Alluring Pastime Vintage Fishing Tackle In General Is Becoming An Increasingly Collectible Commodity. There Are Several Web Pages On The Internet Devoted To Buying, Selling And Trading The Stuff.

The classified ad says he’s looking for old fishing creels, for “vintage fishing tackle.” Collector seeks collectibles.

But let’s cut to the chase, here.

Mike Fegles is after plugs. Preferably salmon, but bass will do. Cedar or balsa, anything pre plastic.

He’ll buy the other stuff, too, the wicker creels and classic reels. But that’s just trading fodder for him, the currency that spends most easily among collectors who appreciate the bygone elegance of a split-bamboo fly rod or the practical simplicity of a canvas minnow bucket.

Fegles will use those kinds of things to bargain his way into another salmon plug or two. That’s where he finds the artistry and craftsmanship he’s after, and the history. Those old hand-painted lures from the ‘30s and ‘40s are the prizes that tug at his line.

“Vintage fishing tackle - pre-1950s, from the ‘40s on back - has really come to be respected as folk art,” Fegles says. “I try to collect things I can relate to and have some kind of an attachment to - that’s why I go after the Northwest things.”

Such as salmon plugs. Some anglers carved their own wooden lures as early as the late 1800s, but they didn’t become much of a commercial item until well into this century in the Seattle area.

“Most salmon plug businesses started around the ‘30s, and most of them were Depression-driven, just Mom and Pop things out in the garage,” Fegles says. “They sold them down on the docks for a dollar or two. They sold them to wealthier people who could afford to come to the Puget Sound and catch chinook.”

Those same lures, carved with pocket knives or turned on lathes, now sell for an average of $20 or $30 if they’re in good shape, and some rare or especially intricate pieces can bring hundreds of dollars.

Vintage fishing tackle in general is becoming an increasingly collectible commodity. There are several Web pages on the Internet devoted to buying, selling and trading the stuff.

There’s even a nationwide organization of collectors, such as Fegles, who specialize in antique lures.

“Probably five years ago, membership was at 2,000 and this year it hit 5,000,” says Gabby Talkington of Richmond, Calif., who is himself a lifetime member of the National Fishing Lure Collectors Club.

Talkington is a collectibles dealer specializing in wooden lures, and he maintains databases of items on the buy or sell lists of several hundred collectors across the country.

Fegles has assembled much of his collection just by casting about at garage sales and flea markets, even antique stores.

He’s found that price is an overrated factor in the collecting game. The pieces that interest him the most are those with a history, a story to tell.

The “Wilmer’s No Foolin”’ plugs, for instance. According to Fegles, they were made in the early ‘50s by a couple of beer-drinking buddies in Reedsport. The finger-sized herring were carved and painted by hand, and used to catch striper along the coast.

“They were just a couple guys who literally sat in their garage and sucked down Blitzes and made them,” Fegles says.

Some of the old and elaborate pieces in his collection include the “Success Streamliners,” the “Lucky Lures” and the “Spark-X-Plugs.”

Then there are the “Neon Mickeys.” They stand out among Fegles’ other lures because, for one thing, they’re plastic. Manufactured in the late 1950s, they eventually fell into disfavor as environmental hazards.

You see, their name derived from the fact that each contained a substance that caused them to luminesce as they moved through the water.

“The state banned them because they had mercury inside,” Fegles says.

It’s gotten to the point where that kind of backgrounding and research are as much a part of his hobby as shopping or trading or cataloging.