By GEORGE ROGERS
of the Gazette
In the bottom of your tackle box there's a fishing plug you inherited from your Pa. It's in real good shape because it's only been used a few times. That's because the Old Man couldn't catch anything with that weird-looking thing and neither could you.
Before you junk it to make room for this year's red-hot lure, check with John Kolbeck. Maybe he'll tell you it's only worth a dollar. But maybe he'll say you've got something that'll make a collector drool.
Don't be bothered by the fact that fish won't give the lure a second look. The ineffective plugs are the ones collectors want. Bass-Orenos and Pikie Minnows caught fish and were made by the carload, so unless they're an odd color or have some other quirk they're not worth much. But the lures that didn't catch fish weren't mass-produced because they didn't sell, so they're scarce and therefore valuable.
Kolbeck, of 1610 Michigan Ave., Stevens Point, is a fishing tackle collector and dealer. If you call him up on the phone or e-mail him at jkolbeck@g2a.net he may tell you instantly that your plug is junk. Or maybe he'll tell you to bring it over for a close look because you might have a lure that's worth something.
You really should have started collecting tackle 20 years ago when the stuff was cheap. Now, some of it sells for eye-popping prices, and Kolbeck knows of one lure than went for about $50,000. But don't get your hopes up, that's far from typical.
And it's cheap compared with what collectors pay for duck decoys. "Rich people collect decoys," said Kolbeck, "tackle collectors are mostly blue-collar guys."
And they're numerous. Kolbeck belongs to the 5,000-plus member National Fishing Lure Collectors Club, and a lot more tackle fans are non-members. They collect rods, reels and other paraphernalia, even sinker containers. But mostly they collect lures. Kolbeck was at a national lure show in Louisville, Ky., where the people attending filled 600 hotel rooms and spilled over into other hotels.
He does most of his selling over the Internet on eBay, the on-line auction site. Buyers can see what they're bidding on because he posts photographs of the lures. Some, however, insist on actually being there when they buy. "That's why we have shows," he said.
Kolbeck not only collects tackle, he uses it. He guided for 10 years on the Wisconsin River and, he said, averaged 40 fish per outing. He pushed long and hard for restrictive smallmouth bass rules on the river below Stevens Point and will apparently get his wish. At last spring's fish and game rules hearing in Portage County, the people attending voted for an 18-inch, one-fish-per-day smallmouth regulation, and the Natural Resources Board will probably ratify it before next season.
Although lures come in a variety of colors, Kolbeck thinks that's a manufacturer's gimmick - a way of getting people to buy more plugs. In guiding, he said, "Way less than one percent of the time I've seen color make a difference." It's how you use the lure rather than the color that counts, he declared, adding, "there's plenty of people who'll disagree with me." For the collector, color DOES count. He won't just settle for the green one. He has to have the red one, too. And the orange one, and the ...
Kolbeck, originally from Wausau, retired after 21 years in the Air Force and moved to Stevens Point in 1988. He was a coin collector and for a time was editor of a coin magazine for Krause Publications of Iola. He sold his coin collection when he became editor and vowed to do no more collecting.
But then he got into guiding and one of his customers was a man who examined his tackle assortment and told him he ought to get into the game. He dragged Kolbeck to a tackle show and he was - how do you say it? - hooked.
Now, said Kolbeck, he's the biggest lure dealer on eBay, where he goes by the handle "Capt. John." Buyers come from all over. "Japanese guys were buying a lot of stuff three or four years ago," he said, but then their economy went sour.
Uncountable numbers of fishing lures have been made over the years, some of them kind of odd. One, the Bon-Net, had seven treble hooks hanging from it. Kolbeck believes many more strange lures are waiting to be discovered. "There's still a lot of stuff out there sitting in boathouses," he said.
Other than something to look at, are these old lures of any use? Well, Kolbeck sometimes fishes with them - not the extremely expensive ones, of course. He used a Mud Puppy on a recent fishing trip to Canada and caught a couple of fish on it. He knows it was made at least 60 years ago since it has glass eyes, which became unobtainable at the start of World War II because they came from Germany.
The Mud Puppy, a muskie and northern pike lure, was manufactured in Mosinee, and still is. It's not really mass produced. It's made in a garage.
Kolbeck believes the Mud Puppy's maker, the C.C. Roberts Co., is one of the oldest independent tackle manufacturers in the country, if not the oldest. By that, he means it hasn't been bought out by a bigger company, as Heddon, South Bend, Creek Chub, Pflueger, Shakespeare and others have.