Just Plugging Away

This last fall I had a woman walk into my garage and on seeing all these gorgeous Qwikfish lures she exclaimed "what beautiful decorations". Mmmmmm, well I have to put them somewhere and I might have purchased more salmon plugs than anyone ever on the Kenai River so theres alot of them hanging around. I love to fish the plugs, its a little bit like fly fishing as you have to trick ole slimey and they're just cool objects. So when you know a guy like me the word 'experience' comes up alot, to me the coolest part of that is history. So here it is a short history and evolution of Salmon plugs on the world famous Kenai River.

Thats the plug that started it all. Heddon's TadPolly. The fishery in the 70's here was kind of willy-nilly. Most people anchored and ran Tee spoons behind the boat and then one day people starting showing up with reliable outboards that would actually run all day and the game was on. We began to drift and backtroll. Drifting a spin-glo seemed to be the most popular but some of the guys had the 'secret lure', the Tadpolly. My first ever guided customer, a wonderful guy named John Manson caught the first King I ever guided on a silver Tadpolly just like this. And, it was both mine and his first guide trip. I was happier than he was. I used this plug for years , especially for silvers in the tidal area. One time an older guy who kind of mentored me might have been a bit embarrassed by his catch and what we had when he said " them plugs are for lazy guides and &*@!# fisherman". The next day as we ran down river I could see his rods doing that tell tale plug dance, he must have decided to get a bit lazy.

Then in the early 80's the big break through came. My old friend Roland Cusson who owned the Spots Den got wind of some guys using the Qwikfish lure and ordered the first batch for us ordinary citizens. Heres a pic of the first batch, it cost $6.99 and I bought so many I still have some like this left. It was built in Windsor Canada before Lure Jensen Company bought them out. The guys from Oregon and California brought them up and as much as they tried to keep it a secret we all found out. My friend Ron Buntrock from Grants Pass Oregon came by to show me how to rig the bait . He had a complex system where he filed grooves in the lure so the thread wouldn't slip and then he cut the sardine bait so exact it was like surgery and I thought...." wow, these guys are gooooood".

Then about the time I was president of the guide association in the late 80's I saw my first Magnum Wiggle Wart. Its the one in the middle of the next picture. A guide again from Oregon had them and when I asked him to 'salt' a few around he told me he was a tackle tester for the Storm Lure company and they didn't want them in just 'anybody's ole hands' until he had adequetley tested the product. mmmmmm, this part I'm not proud of but whats a guy to do? He left Stewarts Landing for lunch with a couple Wiggle Warts dangling from the rod tips outside his boat....so now we have a couple in 'anybody's ole hand'. Its the plug in the middle of this pic and in the spring /clear water I've guided more salmon on this baby than any of them. This pic is the trifecta, left from right, TadPolly. Wiggle Wart and the Magnum Hotshot.

I had the pleasure to meet and fish with Buzz Ramsey of Lure Jensen fame when he was developing the Magnum hotshot. The plug has a big bill to dive well in the slower water and has a nice tight movement to it. Buzz would a run a plug next to the boat as we routinely do to see if it needs 'tuning' and say " what do you think Jeff, that'll catch a salmon" ? He'd then fish it for 5 or 10 minutes and repeat with a new plug. Of course he was really trying the product out while I'm thinking what everyone knows...you only catch em on what you have in the water. Buzz sent me a lifetime supply of these baby's that I still use today.

No plug on the Kenai has made the impact the Qwikfish has. I was at a Board of Fisheries meeting one time when a stratedgy was being discussed for 'slowing down' harvest without closing the fishery if a run might be to small to make escapement goals. The solution was easy to me, outlaw the Qwikfish. But bureacracy doesn't work that way which I guess is a good thing, sometimes. This last pic from top to bottom is the short history of hot colors that went super Nova hot. I personally think as I said before, you only catch them with what you're fishing with. But, one of the really fun things is to see the trends, the gossip and the legends of fishing develope. I don't think the salmons' habits change or that they get tired of one bait. I do think its just fun and we'd like them to be smarter than they really are.

The top one is the venerable Chartruesse head. When we all finally really got dialed in on rigging the QwikFish this guy was number 1 for 10 years. Then in the late 90's the 'Rodman' was the must have plug and in the 2000's the Rodman in Gold was it for a while. Lately its this last plug, 'Agent Orange'. Next year????? I can't wait........