6:19 PM Page 1 Saltwater (#30 in a Series) Classics Don Musso and Super Strike Lures Part 3 By Frank Pintauro A s promised, Don and Steve Musso sat with us to detail Super Strike s move to modern plastics. In an economic climate where it is vital to be able to reinvent yourself, I think you will find it fascinating to see just how important the power of an innovative product is. For Super Strike lures have those fish-catching extras - a sure, deadly, quality lure. Put Don Musso up there with Stan Gibbs and Bob Pond as one of the great saltwater lure makers of any generation we have known on the Striper Coast. Interview Frank Pintauro: In the first two articles we did we covered the wooden era. I guess the big question is why did Super Strike go to plastic? Don Musso: I was getting tired of the wood because you couldn t count on every single plug being the same. That was number one. Number two was after you used them for a while, they started taking water on and they didn t work properly. Production-wise I knew we could get out a lot more plugs in plastic and every plug was going to be precision-made. Every balance was going to be exactly the same. If you took twenty plugs out of a package, twenty plugs would work; compared to if you took twenty wood plugs out of a package, maybe you d get five that were really hot plugs and the rest would be mediocre. FP: The problem being wood gets water-logged and that just affects the swimming. DM: That s exactly right and even though the wood is sealed, it will still eventually take on water A close-up view of the well designed Bullet in four hard-to-find colors. 46 once the hooks start digging into the body. FP: For a craftsman like yourself, to go from wood to plastic you must have had to really educate yourself and figure out how to do it. How did you guys go about doing that? And the second part of the question is, Steve, when did you really jumpin in a big way? Steve Musso: For me it was about 1987. DM: In the beginning, both my sons Donnie and Steve were doing the wood with me, but as soon as we went into the plastic lures.donnie helped me a lot with the needlefish assembly work. In fact Donnie had to spray an emergency order of needles for Campo when I was away fishing. SM: I didn t do so much in the very beginning of the early plastic years as those were my teenage years. Once I started in college I got much more involved with the business. The Super Strike Color Chart featuring 34 standard colors. Hunting & Fishing Collectibles Magazine
6:19 PM Page 2 The anatomy of this Bullet highlights its internal structure. Hard-to-find Clear Darter in transparent color and its packaging. With only 150 produced, the Bunker Bullet is one of the rarest runs Super Strike has made. FP: Did you go to college locally? SM: Yeah. SUNY Farmingdale. So since 86 I ve been pretty much steady with the business since then FP: How long had you been thinking about the move to plastic? DM: As far back as 1960 or 1961, if you remember those plastic pieces from the last article. It was always in my mind because I knew the wood just had nothing but problems. FP: So you were basically researching it for twenty years, from 1961 or 62 to 84, What happened in 84 that said Okay, now s the time? DM: When we went up to the Cape and did such a job on the fish, I knew I had to get the lure into plastic. I knew I could never keep up with the demand for the plug in wood with the way that lure was catching fish. So I knew I had to get into plastic, and I knew that the plastic was going to hold up. I also knew I could design a plug where the wire went over the top of the plug with a bigger swivel, being it was so narrow. In wood, if I put a big swivel in, it was going to be hanging way out at the bottom and I didn t want that. So that was another reason for going into the plastic. At that point I had to go to companies that I can find out prices and get molds made SM: You did a lot of research? DM: Yeah, I did. Especially in regards to specific weights of plastics. FP: How do you know where to find the equipment to do it? DM: Once you design a plug and you figure out how you want to make the inside, you make the drawings up then you go to a mold maker. I met with Ralph Verney, an engineer with Jameson Plastics in Baldwin and he had been interested as far back as 1961 with working with me on the minnow swimmer. When I went back with the needlefish, he mentioned a few other companies to go to. I must ve have gone to five or six injection mold makers, and finally I settled on one out here on the island. The others were actually all from the island. I went to Mack Plastic, I went to Heller Plastic, I went to I think it was J & B Plastic - they were out in Deer Park at that time. I went to America Mold Company - that was another one. FP: So the needlefish was the first plastic one DM: Yes. Two versions of the Little Neck deep swimmer in the packaging it was sold in. The Little Neck Swimmer electrode template used to make the 2002 modification of the lure. March-April, 2009 47
6:20 PM Page 3 The Little Neck Swimmer electrode template used to make the 2002 modification of the lure. Hard-to-find green-eyed needlefish signifying the lure as a lightweight version, in three sizes. The simple lead weights used for wood (top) and engineered lead weights for plastic (bottom). The bottom weights, engineered by Don Musso, allow precision shape and placement in the plastic lures. FP: Now on an average year of wood, how many needlefish were you able to make versus how many could you make with plastic? DM: I didn t stay in the wood that long with the needlefish. I went right into the plastic. I only stayed with the wood until we had the molds made. FP: Could you quadruple the amount you made? SM: Oh, you could do quite a bit more. DM: The first shot of plastics we had 24,000 made. And that was three sizes. That was large needlefish, medium needlefish and the small needlefish. SM: So it was 8,000 shots. A shot produced three lures, so that s your 24,000. FP: Did you have to go to more retail shops to really expand the base? DM: More retail shops came to us wanting to handle the plugs. FP: So the first year was strictly needlefish? DM: We were so busy with the needlefish we were almost letting go of all the other wood plugs. It was really nothing but needlefish that was going on. FP: When did the rest of the plastic models make their debut? SM: The first made were the small, medium and large needlefish. That was back in 84. In 1987 there was a small popper, medium popper and the Bullet. In 1990 there was the darter and large popper. In 1995 we came out with the deep swimmer. FP: Gotcha. How many different models did you come out with the casting swimmer? DM: Just the 6 model. We made The Needlefish electrode, handmade by Don Musso, used to make the plastic large needlefish mold. 48 Mackerel colored swimmers unveiled last month at the L.I. Recreational Fishing Expo. A limited run; it will not be available as a standard item. them in different sizes in wood but only one in plastic. SM: Same thing with the Darter only one size. FP: How did the Bullet come about? DM: Tim Coleman had called me up and he wanted me to make a Stubby Needlefish, which he designed, what they call the Pocket Rocket. I told him we did not have the time, so I sent him to Danny and Dan made it. But the more I thought about it, I decided I m going to make a Stubby Needlefish also and that s when I came up with the design for the Bullet. FP: How many different colors did you guys make? SM: I have my very first catalogue, which was done in 1988 there were 25 colors. FP: So 84/ 85 were there 25 different colors already? DM: Approximately. FP: How did you pick the colors? Did guys ask for something special? DM: Not really. It was just colors that we just started to paint that I thought looked good. And then Hunting & Fishing Collectibles Magazine
6:20 PM Page 4 Super-rare, purple orange mackerel needlefish painted by Steve Musso. Only two reverse blurple Bullets were ever painted. Steve Campo of course wanted certain crazy colors that he wanted for his crew. FP: Steve Campo told me he caught the first bass on your plastic darter! DM: That s right. He said to me, Don, don t change a freakin thing on that plug, because, he says the fish were jumping all over it. He said he never saw anything in his life like it! FP: I guess this is going to be a very difficult question to answer because you made so many colors, but did you have any specials made? Easy to answer in wood - we talked about the scallop-colored, mackerel and stuff like that. SM: The Transparent Series was probably in 1985. We made the needlefish basically in all transparent colors, like a red, blue, green, and yellow. FP: Is there a certain amount of colors that you re using now? SM: For 2009 there will be 34 colors. But I get special calls for custom colors from stores and I ll do that if I have the time. FP: When I was talking to a couple of guys, they talked about the special colors that they were using in the 90 s like glow-yellow, chartreuse, parrot? DM: Yep, yep. Parrot was one of the colors - Steve Campo asked us to Set of ZZ - A close-up of a shot which produced three lures. March-April, 2009 paint the parrot color SM: Yeah, we still do the parrot and herring also. DM: You know how I started the Herring color? I had an old Nissan 200SX and I had some damage and I bought some paint to fix up the damage on it. And it was powder blue maybe a little bit deeper than we re using now. And we used that and the color seemed to be very, very good for catching fish so we continued using it. FP: Wow. He also said blue mackerel was another special color he did really well on. White opaque also. SM: White is a standard color now. It s one of our top selling colors. FP: There was an issue with some of them filling up with water when the needles first came out. Can you tell us about that? DM: We were gluing the tubes inside the plug different than we do now, and the guy that we had working with us was using way too much of this glue and it wasn t drying. What was happening was when the water started to get at it, it would start going right through the gluing process. Today, we use the same stuff that the plugs are made out of so it all fuses together. It didn t last very long. I remember it was just one year and it wasn t in all the plugs. FP: Has there ever been any A color collection of Super Strike mackerel needlefish. 49
6:20 PM Page 5 Zig Zag special transparent colored darters given away at fundraisers by Don and Steve. thought about some other models to do in plastic? DM: There s been a lot of thought. SM: The lipless swimmer was something that should have been done at the same time as the deep swimmer. It just wasn t able to get finished because the mold maker couldn t figure out how to do the front section of it. But the mold is a good majority of the way finished. The mold is probably 90% complete. So that was another one that would ve been in plastic and should ve been in plastic. Soon, hopefully. FP: Anything else? SM: There was a pencil popper. The mold maker that made all of our previous molds retired so we had to find someone new. After a long search, I found someone who seemed to be able to handle our job. I sent our drawing and samples on its way. After a few weeks we get some samples back. I still probably have them laying around. I looked at the lure and said, Whose lure is this? And thought to myself this isn t what we sent you. I don t know what they did but it looks just like someone else s pencil popper that is on the market in plastic. It was totally wrong. And they wound up doing like three versions before my father finally said, Let me make this part up for you. We gave them a perfect wooden model a lure exactly like this (showing a carbon electrode). And they were supposed to digitize it. And take the numbers generated into a program for a CNC machine. As it turned out they never digitized it, they tried to make the lure based Rare Zig Zag gold-orange darter painted by Steve Musso. solely on the drawings that were sent. So, my father finally had to make the electrodes for the pencil popper after the mold maker couldn t do it the way we wanted. Each time he tried the mold maker just never got it exactly right. After he made the carbon electrode the molds were finally on their way. However, there were small problems with quality that never seemed to get resolved that would keep delaying us from testing the mold. Finally, we felt that the shape of the new plug was right and ready for a test run and but it failed. As it turned out the mold maker never incorporated water-cooling into the mold, and it would never be able to reach full production run without overheating. Which meant the injection mold machine would have to be shut down every 15 minutes for the mold to cool there was no way we could accept a mold that could not produce parts at the level we needed, so it wound up being scraped. FP: Is it safe to say there could be a pencil popper in our future? SM: It s something I hope to do soon. DM: I made them in wood in the beginning! We took a lot of fish on them so they work good. FP: The interesting thing about plastic is that plastic is just beginning to find a very strong following collecting-wise. We see it with Heddon, we see it with Creek Club and South Bend. What can we tell collectors to look for in terms of specials? SM: Be around for raffles. Raffles, any kind of charity things. that s where I make up lots of stuff that s one or six of a kind. I ll make one and I ll forget what I ever did to it and the guy that wins it has something nobody else has. There s quite a few lures out there like that. I give away a lot of stuff. Around Christmas time for the Toys for Tots that the Striper Surf Club sponsors I made up about a dozen plugs for them. The stuff I sell through the stores, you know, there s thousands of. But the stuff that s for donations I always try to make something up special. The unique stuff I make I give away. FP: Anything else rare? SM: Yeah. The rarest production run of lures right now is the Bunker Bullets. There are only 150 of those I made so far. I may do more of them this year. And there was the reverse purple with a red gill slit. That was something different there are only two of them that I made. The needlefish, bullets, and deep swimmers with green eyes are lures that were only produced in low numbers. You don t find too many of them. They were either a lighter weight version or unweighted. DM: The green eye needlefish was made for much calmer water where you could work the plug much slower and not have it sinking. FP: What s your most popular plug? SM: Year after year, the medium popper 2 3/8 is the best selling, then the darter. And I would say the large needlefish after that. DM: Popping plugs are going to be the biggest seller because it is a daytime plug. You got more people fishing days than nights. And if the idea is they re not going to be casting that many small minnow plugs most of these guys that fish wanna see this plug go way out. And I don t think the interest is catching fish anymore, I think it s in how far they can cast really. That s about what it gets down to. That s why the medium popper usually is the best seller. 50 Hunting & Fishing Collectibles Magazine
6:21 PM Page 6 Don and Steve Musso on the night of our interview. SM: Bluefish blitzes sell lures, too! FP: And that s what the shop owners want. Guys are asking me how you are doing with the limited Wadds? Still sticking to a limited edition of 66? DM: They are not all finished but yes, 66. FP: Other than the Bunker Bullets, any other limited runs being considered? SM: I would like to keep all the mackerel lures to limited runs. I just made 150 mackerel of the new Rattl n Little Neck Swimmers as part of a show special. They are the first ones released as my father just made up the mackerel template for them. They will not be available as a standard item just limited runs. They re going to be special. You know what else is pretty rare, Frank? Because the production has completely ceased on it is the original version of the casting swimmer. It has a much longer front and the original ones say Super Strike Deep Swimmer on them. The original ones ran too deep so we shortened the front. That s a rare item! DM: Yes, the early ones were only good for the Lighthouse. Otherwise if you fished False Bar or North Bar you were bouncing bottom. If you fished the Bluffs, you were bouncing bottom so we had to make an adjustment. FP: And so the ones marked Super Strike Deep Swimmer on the bottom with the elongated top would be the rarest? SM: Yes, those would be the rarest. I like to refer to them as the first version or V.1. Even though we sold that version between 1994-2002, the production was maybe two runs on those. In late 2002 we modified the swimmer too, so it wouldn t go too deep. This was version 2: the lip was shorter and the name Super Strike Deep Swimmer was no longer on the bottom of the lure. (Lost it in the modification) They had a fixed weight in them and were produced between 2002-2007. And now there is the newest and 3rd version of this lure called the Rattl n Little Neck Swimmer V.3. The outside is identical to the second version, but this one now rattle s no more fixed weight; only bb s are used to weight the lure. There were green eyes on the first version; I would say they are very, very rare. FP: What s your paint technique? Anything special for the mackerel pattern? SM: Yes we use a specially made template specific to each model. First the lure is racked and painted in its usual way; then it is transferred to a special fixture that holds the lure in place and the template is placed over it. Usually black is then sprayed on the lure, after drying it is removed, transferred back to its standard rack and the finishing touches of paint are applied. It s a time consuming process; that is why I only like to sell mackerel lures in limited numbers. If I change my process down the road I would consider doing more. FP: Are you serving basically the Northeast? SM: The best market for us is New York, Long Island, then Rhode Island and Massachusetts. I m starting to get some very good stores in New Jersey. I sell to a few stores in California. I have a little business I m doing in Florida. FP: Guys, you ve both been great. Thanks so much for spending time with us, DM: Happy to do it, Frank. SM: Thank you. (Editor s note: Readers wishing to contact Frank Pintauro may do so by calling 516-741-7044 or emailing masterlure@aol.com) March-April, 2009