Some of you may remember I lost a very good friend back in July of 2011, someone who was near and dear to me and taught me alot in my business. His name was Jim Brown, most won't know him, some of the old timers in plug building might. Jim started Plug Builders Supply many years ago and supplied fishing lure kits, lips, all kinds of stuff via a mail order catalog. 20 years ago he was THE guy to go to for lure building stuff. Many got their start with Jim's stuff. Time went on and he stopped selling components but still did alot behind the scenes. When I first got into making lures I bought alot of stuff off him and over time Jim became a friend who I talked with almost every day. I still remember our last conversation. It was never said but I think we both knew it could be the last. Several weeks went by that I didn't hear from him and he was doing some new cutting edge chemo treatments. He was pretty sick and I had told him I wouldn't bother him but call me if he felt well enough to talk. He passed shortly thereafter of a Glioblastoma which is a cancer of the brain stem. Same thing Teddy Kennedy died from.
Since he passed there hasn't been too many weeks or days that I don't think of him. Honestly it's been hard doing alot of things he taught me because of the good memories and conversations we shared..I think of him literally every time I power up my lip press.
Several weeks ago FATE happened. Something as simple as riding my motorcycle to Home Depot and getting stopped in the parking lot....
I come out of HD to....Hey are you that Salty guy who makes the fishing lures? Turned into a chance meeting of his son Jim on his motorcycle. Jim recognized me and waited til I came out. He mentioned that he had a ton of stuff set aside at his house for me that his dad wanted me to have and we would get together soon.
Today was that day.
Since our chance encounter I have been thinking alot about this trying to figure out what to do with all the stuff and I came up with an idea and passed it by Jim jr.. he liked it as much as I did..and it's going to happen. Sometime between now and probably the Risaa show in the spring, maybe sooner I am going to start finishing out alot of this stuff that is there and am going to be selling all in honor of Jim. 100% of what these lures sell for will be made a donation to either the American Cancer Society, the National Brain Tumor Society, or maybe the Dana Farber Cancer Center where he was treated. We're not sure where yet, but it's going to happen where his family feels it should go.
There will be some stuff that many haven't seen in a long time, and there may even be some new kits dedicated to Jim, some new lips including a pikie 0.5 that many have asked for and I've never sunk the money into the tooling, I will have a few weeks work just going through all this stuff to see what's there. Pencil poppers, mini eelskins, micro A40 swimmers, poppers, all kinds of stuff.
This will be a piece of plug builder history and I hope you will join me in helping make this a contribution to honor a true friend. Stay tuned.