When Bill Sonnett says he enjoys “old school” bass fishing, he isn’t exaggerating. Sonnett not only collects antique fishing gear, he fishes with it. Other bass fishermen can have their high-powered boats, expensive rods and reels, and high-tech electronics. Sonnett would rather putt around in his small rowboat and fish the way his ancestors did.
He uses topwater lures that are almost 100 years old, baitcasting reels from the World War II era, tubular glass rods made in the early 1950s, and a beat-up metal tackle box from the 1940s. He relives history every time he goes fishing, and he regularly proves that the vintage tackle can still catch big bass.
Consider a stretch in late July and early August. Fishing evenings on a small lake in southern Michigan where he and his wife own a cabin, he caught and released 5-pound largemouth bass in three of four trips he took. He accomplished that feat in typical old-school fashion. He rowed his small fishing boat to a weed-choked part of the lake and cast antique topwater lures to holes in the vegetation.
“In these shallow, weedy lakes, you have to be very quiet or you’ll spook the fish,” said Sonnett, 81, who lives in Jackson, Mich. “I like to row out to a place I plan to fish and just putt around. I’ll just twitch my topwater baits, make a little splash, then let them set for a second. I want to imitate something struggling. A lot of times, the bass can’t resist.”
He paused and added, “These old wooden plugs still work. They caught bass years ago, and they catch them now.”
A Trip to Remember
I’ve seen Sonnett in action. Years ago, I traveled to Michigan to join him for a couple days of fishing with vintage tackle. Minutes after reaching our first stop, Sonnett’s keen eyes spotted a school of bass rippling the water.
“You throw about 10 yards in front of the direction they’re heading and catch one,” he instructed. “Then I’ll throw in there and catch another one.”
“Yeah, right,” I muttered sarcastically. But I followed instructions and cast my Creek Chub Plunker in front of the school of fish. I popped the lure one time and a bass immediately rose to hit it. Before the wake of that activity even subsided, Sonnett cast out his plug and set the hook on a similar-sized bass.vHe gave me one of those I-told-you-so looks and we continued fishing. We caught and released many other bass that day, all on antique plugs. And I was hooked.
Sonnett wasn’t the only one who influenced my early interest in vintage tackle, though. While I worked for The Kansas City Star, I met Warren Platt, a former teacher and driver’s ed. instructor who had a similar passion for collecting and fishing with antique gear. We met up for a day of fishing at a small public lake and Platt handed me a tubular steel fishing rod with a baitcasting reel attached.
“Where’s the drag?” I asked.
“There is no drag. You use your thumb to stop the line from backlashing,” he answered.
After a few trials, I got the hang of it and I caught a decent-size bass as I worked a Creek Chub Plunker across the surface. That started a long love affair with a popular bait of old. I fished with Platt many times after that and I was always a “one-trick pony.” Though Warren tried to persuade me to try other baits, I always went back to the Plunker and I caught fish.
Sadly, Platt now has dementia and resides in a memory-care facility. Even when a family member shows him a scrapbook filled with photos and some of the articles I did on him, he reacts with only a slight glimmer of recognition.
Sonnett, his longtime friend and fishing partner, misses his old buddy. He often ends his fishing trips with one last cast and the words “This one’s for you, Warren.”
Collecting Old-Time Lures
When Platt loaned me a Plunker to try out, my first thought was, “What if I get this thing hung up and I lose it? I mean, a lure that was made in the late 1920s has to be worth a lot of money.”
Not so. Age doesn’t necessarily translate to value in the world of fishing lures. The Creek Chub Bait Co. began manufacturing the Plunker in 1926, and it became one of the most popular topwater lures of all time. Yet, one that is scuffed up can be purchased for as low as $5 today at collectors shows.
Why? Because Creek Chub flooded the market with the baits.
“About any old tackle box you buy at an estate sale has a Plunker in it,” Sonnett said. “They were very common.”
The same is true of many other baits such as the Creek Chub Darter, the Shakespeare Mouse, the South Bend Bass-O-Reno and the original wooden Jitterbug and Hula Popper made by the Arbogast Co. They’ve often been copied over the years and labeled as revolutionary new topwater baits. But Sonnett and Platt scoff at the manufacturers’ claims.
“There’s really very little that’s new out there,” Platt used to tell me. “A lot of the topwater baits on the market today are just based on some of the old plugs.”
Why They Still Catch Fish
To understand the effectiveness of vintage lures, you have to consider the era in which they were made. There were few large, deep reservoirs in the mid 1900s; instead, most fishing was done on small, shallow, weedy lakes. That’s why most baits were topwater plugs designed for those bodies of water.
Early ads got creative in competing for the anglers’ attention:
- For Heddon’s Crazy Crawler topwater bait: “Warning: If savage smashes startle you, don’t use this bait.”
- For the Arbogast Hula Popper: “Quick jerks, Small pops, Lots of fun, Unfair to bass.”
- For the Creek Chub Plunker: “Old Mr. Bass gets so mad watching it bobbing, dancing, fussing and ker-plunking along that he rushes and strikes hard to kill it.”
- Also for the Creek Chub Bait Co.: “Every Creek Chub lure sold with a guarantee to catch fish or get your money back.”
Some companies boasted of selling millions of lures, though that is without documentation and probably somewhat of a fish story. But some of those baits are living a second life after sitting in an attic or garage for years.
“I’ve had fishermen complain about how slow the old reels retrieve,” Sonnett said. “But really, I think that’s part of why the old-time baits still work.
“The new reels have such a high gear ratio that fishermen just burn their baits in. They can cover a lot of water but I have to think the bass are wondering, ‘What was that that just went past?’ If people would just slow down, they’d catch more fish.”
In Search of Antiques
When Sonnett was a boy — and he admits that was a long time ago — he paged through books on bass fishing and marveled at the photos and drawings of some of the famous bass lures. There was only one problem: Production of most of the baits had ended, and Sonnett was frustrated in figuring out where to buy them.
“None of the tackle shops carried them,” he said. “They weren’t easy to find.”
That’s when he talked to a longtime lure collector who revealed a couple of his secrets.
“He told me that he got a lot of his lures by buying tackle boxes in estate sales or in antique stores,” Sonnett said. “I started doing that and I was amazed at what I would find.”
The lures that Sonnett gains fall into two categories — the ones that are rare and belong in a display case, and the lures that were common that belong on the end of his line even today.
Sonnett has sold most of his collection of rare lures. “At my age (81), I know I wouldn’t be around a lot longer to enjoy them,” he said. But he continues to add to his collection of lures he can fish with.
In fact, vintage lures are all Sonnett has ever used. He fishes with wooden topwater baits that were mostly made from the 1920s to the early 1950s. His rods and reels come from a similar era, before modern technology changed fishing in a big way.
“When I’m fishing this way, I feel like I’m giving the fish a fighting chance,” Sonnett said. “I started fishing with antique fishing gear when I was a boy and I’ve just never quit.”
For more information on collecting vintage fishing lures, go to the official National Fishing Lure Collectors Club website.
