Description

These 6 plugs came directly from the surf bag that Brad Burns used to prowl around the Muscle Bar and Bass Stand on Martha’s Vineyard back in the 1980s.  These plugs will catch big bass now just as they did then.  All the plugs are moderately used, but perfectly serviceable.

Starting in the upper left corner and going clockwise these plugs are:

• Atom 40 Surface Swimmer (Bob Pond used the same bodies on these as the squid imitating Reverse Atom) it is a great plug for snaking through the boulders of Squibby at night.  I watched Bob make these at his shop in North Attleboro.
• Danny Casting Swimming Plug – I had these plugs made both by Danny and then by Gibbs after they bought them.  This one is a Gibbs I think.  Same application as the Atom 40, but wood, and a heavier plug.
• Gibbs Pencil Popper – I used this at dawn and dusk.
• Long A Bomber – a subsurface plug like the Redfin or Rebel.  Excellent nighttime big bass plug.
• Super Strike Needlefish that gained fame during the Block Island fall blitzes of the mid 80s.
• Gibbs Stubby Needlefish – this was THE hot plug when it came on the scene.  Danny also made one that may have given Gibbs the idea – undoubtedly one of our members knows.  Tim Coleman of the Surfcaster Magazine made this style of plug famous at SE Light on Block.  I landed the biggest surf bass of my life at the Sprague River in Maine one night in the late 80s on this exact plug.  I hooked it by the big ledge, and it went halfway to the Morse River on the first run – then it swam all the way back to exactly where I hooked it!  We had to follow it most of the way or I would have been spooled.  Our rough measurement was 55″.  I drew the profile on the wall in the lunch room of our business where is remained for 20 years.