One for the collection

[Team9nine]

Just picked this little gem up this week...an original Charlie Brewer 'Do Nothing' kit as sold by Northwoods (Fishing Facts) circa 1975.

 

 

 

[bigbill]

Betcha they still catch fish. I have some silly looking lures from the 70’s one has a assortment of different colored fins. This was when colors were solid and not attractive.

[Mobasser]

8 hours ago, Team9nine said:

Just picked this little gem up this week...an original Charlie Brewer 'Do Nothing' kit as sold by Northwoods (Fishing Facts) circa 1975.

 

 

 

4 hours ago, bigbill said:

 

Nice find. I ordered a slider kit direct from Charlie Brewer in the early 1980s. Mine was only 4" worms and assorted heads with the book on slider fishing. By that time I think they were no longer called Crazy Head lure co.I caught lots of bass with those worms, following the instructions in the book.Innovative stuff in the mid 70s, and works just as well today

[Harold Scoggins]

16 hours ago, Team9nine said:

Just picked this little gem up this week...an original Charlie Brewer 'Do Nothing' kit as sold by Northwoods (Fishing Facts) circa 1975.

 

 

 

I like looking at and collecting vintage tackle, be nice to see a thread started. Thanks for sharing.

[burrows]

55 minutes ago, Harold Scoggins said:

I like looking at and collecting vintage tackle, be nice to see a thread started. Thanks for sharing.

Start one up I would but I have no vintage tackle??‍♂️

[lo n slo]

that rules!

[Team9nine]

1 hour ago, Harold Scoggins said:

I like looking at and collecting vintage tackle, be nice to see a thread started. Thanks for sharing.

@whitwolf started a nice thread a while back that covered a lot of vintage Rebel stuff...

 

Vintage Rebel

[burrows]

8 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

@whitwolf started a nice thread a while back that covered a lot of vintage Rebel stuff...

 

Vintage Rebel

Yes I remember this he loves old rebel stuff and he’s got a ton of old rebel stuff but I couldn’t remember where he posted them. I like looking at vintage lures I don’t have vintage I have plenty of reproductions though.

[detroit1]

I remember Northwoods in fishing facts magazine...nice ads. Those hair jigs they sold looked great. Greatest mag in their day....

[Team9nine]

21 minutes ago, detroit1 said:

I remember Northwoods in fishing facts magazine...nice ads. Those hair jigs they sold looked great. Greatest mag in their day....

The hair jigs were "Crawford Jigs," tied by Jack Crawford out of Racine, WI. They were popularized by Bill Binkelman in the pages of his "Fishing News," which was the predecessor to Fishing Facts before George Pazik took complete control. 

 

 

[detroit1]

I am sooo jealous! The "barred rock" pattern (lower right) were my favorites. I never ordered anything from them (Northwoods) , but I did order the 25 pack of off-brand lures from Sports Liquidators! 

[Team9nine]

1 minute ago, detroit1 said:

I am sooo jealous! The "barred rock" pattern (lower right) were my favorites. I never ordered anything from them (Northwoods) , but I did order the 25 pack of off-brand lures from Sports Liquidators! 

Mister Twister did a lot of Jack's jig patterns in their Nature Series of baits. I thought maybe they had bought out Jack, but I've been told they were merely knock-offs/replicas.

 

[DSTN]

Good stuff.  I saw the spinner blade on the jig head hook trick in an article somewhere recently.

[Paul Roberts]

I believe my first worm kit -if I'm remembering right- had the same green plastic box, so it must have come from Northwoods -prob through Fishing Facts. Amazing how I still remember, really well, how that box opened, a bit stiff. Man, I think I can still smell it too.

 

I had some Crawford jigs too. My buddy back then caught the first really big bass we ever saw, a 23" 7lber, on a purple Crawford "Governor" jig. I began to tie my own shortly thereafter; Used a lot of marabou with worm tails after that.

 

[thinkingredneck]

Cool find!

[burrows]

9 hours ago, Paul Roberts said:

I believe my first worm kit -if I'm remembering right- had the same green plastic box, so it must have come from Northwoods -prob through Fishing Facts. Amazing how I still remember, really well, how that box opened, a bit stiff. Man, I think I can still smell it too.

 

I had some Crawford jigs too. My buddy back then caught the first really big bass we ever saw, a 23" 7lber, on a purple Crawford "Governor" jig. I began to tie my own shortly thereafter; Used a lot of marabou with worm tails after that.

 

Do you still use hair jigs for bass? Like a regular jig and trailer? Or were are these float and fly techniques ??‍♂️ I don’t know? I don’t see many using hair jigs beside the float and fly guys in the colder months on fishing shows. But I know @WRB has cought I think 17 or bigger on hair jig and trailer. Just never seen anyone using a hair jig and trailer for bass I’ve heard about it but never done it myself. I also feel that there is a reason they are kinda fazed out and it’s because the newer rubber or silicon jigs just perform better? ??‍♂️

[WRB]

Both hair and feathers have been used for jig trailers since the early 1900's.

The 1st hair jig I recall using was back in the 50's called a Doll Fly, black with red wrap.

I learned on this site from Catt, who posted a Doll Fly advertisement, that the hair used was polar bear not buck tail. Doll Fly jigs were commercially availble in the early 30's offering 1/4 to 5/8 oz, as I recall, in both solid colors and multiple colors using a ball head design jig.

I started making my own design jigs in 1971, 7/16 oz with 5/0 hook using multiple colors of buck tail hair. I still use hair jigs with pork rind trailers the majority of the time, no longer availble commercially. The term pig n jig was a jig with pork rind trailer, now used for any trailer material like vinyl, silicone, living rubber etc.

Tom

[flyfisher]

1 hour ago, WRB said:

Both hair and feathers have been used for jig trailers since the early 1900's.

The 1st hair jig I recall using was back in the 50's called a Doll Fly, black with red wrap.

I learned on this site from Catt, who posted a Doll Fly advertisement, that the hair used was polar bear not buck tail. Doll Fly jigs were commercially availble in the early 30's offering 1/4 to 5/8 oz, as I recall, in both solid colors and multiple colors using a ball head design jig.

I started making my own design jigs in 1971, 7/16 oz with 5/0 hook using multiple colors of buck tail hair. I still use hair jigs with pork rind trailers the majority of the time, no longer availble commercially. The term pig n jig was a jig with pork rind trailer, now used for any trailer material like vinyl, silicone, living rubber etc.

Tom

Polar bear is awesome stuff if you can find it.  I had a patch of it i used for tying smallmouth flies about 15 years ago.  

[Paul Roberts]

On 9/30/2018 at 8:14 AM, Burrows said:

Do you still use hair jigs for bass? Like a regular jig and trailer? Or were are these float and fly techniques ??‍♂️ I don’t know? I don’t see many using hair jigs beside the float and fly guys in the colder months on fishing shows. But I know @WRB has cought I think 17 or bigger on hair jig and trailer. Just never seen anyone using a hair jig and trailer for bass I’ve heard about it but never done it myself. I also feel that there is a reason they are kinda fazed out and it’s because the newer rubber or silicon jigs just perform better? ??‍♂️

Hair jigs work as well as skirted jigs in my mind, maybe better in some cases. They were "phased out" bc they are more labor intensive to produce. Rubber skirts just made things simpler. Rubber (silicone mostly) do offer more variations in color, and translucency, which can be a plus. But, hair moves water -makes a wake- better bc of its mass and buoyancy. And that wake seems to say "food" to fish.

 

Hair is esp good in winter bc it slows baits down and moves well in really cold water. But they work all year long. Before "Living Rubber" came out in the 80s I used deer hair jigs for a similar purpose. They worked really well. I also used marabou a lot, and still feel that if I was left with one material to tie jigs and flies with, marabou would be it. I used marabou jigs with either a pork or plastic trailer. If there is a drawback to it, for bass fishing, it's that it is somewhat fragile -will get torn up eventually, and it collects algae, dirt, and detritus. Light colors, esp white, will get dirty and stain. But... nothing moves like marabou in the water.

[Harold Scoggins]

Like to see Team9nine's thread continue and I hope there are other tackle finds and collectors here on BR. It's neat to see how tackle and lures have evolved over the decades. This will be my first contribution to the thread.

 

Croaker Frog by the Paw Paw Bait Company, late 1930s. Covered in real frog skin.

[Team9nine]

Per @Burrows suggestion, I'll add the 1984 Knight Spinner Bait to this thread, and keep adding here as I recently picked up a bunch of old wormin' stuff.

 

[Paul Roberts]

Neat thread. When I lived in NY, I often found old fishing tackle at garage sales and flea markets. Now, in CO, it's rare, and more apt to be trout fly-fishing stuff.

 

Very cool, Harold! Real frog skin! Now that is cool.

 

Love the spinnerbait, Brian. Looks like that one was to address the idea that bass sometimes target the blades. Not sure that's really what's going on there, but that explanation did get passed around a lot.

[kenmitch]

One of these days I'll run down to my brothers house and photo his collection of vintage fishing tackle collection. He pretty much just runs around and buys stuff at yard sales, estate sales, garage sales, etc. and then sells them on eBay. He keeps the old stuff to add to his collection. A few years ago he scored a locked trunk at a yard sale which turned out to be from the late Zane Grey and was filled with brand new sealed duplicates of his lures.

[Team9nine]

For the plastic worm fans, the original "jig worm"

 

We don’t have an exact date of when an angler affixed one of Creme’s, Norton’s or Stembridge’s worms to a jig. But we do know that Ted Green and Gayle Marcus of Mar Lynn Lure Company of Blue Springs, Missouri, purchased Dave Hawks’ Thinga-ma-Jig in 1955. It was a horse-hoof-shaped jig that Hawks’ dressed with a pork-rind eel to catch largemouth bass at Bull Shoals Lake. In 1956, Green and Marcus added one of Norton’s plastic worms to Hawks’ jig, and they named this combo the Skworm-N-Jig. In 1960, Harold Ensley of Overland Park, Kansas, Ensley used use the Skworm-N-Jig to win the World Series of Sports Fishing.

 

-Ned Kehde