip and line tie) could both be tuned different ways to swim slower or faster and shallower or deeper in the medium-diver range.
The Bootleg was kiddingly called that due to its shape and dimensions seeming similar to Donny Musso’s Pine medium-diver, which was one of the surfman’s preferred medium-divers of the day. To be fair, you can see the Bootleg (third in photo) also shares a common shape and dimensions not unlike Danny’s own Surface Swimmer (top in photo). However, sharing a shape and dimensions like Donny’s Pine is not where the Bootleg’s similarities ended. The Bootleg also had a very close action, depth and swimming movement in the water similar to Donny’s Pine. Hence, it’s name given by the beach crowd in admiration and respect to both men, Danny’s “Donny Bootleg” swimmer.
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Trollers
VINTAGE Danny Pichney Troller Sr.
No longer made. Metal lip swimming plug. Body length: 8″ (excluding lip). Weight: 3-3/4 to 4 oz.
The Troller Senior was a huge plug, a manly plug with an extra wide girth. It accounted for most of the very largest striped bass I ever bagged on Trollers. It is a simple truth that big plugs produce big fish… and even bigger plugs produce even bigger fish. Taking logic to its conclusion, the very biggest plugs produce the very biggest bass. Some incredible fish crushed the Danny’s Troller Senior in its day. This plug is about the biggest and bulkiest metal lip striper plug I know – without jumping up into the giant jointed pike lure class.
The Troller Senior was the ideal size for cow bass, and it had the hooks to handle them. Best used on heavy conventional gear. Best used on deep beaches, inlets, jetties and channel areas. Actually most anywhere the current moved, except it dug too deeply for shallow beaches. A very stable lure with a penchant for fast-moving currents and rips. As the name implies, the Troller was a preferred boat trolling plug due to its stability in fast water or on the troll. But the name is deceptive in that it is also a great casting lure. The plug had a quick, tight vibrating movement as opposed to the more swaying, rolling movement typical of other metal lip plugs. The tight, quick, fast vibrating action of the Troller could often be enhanced by using it with a single stainless Siwash white bucktail-dressed tail hook. Despite all this talk of fast water and tight vibrating movement, the rule of thumb to fish plugs ever-so-slowly still wisely applies to the Troller in fast water.
VINTAGE Danny Pichney Troller Jr.
No longer made. Metal lip swimming plug. Body length: 6″ (excluding lip). Weight: 2 oz.
This lure was known as Danny Pichney’s Troller. Danny made at least three sizes of it. This lure is the medium size. Most swimming plugs of this approximate “medium” size were tagged in the vernacular of the beach as the Junior (Jr.) size, no doubt a slang reference to similarity in body length to the Atom Manufacturing Company’s Atom Junior swimmer. The colloquial naming convention was that most all swimmers of any origin that were of the medium Atom Junior size were referred to as Junior (Jr.) model sizes.
Of the three Troller sizes, the largest size Troller Sr. excelled for jumbo bass 15 lbs and up. On the other end of the spectrum, Danny’s very smallest size Troller was relatively rarely used, except in a back bay, estuary or light tackle beach environment. It appealed best to pre-migratory schoolies predominantly under 5 lbs and was a light tackle plug.
Getting back to the medium-sized Troller Jr. shown here, it caught everything in between the other two sizes. It is a very stable lure with a penchant for fast-moving currents and rips. As the name implies, it was a preferred boat trolling plug due to its stability in fast water or on the troll. But the name is deceptive in that it is also a great beach and jetty casting lure. The plug had a quick, tight vibrating movement as opposed to the more swaying, rolling movement typical of Danny’s other plugs. Despite all this talk of fast water and tight vibrating movement, the rule of thumb to fish plugs ever-so-slowly still wisely applies to Danny’s Troller in fast water.
The tight, quick, fast vibrating action of the Troller could often be enhanced by using it with a single stainless Siwash white bucktail-dressed tail hook. This really caused the tail to flutter quickly.
For normal beach use, the Troller was rigged with two 2/0 #35517 trebles on the belly. For trolling and to get it deeper off beaches and jetties, a 3/0 was instead used on the head. This drove the Troller deeper and added more trolling stability.
The desired “tune” was to angle the line tie eye slightly downward. Each individual plug needed slightly more or less angle than others – but all within a narrow range of downward eye bend. Once the line tie was angled downward, the lip was angled to match the exact same downward degree as the eye. This matching eye/lip angle tended to produce the best action in each Troller – and often (but not always) the optimal angle was the same angle as the planed wood Troller head. The two Rainbow Trollers in the photo show the tune. Each subdued several hundred laudable-sized bass before being put out to stud to be used only when large cows were present.
The Rainbow color was my preferred color for Danny’s Troller. Not every model of Danny’s plug were made in this Rainbow color (or at least I have not seen every model in Rainbow). But if I had to pick only one of Danny’s plugs to use in Rainbow, or only one color Troller to use, it would be Rainbow. The color and the plug seemed to go together, an observation based on many fine fish landed on Rainbow Trollers.
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VINTAGE Donny Musso Troller Jr.
No longer made. Metal lip swimming plug. Body length: 6″ (excluding lip). Weight: 2 to 2-1/4 oz.
This lure was known as Donny Musso’s Troller. Donny made at least three sizes of it. This lure is the Junior size and was the smallest of Donny’s three Troller sizes. Donny also made two larger Senior sizes – one larger than the other.
The Troller Jr. was a very stable lure with a penchant for fast-moving currents and rips. As the name implies, it was a preferred boat trolling plug due to its stability in fast water or on the troll. But the name is deceptive in that it is also a great beach and jetty casting lure. The plug had a quick, tight vibrating movement as opposed to the more swaying, rolling movement typical of Danny’s other plugs. Despite all this talk of fast water and tight vibrating movement, the rule of thumb to fish plugs ever-so-slowly still wisely applies to Danny’s Troller in fast water.
The blue scallop color pattern here was my absolute favorite of Donny’s color patterns. It is a tremendously handsome and unique color to Donny as far as I know. I had not seen this pattern on any other plugs except for Donny’s plugs. As can be seen in the photo at right, the stencil used to spray the scallop, still allowed the very back to remain baby blue. This is a unique and admirable effect. Truly this can be considered a “signature color” of Donny’s, meaning I am unaware of the pattern being produced otherwise, especially not with the “pass through” type top color.
Some persons claimed the blue scallop color represented a snapper bluefish. Of course, it effectively mimics a mackerel. It was also ideal in late summer around rocks and pilings where base were gorging on the end-of-summer bounty of free-swimming blueclaw crabs.
The tight, quick, fast vibrating action of the Troller could often be enhanced by using it with a single stainless Siwash white bucktail-dressed tail hook. This really caused the tail to flutter quickly. On the belly hook hangers, Donny’s Troller was rigged with two 2/0 #35517 trebles.
The desired “tune” was to angle the line tie eye slightly downward. Once the line tie was angled downward properly, then the lip was angled upward, often matching closely to the downward degree as the eye. This matching eye/lip angle tended to produce the best action in each Troller. Donny’s Troller was a precision-made and sturdy plug. The action was repeatable for plug to plug, and it held it’s tune well despite heavy catches on it. The golden yellow Troller shows the tune. A warrior, it had caught over one hundred good-sized bass in its prime before being reserved for special occasions. On this particular plug, the metal lip is tuned almost yet not quite on the same angle as the planed wood head. Due to its elliptical shape, centered perfectly, the Donny Troller exhibited a fluid, alluring motion irresistible to bass in fast-moving water where Donny’s Troller performed its best.
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VINTAGE Donny Musso Troller Sr. Version 1
No longer