saltwater classics · by frank pintauro a s promised, don and steve ... was a small popper, medium...

46 Hunting & Fishing Collectibles Magazine

Don Musso and Super Strike Lures – Part 3

By Frank Pintauro

As promised, Don and SteveMusso sat with us to detailSuper Strike’s move tomodern plastics. In an

economic climate where it is vital tobe able to reinvent yourself, I thinkyou will find it fascinating to see justhow important the power of aninnovative product is. For SuperStrike lures have those fish-catchingextras —- a sure, deadly, quality lure.Put Don Musso up there with StanGibbs and Bob Pond as one of thegreat saltwater lure makers of anygeneration we have known on theStriper Coast.

InterviewFrank Pintauro: In the first two arti-cles we did we covered the woodenera. I guess the big question is whydid Super Strike go to plastic?

Don Musso: I was getting tired ofthe wood because you couldn’tcount on every single plug being thesame. That was number one.Number two was after you usedthem for a while, they started takingwater on and they didn’t work prop-erly. Production-wise I knew wecould get out a lot more plugs inplastic and every plug was going tobe precision-made. Every balancewas going to be exactly the same. Ifyou took twenty plugs out of a pack-age, twenty plugs would work; com-pared to if you took twenty woodplugs out of a package, maybe you’dget five that were really hot plugsand the rest would be mediocre.

FP: The problem being wood getswater-logged and that just affects theswimming.

DM: That’s exactly right andeven though the wood is sealed, itwill still eventually take on water

once the hooks start digging into thebody.

FP: For a craftsman like yourself,to go from wood to plastic you musthave had to really educate yourselfand figure out how to do it. Howdid you guys go about doing that?And the second part of the questionis, Steve, when did you really jump-in in a big way?

Steve Musso: For me it wasabout 1987.

DM: In the beginning, both mysons Donnie and Steve were doingthe wood with me, but as soon as wewent into the plastic lures….Donniehelped me a lot with the needlefishassembly work. In fact Donnie had tospray an emergency order of needlesfor Campo when I was away fishing.

SM: I didn’t do so much in thevery beginning of the early plasticyears as those were my teenage years.Once I started in college I got muchmore involved with the business.

Saltwater Classics(#30 in a Series)

A close-up view of the well designed Bullet in four hard-to-find colors. The Super Strike Color Chart featuring 34 standard colors.

saltwater:Layout 1 2/17/09 6:19 PM

March-April, 2009 47

FP: Did you go to college locally?SM: Yeah. SUNY Farmingdale.

So since ’86 I’ve been pretty muchsteady with the business since then

FP: How long had you beenthinking about the move to plastic?

DM: As far back as 1960 or 1961,if you remember those plastic piecesfrom the last article. It was always inmy mind because I knew the woodjust had nothing but problems.

FP: So you were basicallyresearching it for twenty years, from1961 or ’62 to ’84, What happened in’84 that said Okay, now’s the time?

DM: When we went up to theCape and did such a job on the fish,I knew I had to get the lure into plas-tic. I knew I could never keep upwith the demand for the plug inwood with the way that lure wascatching fish. So I knew I had to getinto plastic, and I knew that the plas-tic was going to hold up. I also knewI could design a plug where the wirewent over the top of the plug with abigger swivel, being it was so nar-row. In wood, if I put a big swivel in,it was going to be hanging way outat the bottom and I didn’t want that.So that was another reason for goinginto the plastic. At that point I had to

go to companies that I can find outprices and get molds made

SM: You did a lot of research?DM: Yeah, I did. Especially in

regards to specific weights of plas-tics.

FP: How do you know where tofind the equipment to do it?

DM: Once you design a plug andyou figure out how you want tomake the inside, you make the draw-ings up then you go to a moldmaker. I met with Ralph Verney, anengineer with Jameson Plastics inBaldwin and he had been interestedas far back as 1961 with workingwith me on the minnow swimmer.When I went back with the needle-fish, he mentioned a few other com-panies to go to. I must’ve have goneto five or six injection mold makers,and finally I settled on one out hereon the island. The others were actu-ally all from the island. I went toMack Plastic, I went to Heller Plastic,I went to… I think it was J & BPlastic - they were out in Deer Parkat that time. I went to America MoldCompany - that was another one.

FP: So the needlefish was the firstplastic one -

DM: Yes.

The anatomy of this Bullet highlights its internal structure.

With only 150 produced, the Bunker Bullet is one of the rarest runsSuper Strike has made.

Hard-to-find Clear Darter in trans-parent color and its packaging.

The Little Neck Swimmer electrode template used to make the 2002modification of the lure.

Two versions of the Little Neck deep swimmer in thepackaging it was sold in.


FP: Now on an average year ofwood, how many needlefish wereyou able to make versus how manycould you make with plastic? DM: I didn’t stay in the wood

that long with the needlefish. I wentright into the plastic. I only stayedwith the wood until we had themolds made.FP: Could you quadruple the

amount you made?SM: Oh, you could do quite a bit

more.DM: The first shot of plastics we

had 24,000 made. And that was threesizes. That was large needlefish,medium needlefish and the smallneedlefish.SM: So it was 8,000 shots. A shot

produced three lures, so that’s your24,000.FP: Did you have to go to more

retail shops to really expand the base?

DM:More retail shops came to uswanting to handle the plugs.FP: So the first year was strictly

needlefish?DM: We were so busy with the

needlefish we were almost letting goof all the other wood plugs. It wasreally nothing but needlefish thatwas going on.FP: When did the rest of the plas-

tic models make their debut?SM: The first made were the

small, medium and large needlefish.That was back in ’84. In 1987 therewas a small popper, medium popperand the Bullet. In 1990 there was thedarter and large popper. In 1995 wecame out with the deep swimmer.FP: Gotcha. How many different

models did you come out with thecasting swimmer? DM: Just the 6” model. We made

them in different sizes in wood butonly one in plastic.SM: Same thing with the Darter –

only one size.FP: How did the Bullet come

about?DM: Tim Coleman had called me

up and he wanted me to make aStubby Needlefish, which hedesigned, what they call the PocketRocket. I told him we did not havethe time, so I sent him to Danny andDan made it. But the more I thoughtabout it, I decided I’m going to makea Stubby Needlefish also and that’swhen I came up with the design forthe Bullet.FP: How many different colors

did you guys make?SM: I have my very first cata-

logue, which was done in 1988 –there were 25 colors.FP: So ‘84/’85 were there 25 dif-

ferent colors already?DM: Approximately.FP: How did you pick the colors?

Did guys ask for something special?DM: Not really. It was just colors

that we just started to paint that Ithought looked good. And then


The Little Neck Swimmer electrode template used to make the 2002modification of the lure.

Hard-to-find green-eyed needlefish signifying the lure as a light-weight version, in three sizes.

The simple lead weights used for wood (top) and engineered leadweights for plastic (bottom). The bottom weights, engineered by DonMusso, allow precision shape and placement in the plastic lures. Mackerel colored swimmers unveiled last month at the L.I.

Recreational Fishing Expo. A limited run; it will not be available asa standard item.

The Needlefish electrode, handmade by Don Musso,used to make the plastic large needlefish mold.


Steve Campo of course wanted cer-tain crazy colors that he wanted forhis crew.FP: Steve Campo told me he

caught the first bass on your plasticdarter!DM: That’s right. He said to me,

“Don, don’t change a freakin’ thingon that plug, because,” he says thefish were jumping all over it. Hesaid he never saw anything in his lifelike it!FP: I guess this is going to be a

very difficult question to answerbecause you made so many colors,but did you have any specials made?Easy to answer in wood - we talkedabout the scallop-colored, mackereland stuff like that.SM: The Transparent Series was

probably in 1985. We made the

needlefish basically in all transpar-ent colors, like a red, blue, green, andyellow. FP: Is there a certain amount of

colors that you’re using now? SM: For 2009 there will be 34 col-

ors. But I get special calls for customcolors from stores and I’ll do that if Ihave the time.FP: When I was talking to a cou-

ple of guys, they talked about thespecial colors that they were using inthe ‘90’s like glow-yellow, char-treuse, parrot?DM: Yep, yep. Parrot was one of

the colors - Steve Campo asked us to


paint the parrot colorSM: Yeah, we still do the parrot

and herring also.DM: You know how I started the

Herring color? I had an old Nissan200SX and I had some damage and Ibought some paint to fix up thedamage on it. And it was powderblue – maybe a little bit deeper thanwe’re using now. And we used thatand the color seemed to be very, verygood for catching fish so we contin-ued using it.FP:Wow. He also said blue mack-

erel was another special color he didreally well on. White opaque also.SM: White is a standard color

now. It’s one of our top selling colors.FP: There was an issue with some

of them filling up with water whenthe needles first came out. Can youtell us about that?

DM: We were gluing the tubesinside the plug different than we donow, and the guy that we had work-ing with us was using way too muchof this glue and it wasn’t drying.What was happening was when thewater started to get at it, it wouldstart going right through the gluingprocess. Today, we use the same stuffthat the plugs are made out of so itall fuses together.

It didn’t last very long. I remem-ber it was just one year and it wasn’tin all the plugs. FP: Has there ever been any

Super-rare, purple orange mackerel needlefish painted by Steve Musso.

Only two reverse blurple Bullets were ever painted.

Set of ZZ - A close-up of “a shot” which produced three lures. A color collection of Super Strike mackerel needlefish.


thought about some other models todo in plastic?DM: There’s been a lot of thought.SM: The lipless swimmer was

something that should have beendone at the same time as the deepswimmer. It just wasn’t able to getfinished because the mold makercouldn’t figure out how to do thefront section of it. But the mold is agood majority of the way finished.The mold is probably 90% complete.So that was another one thatwould’ve been in plastic andshould’ve been in plastic. Soon,hopefully.FP: Anything else?SM: There was a pencil popper.

The mold maker that made all of ourprevious molds retired so we had tofind someone new. After a longsearch, I found someone whoseemed to be able to handle our job.I sent our drawing and samples onits way. After a few weeks we getsome samples back. I still probablyhave them laying around. I lookedat the lure and said, “Whose lure isthis? And thought to myself this isn’twhat we sent you.” I don’t knowwhat they did but it looks just likesomeone else’s pencil popper that ison the market in plastic. It was total-ly wrong. And they wound up doinglike three versions before my fatherfinally said, “Let me make this partup for you.” We gave them a perfectwooden model – a lure exactly likethis (showing a carbon electrode).And they were supposed to digitizeit. And take the numbers generatedinto a program for a CNC machine.As it turned out they never digitizedit, they tried to make the lure based

solely on the drawings that weresent. So, my father finally had tomake the electrodes for the pencilpopper after the mold maker could-n’t do it the way we wanted. Eachtime he tried the mold maker justnever got it exactly right. After hemade the carbon electrode the moldswere finally on their way. However,there were small problems withquality that never seemed to getresolved that would keep delayingus from testing the mold. Finally, wefelt that the shape of the new plugwas right and ready for a test runand but it failed. As it turned out themold maker never incorporatedwater-cooling into the mold, and itwould never be able to reach fullproduction run without overheating.Which meant the injection moldmachine would have to be shutdown every 15 minutes for the moldto cool…there was no way we couldaccept a mold that could not pro-duce parts at the level we needed, soit wound up being scraped. FP: Is it safe to say there could be

a pencil popper in our future?SM: It’s something I hope to do

soon.DM: I made them in wood in the

beginning! We took a lot of fish onthem so they work good. FP: The interesting thing about

plastic is that plastic is just beginningto find a very strong following col-lecting-wise. We see it with Heddon,we see it with Creek Club and SouthBend. What can we tell collectors tolook for in terms of specials?SM: Be around for raffles.

Raffles, any kind of charity things….that’s where I make up lots of stuff

that’s one or six of a kind. I’ll makeone and I’ll forget what I ever did toit and the guy that wins it has some-thing nobody else has. There’s quitea few lures out there like that. I giveaway a lot of stuff. AroundChristmas time for the Toys for Totsthat the Striper Surf Club sponsors Imade up about a dozen plugs forthem. The stuff I sell through thestores, you know, there’s thousandsof. But the stuff that’s for donations –I always try to make something upspecial. The unique stuff I make Igive away.FP: Anything else rare?SM: Yeah. The rarest production

run of lures right now is the BunkerBullets. There are only 150 of those Imade so far. I may do more of themthis year. And there was the reversepurple with a red gill slit. That wassomething different – there are onlytwo of them that I made. Theneedlefish, bullets, and deep swim-mers with green eyes are lures thatwere only produced in low numbers.You don’t find too many of them.They were– either a lighter weightversion or unweighted. DM: The green eye needlefish

was made for much calmer waterwhere you could work the plugmuch slower and not have it sinking.FP: What’s your most popular

plug?SM: Year after year, the medium

popper 2 3/8” is the best selling,then the darter. And I would say thelarge needlefish after that. DM: Popping plugs are going to

be the biggest seller because it is adaytime plug. You got more peoplefishing days than nights. And if theidea is they’re not going to be castingthat many small minnow plugs –most of these guys that fish wannasee this plug go way out. And I don’tthink the interest is catching fishanymore, I think it’s in how far theycan cast really. That’s about what itgets down to. That’s why the medi-um popper usually is the best seller.


Zig Zag special transparent colored darters given away at fundrais-ers by Don and Steve.

Rare Zig Zaggold-orangedarter painted bySteve Musso.


“Super Strike Deep Swimmer” onthe bottom with the elongated topwould be the rarest?SM: Yes, those would be the

rarest. I like to refer to them as thefirst version or V.1. Even though wesold that version between 1994-2002,the production was maybe two runson those. In late 2002 we modifiedthe swimmer too, so it wouldn’t gotoo deep. This was version 2: the lipwas shorter and the name “SuperStrike Deep Swimmer” was nolonger on the bottom of the lure.(Lost it in the modification) Theyhad a fixed weight in them and wereproduced between 2002-2007. Andnow there is the newest and 3rd ver-sion of this lure called the Rattl’nLittle Neck Swimmer V.3. The out-side is identical to the second ver-sion, but this one now rattle’s nomore fixed weight; only bb’s areused to weight the lure. There weregreen eyes on the first version; Iwould say they are very, very rare.FP: What’s your paint technique?

Anything special for the mackerelpattern?SM: Yes we use a specially made

template specific to each model. Firstthe lure is racked and painted in itsusual way; then it is transferred to aspecial fixture that holds the lure inplace and the template is placed overit. Usually black is then sprayed onthe lure, after drying it is removed,transferred back to its standard rackand the finishing touches of paintare applied. It’s a time consumingprocess; that is why I only like to sellmackerel lures in limited numbers.If I change my process down theroad I would consider doing more.FP: Are you serving basically the

Northeast?SM: The best market for us is

New York, Long Island, then RhodeIsland and Massachusetts. I’m start-ing to get some very good stores inNew Jersey. I sell to a few stores inCalifornia. I have a little businessI’m doing in Florida.FP: Guys, you’ve both been great.

Thanks so much for spending timewith us,DM: Happy to do it, Frank. SM: Thank you.

(Editor’s note: Readers wishing tocontact Frank Pintauro may do so bycalling 516-741-7044 or [email protected])

SM: Bluefish blitzes sell lures, too!FP: And that’s what the shop

owners want. Guys are asking me how you are

doing with the limited Wadds? Stillsticking to a limited edition of 66?DM: They are not all finished but

yes, 66.FP: Other than the Bunker

Bullets, any other limited runs beingconsidered?SM: I would like to keep all the

mackerel lures to limited runs. I justmade 150 mackerel of the newRattl’n Little Neck Swimmers as partof a show special. They are the firstones released as my father just madeup the mackerel template for them.They will not be available as a stan-dard item…just limited runs.They’re going to be special.

You know what else is pretty rare,Frank? Because the production hascompletely ceased on it – is the orig-inal version of the casting swimmer.It has a much longer front and theoriginal ones say “Super Strike DeepSwimmer” on them. The originalones ran too deep so we shortenedthe front. That’s a rare item!DM: Yes, the early ones were

only good for the Lighthouse.Otherwise if you fished False Bar orNorth Bar you were bouncing bot-tom. If you fished the Bluffs, youwere bouncing bottom so we had tomake an adjustment.FP: And so the ones marked


Don and Steve Musso on the night of ourinterview.

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saltwater classics · by frank pintauro a s promised, don and steve ... was a small popper, medium...

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