living rubber material and other jig components out of San Jose, Calif. His company has been noted to be advertised in Western Bass Magazines that date back to 1977. Bassmaster featured an article on Hauck and his living rubber skirts in the summer of 79.
The living rubber component evolved into flat rubber and fine or frog hair rubber and by the mid to late 80’s, that was really where the finesse jig came from.
At that point, my tie was with Gary Klein and Tournament Lures in Oroville. We did the Weapon Jig, the Texas Flip jig and some others. These all came with a variation of weed guards.
48
NECESSITY BREEDS INVENTION
Around this time we
began to realize that we
needed two jigs- a deep
water jig and a flippin’
The original Tournament
Lures Weapon Jig
jig (heavy cover jig). The Weapon’s claim to fame was the first needle point hook. It
was the first jig hook to have
a turned eye.
This was really designed with
Gary (Klein) in mind, because his first year on the
B.A.S.S. tour, in ‘79, he lost Angler of the Year (AOY) by
two pounds. Throughout that whole year, there were
a number of fish that he lost (all with a flippin’ stick, all
with a flippin’ jig), that could’ve won him the title.
There was a lot of innovation in that 15 to 18 year
period. The jig industry grew leaps and bounds with
everything from colors, style of heads, hooks, etc. and
it was all made here in the West.
There was a guy here in my hometown that got
me tournament fishing and he made all the molds
in his garage. They were single cavity jig molds, so
long before injection molding and long before casting,
we pouring jigs one at a time in his garage. I was
pouring for him and he was supplying all the jigs for
Tournament Lures (for the Weapon), for the Garland
Brothers and everybody from Mann’s to Haddock
Lure Company.
PRE INTERNET TACKLE
Western Bass tournament direction Hal Huggins operated Fanguard outside of Chico. That was kind of the first “mail order catalog”. You could call up, order it and ship it to your house. He was the Tackle Warehouse of his time and jig heads were a big deal with Vanguard at the time. One of the things that he had was a weed guard. It was two strands of piano wire that were poured into the jig head. Once opened, they had to be shaped over your hook to act as the weed guard. This was where the football head jig really started.
The Garland jig originally was fished on a triangle shaped head, but the football head jig was way better in deep water, because it had more feeling in deep
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