This brief article concerning the life and times of quite possibly the greatest and most influential angler of our time was published in the New York Times on August 28, 2005. While it is a great primer to the rich and accomplished life of this legend, more will be added in depth through personal insight and interviews when available. Until then, enjoy reading about the father of modern angling…
Elwood “Buck” Perry, a soft-spoken Southerner who translated his almost preternatural ability to catch fish into a finely tuned philosophy, a lucrative business and a personal legend as outsized as any fish story, died on Aug. 12, 2005 at his home in Taylorsville, N.C. He was 90.
Mr. Perry was known to three generations of fishermen as Buck, with his name forever linked to the lure he patented in 1946, the Spoonplug. He sold millions of the lures, which meld two pieces of traditional tackle, the spoon and the plug.
Buck Perry said they looked like ”a shoehorn that’s been tromped on by a horse.”
Mr. Perry’s fishing system was called Spoonplugging, but Spoonplugs were not really the most important part of it. His concern was the essence of fishing: the migration of fish, underwater topography, weather, water conditions and much more; ”structure fishing,” he called it.
His own piscatorial genius was indisputable. When the golfer Bobby Jones wanted to improve his fishing, he came to Mr. Perry.
On July 24, 1954, Mr. Perry, before dozens of witnesses, cast a silver Spoonplug 30 times and landed 30 bass, an informal record.
”I believe I could have caught 100,” he told reporters.
Mr. Perry discovered profound fishing truths, including the advisability of dragging a lure — be it Spoonplug, jig or plastic worm — so that it bounces on the bottom.
”A bumping lure is often the only presentation that will produce fish,” Mr. Perry said in an interview with boats.com in 1997. ”A free-swimming lure can pass within inches of a school and the fish will not strike.”
In 2000, In-Fisherman magazine named Mr. Perry, a member of the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame, one of the nation’s 25 most influential anglers. In 1984, George Pazik, publisher of Fishing Facts magazine, said Mr. Perry began the ”whole modern era of freshwater fishing.”
Elwood Lake Perry was born on July 10, 1915, in Hickory, N.C. Thirteen years later, in a boat on nearby Lake James, he informed his father, a confident angler, that the two of them were being less than brainy.
”We’re not only fishing wrong, we’re fishing in the wrong place,” Mr. Perry said, according to an interview in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2004. His father threatened to throw him in the lake.
The youth’s theory was that big fish dwell in deeper water, but occasionally move to shallower depths, following regular routes, so successful anglers fish at the right place in the right depth at the right time. This idea was the foundation of all his future research and success.
After earning a degree in physics and mathematics from Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, N.C., Mr. Perry taught and coached at Hickory High School. He then studied engineering at North Carolina State University, leaving for the Army during World War II.
After briefly working in a family business, he started making Spoonplugs. Business lagged, despite stunts like dousing a Spoonplug in gasoline, considered repugnant to fish, then promptly catching one.
In 1957, he visited a supposedly fished-out lake with two Chicago writers. They marveled in print over his success, and Spoonplugs took off.
At first, Mr. Perry made other things in addition to lures, including golf clubs and sleeping bags. But after a fire at his plant, he stuck to Spoonplugs, which today come in seven sizes and 35 colors.
The differing weights mean the lures sink to different depths, so a fisherman needs several to be sure he is on the all-important bottom. In 1973, Mr. Perry published ”Spoonplugging: Your Guide to Lunker Catches,” and in 1981, a nine-volume home study series.
Spoonplugs and much more are still commercially available, and understandably popular through Buck’s Baits, located in Hickory, North Carolina.
For information on purchasing Spoonplugs, specialized tackle, learning materials, and just discovering one of the great untold stories of the past century, visit www.buckperry.com.