Joe yee

Joe Yee is one of a handful of craftsmen that has set an industry standard through his continued pursuit of excellence and innovation. While many know his claim to fame revolves around the Super Plunger, it is what happens behind the scenes that make him “special”. For over half a century, Joe has been perfecting his craft adopting new materials and technologies yet keeping true to his “style”. What began as a side project from surfboard building has culminated in him becoming a world-renowned lure maker. His basement/workspace is a treasure trove and time capsule all in one. A mix of new and old machinery, molds, shells, powders, tooling and other randomness only overshadowed by the massive amount of stock he has built over the years. He has worked with names like Odagiri, Parker, Eoff, Lau, Sonoda to name but a few. “Papa Joe" as he is affectionately called, has been around the block and back and it can be argued that he is one of the most influential characters in big game fishing, period. The mere mention of a super plunger is associated with big fish, 1000 pounders to be specific. He still carries a picture of the 1166lber caught during the 1993 Pro-am tournament. Like any great character, there is always a supporting cast in the background. For Joe it was his wife, Phyllis. It was with her management that Joe was allowed to focus on his craft. \While some regard his style as “old school” the fish haven’t stopped biting. His most recent grander being caught in 2021. In keeping with family tradition, what was once passed down to his son Joe Jr., is now once again being passed down to his grandson Steven Kegley. The legacy continues…(Source: Jon Niiyama and Steven Kegley)

Chester Kaita

Chester Kaita was originally from Lahaina, Maui. As a young man, he joined the US Army where he worked as a welder. At the end of his career with the Army he married his wife, Ruiko, and moved to Kailua on the island of Oahu. Although Chester was a lifelong fisherman, his lure making career began in the 1960's after he suffered a heart attack, and found lure making as a relaxing hobby to occupy his time while he recuperated. He initially learned the craft through his neighbor, Sonny Rapoza. After a few months of helping Sonny with polishing and learning to pour from him, he began to make his own lures. Lure making became a full scale family activity for the Kaita's. According to his son, David, who began making lures along side his father at the age of 12, Chester's wife Ruiko would pour nearly every single lure, and leave the work of cracking the molds, and then shaping and polishing the lures to perfection on a lathe to Chester and David. Given that Chester was a very active fisherman prior to his heart attack, he began giving his lures away to friends including members of the Haleiwa Boat Club, of which he was a member, as well as captains of the charter fleet at Kewalo basin including Cornelius Choy, captain of the famed Coreene C. He was also close friends and fishing partners with Deal Crooker, who was the principal of Punahou school at the time. Deal owned the Boston Whaler "Betty C 2" and would take his boat over to Kona each year to fish the HIBT tournament. It was through Deal that Chester was introduced to Peter Fithian who ran the HIBT, which is how Kaita lures made their way into the Kona fishing scene. In Kona, Kaita lures gained popularity quickly and were introduced to the legendary Kona fishermen of the day, including Henry Chee. Henry began running some of the lures he received from Chester and found them to be extremely productive. So much so, that he sent a number of his original Chee lures over to Chester to have him replicate them and add Kaita inserts to the original Chee lure shapes. Henry Chee caught his first grander on a scoop that Chester made for him which is featured in the pictures below. Chester's most well known lures are large old school scoops made for slow trolling behind sampans, which were the boats that dominated the Hawaii fishery in the 60's and 70's. His most sought after lures are those with shell slab inserts, salt and pepper inserts and "countertop" material. Many of Chester's original lures were unlabeled, but after a number of impressive catches, he gained notoriety and formed an alliance with local distributor Izuo Brothers. At this point, he began adding the "Trolure" label to his creations and Izuo Brothers proceeded to market them on a broader scale. (Source: David Kaita)

George Lum

George Lum was an Oahu based lure maker who began making lures in the 1960's. By trade, he and his wife Hilda, owned a typewriter store on Kapiolani Blvd in Honolulu, but as a lure maker, he was most known for his "Fat Boy" fish head scoops. The style of insert that he made, which differentiated him from other lure makers of his era, was much larger and wider than many of his contemporaries, and included in depth detail and paint on the fish head inserts themselves. In addition to fish head inserts, he frequently used punched metal inserts and was one of the first lure makers to use lai skin as an insert. In addition, a consistent trend with his lures is a yellow ring around the eye of the lure, and he continually refined and improved the eyes on his lures over the course of his career to make them as realistic as possible. The biggest giveaway of a lure being made by George Lum is the "chicken feet" marking, engraved on the lower skirt saddle. The "chicken feet" are actually the kanji (a system of Japanese writing using Chinese characters) for the "Lum" family name, so he is actually one of the first lure makers to consistently incorporate a makers mark on his lures. George sadly passed away on July 11, 1999 but his lures and contributions to the history of lure making continued to be revered and celebrated to this day. (Source: Noelle Lum, George Lum's granddaughter)

George and Jas Sonoda

The Sonoda's were lure makers from Oahu who began creating lures in the 1960's. They are rumored to have had close ties with Joe Yee, and the eyes of their lures have a distinct resemblance to early Joe Yee lures. They are known for their heavily weighted bullet lures which proved to run well in the choppy waters off Oahu. Many of their lures included a small makers mark, written on paper via type writer, in the seam of the insert.

Rick Rose

Rick Rose was born in Richmond, VA in 1927. He was of Portuguese descent and had a calling to the sea from a young age. He joined the merchant marines for his first real job and was able to travel the world as a result. At one point he managed to find himself in a Russian jail and had his throat slit from ear to ear. He was a no-nonsense person, and had a great scar to prove it. The merchant marines brought him to Hawaii and he settled in Honolulu in the early 1960’s where his professional fishing career began. His first fishing boat was the Judy Ann which was in Honolulu at first. It was actually one of the first charter boats ever out of Kewalo Basin. Shortly after moving to Oahu he decided it was too busy, and in the mid 60's he brought the Judy Ann to Lahaina along with his growing family. Judy Ann was sold in order for Rick to upgrade to something larger, and it sadly sunk shortly after being sold. Rick went through many boats in Lahaina including the Happy Hooker and the Reel Hooker (both names his wife came up with!). By 1978 Rick had established the Aerial fleet which became one of the most well known charter operations in Maui. He grew the fleet to include Aerial 1,2,3, and then moved to Kona where he acquired Aerial 4 which was his baby. From that point forward, Rick made the fertile fishing grounds of Kona his primary focus and fished religiously out of Honokohau harbor. In the meantime Aerial 1,2,3 stayed in Lahaina and were run by son Chris. Chris was the captain for the family from that point on and his other son, Kurt, followed in his father's footsteps as a lure craftsman. Rick had many many notable catches before his passing. T o this day, Rick has 2 fish at the Smithsonian; a lantern fish and a prehistoric Alligator looking fish. He found them both floating in the open ocean while out on a fishing trip...so he didn't personally catch them, but they are significant in that both we’re believed to be extinct and neither had been found in the Pacific prior to him coming across them. Rick personally angled a 1711lb black marlin in Kona in the early 90's, which to this day is the largest black marlin ever caught in Hawaii. He also personally caught an 1100+ blue marlin which is currently mounted at a friends house in Kihei. Another notable catch of his was in 1985, during the filming of an early episode of the legendary Hawaiian fishing show, "Fishing Tales" with Mike Sakamoto. Rick drove the Aerial 4 while his granddaughter Kim angled a 545lb marlin. As a captain, Rick Rose presided over the capture of no less than 3 additional granders. No matter what harbor he was at, Rick was known as a hard ass captain….and he was certainly not afraid to let his deckhands (or clients) have it if they weren’t on their A-game! Rick lived to fish and was on the water constantly. He always prided himself as being the first person to leave the harbor and the last one to come back. It is sadly fitting that Rick passed away in 2000 of melanoma. He fished right up until he passed, and in his later years became a massive advocate of sunscreen, a prime demonstration of his character and care for those around him.

Henry Chee

Henry Chee was born in Honolulu in 1910 and moved to Kona in 1931 where he became one of the first 2 charter captains on the Big Island. He was initially hired by Charley Finlayson to captain his boat, the “Malia” and quickly made a name for himself as being extremely in tune with the ocean and having an inherent knack to consistently find the fish. The world of offshore fishing in the 1930’s was a far cry from what it is today. <br>There were no GPS or modern day electronics, weather forecasting was essentially non-existent, monofilament line didn’t exist and instead fisherman used linen line which had to be dried daily to prevent it from rotting. All that aside, Henry quickly became recognized as a best in class fisherman with his consistent, large catches. One of his most famous catches was a 1095 pacific blue marlin, that he caught in 1964, which became the all tackle world record at the time.<br>World War 2 and the bombing of Pearl Harbor had a devastating impact on the state of Hawaii, and in addition to the damage caused by the attack, it also caused tourism to the islands to come to a screeching halt. This temporarily put an end to Chee’s charter business and forced he and his family to move back to Oahu where he resorted to driving tug boats at Honolulu harbor to get by. Once tourism slowly started to return to the islands, Henry gladly made his way back to Kona and picked up right where he left off, as the most consistent charter captain on the island.<br>In the 1930’s and 40’s, live bait fishing dominated the Hawaiian fishery, as it was economical and bait was plentiful. By the early 1940’s, there were a handful of trolling lures that began to make an appearance in the islands, particularly wooden swim lures from the mainland like the “tarp-o-reno” were brought over by visiting fisherman. These wooden lures may have been the impetus for George Parker to start experimenting with his famed “towel rod” trolling lures. However, Henry Chee was the first person to ever make a lure out of resin, which became the gold standard for lure fishing, and paved the way for modern trolling as we know it today. The story behind Henry Chee’s first lure, as told by his son Joe Chee, was that in 1949 Joe’s cousins were glassing a small boat behind the The Ocean View Inn in Kona, a bar/restaurant that Henry’s sister-in-law owned. His cousins put leftover resin in a small glass jar and left a screwdriver in it. Henry found the jar with the hardened resin and the screwdriver stuck in place sticking out of the middle of the glass. It caught his eye, and the idea sprung in his mind that he could use this approach to pour resin into a glass, and insert a leader tube in the middle of it with pieces of shell and other materials to produce flash that would look similar to the already proven shape made by George Parker. He borrowed some bar glasses as molds since they were wider at the top and had no bead around the lip which would make it easier to extract the hardened resin without breaking the glass. The buoyancy of the resin was very different from the buoyancy of the other wood lures that were being used at the time, so the cut of the lure face had to be made differently. He proceeded to use trial and error via his daily charter trips to produce the size, shape, and lure face angle that drew in the most fish. If a lure got bit, he kept it, and lures that didn’t bring in fish were discarded. Every single lure that Henry Chee made was molded using a bar glass from The Ocean View Inn. Joe Chee has memories from his childhood of his father boiling the glasses filled with resin on the family stove in order to remove the lures without breaking the glass. Chee lures were never made commercially. Each lure was handmade at the Chee household, and then hand trimmed, sanded and polished on a lathe, so every single Chee lure is essentially one of a kind. In the beginning, Henry used red string to affix the inserts in his lures to the leader tube, but quickly found glue to be an easier solution. Mother of pearl was Henry’s preferred lure insert, so much so that he convinced one of his neighbors from Honolulu who worked on the cruise ship, "The Lurline" to hunt some down for him whenever his work brought him to Tahiti. Henry also collaborated with fellow lure maker Chester Kaita of Oahu and is known to have sent Chester some of his lures to copy and put his own personal touch to. As part of that exchange, Chester sent over some white countertop material from Oahu that looked like crushed shells, which also became a standard insert for Chee lures. The vast majority of Henry’s lures were on the Malia when it was sold after his death, and as such, even the Chee family has very few of his lures. A legitimate Henry Chee original is a rare and valuable collector’s item, and truly represents an irreplaceable piece of fishing history. The combination of Henry’s tenacity, focus and diligence as a captain, paired with how well his lures brought up big fish, had a profound impact on the Kona fishery. Every single year from 1954 through 1963, Henry, at the helm of “Malia,” caught more marlin than any other boat in the kona fleet. The fleet ranged from between 7-10 boats during this 10 year time frame, so to take first place every single year for ten straight years is an amazing accomplishment. Yet even more impressive, is that Henry’s catches accounted for between 1/3 and 1/2 of the total marlin caught by the fleet each of those years. He was truly a dominant force in the Kona fishery, and as a result was in extremely high demand as a charter captain. It was only as other lure makers began to take note of and attempt to replicate his creations did the playing field begin to level out. Henry is famous for having collaborated with Peter Fithian to co-found the Hawaii International Billfish tournament as a way to bring international attention to the amazing fishery in Kona. The first HIBT ran in 1959 and the tournament continues annually to this day. Henry fished in 6 of these tournaments before he sadly passed away in 1965. Sadly but fittingly, Henry died as a result of a brain aneurysm that struck him while he was gaffing a marlin that he caught for a client. Even though his client on that fateful day was a doctor, the aneurysm was too severe for the doctor to have any impact, and Henry passed at the young age of 55. To this day, the top captain in the HIBT tournament is awarded the Henry Chee Award which is a tremendous honor in respect to the huge impact he had on the Kona fishery, and what he did to shape the course of fishing as we know it today. (All information and pictures provided by Joe and Butch Chee)

George Parker

George Parker was an absolutely legendary waterman who made an indelible impact on the Kona fishery and on big game fishing as a whole. George was born in 1911 in San Diego, and grew up around the water from an early age. He was enrolled in college at Stanford in the 1930’s when the Great Depression hit. The Parker family struggled financially as a result of the depression, so he left college and became a lifeguard in Del Mar beach to make ends meet. He was always a phenomenal swimmer so the job suited him well. One of his lifeguard friends ended up catching a freighter to Oahu and fell in love with everything about Hawaii….the beaches, the weather ,the surf, the girls, and of course, the fishing. George followed his buddy over on a freighter shortly thereafter and moved to Oahu in 1935. He always had a passion for fishing and aspired to have his own charter business. However, as a new transplant to Hawaii, he needed to put food on the table and save some funds first in order to make that dream a reality. As a result, he took an accounting position with Theo Davies a large sugar cane company. Over the course of the next 10 years he was able to save enough money to buy his first boat, the soon to be legendary, Mona H. George’s career as a charter fisherman began in 1945 when he started one of the first charter businesses in Hawaii out of Kewalo Basin. The majority of charter clients at the time were members of the military on R&R. A few years after launching his charter business, George had 4 military service members ask him to take them on a charter to Kona as they had heard stories about the burgeoning marlin fishery in Kona. He took them on a multi day charter across the Hawaiian islands from Oahu to Kona, and they absolutely crushed it….breaking line left and right, in addition to landing some sturdy fish. That trip is what initially drew George to fishing in Kona. George had been on Oahu for the Pearl Harbor bombing in 1942 which was an extremely traumatic event. The combination of fear of a similar event happening again on Oahu, plus the amazing fishing and flat seas that he found in Kona served as his main motivators to move to Kona full time. He officially made the move and became resident of Kona in the late 40’s, Once he got to Kona, the charter business was slow as no one else was really running charters at the time. He came up with the strategy to go out fishing solo and once he’d get a nice marlin he would drive to Kailua pier, hoist the fish up into his truck, and drive it down to the Kona Inn which was the only real hotel in Kona at the time. They put a block and tackle up on a coconut tree in front of the bar at the Kona Inn, and would hoist the fish up in front of the tourists at the bar which would immediately attract a crowd of onlookers. This turned into his most successful strategy to secure new charter clients. All told, George founded one of the original charter fishing operations in Kona, and an entire industry of future legends in the fishing world followed in his footsteps. Fast forward to 1954 which was a huge year in respect to fishing history. This was the year that George Parker designed his first trolling lure and caught what would be a game changing world record marlin on it. The lure was appropriately called a “towel rack lure”, and although relatively simple in design, it had a huge impact on the future of trolling. It was fashioned from a circular piece of leftover metal towel rack that George picked up out of a scrap pile from the remodeling of the Kona inn. He cut a piece off the towel rack, stuffed a wooden dowel of equal girth into it for floatation and to make it more sturdy, beveled it to make it splash when pulled behind his boat, drilled a hole down the middle of it for the leader line to pass through, poured some lead behind the dowel to give it extra weight for rougher days, tied on a hook and there it was. One of the very first trolling lures known to man. George’s most noteworthy catch, a 1002 Blue marlin, was caught in November of 1954. He was on his way to dry dock, by himself, driving back to Oahu from Kona…a pilgrimage that he made annually due to there not being a commercial harbor in Kona at the time. The channels in between each Hawaiian island are some of the roughest pieces of water in the world as the towering mountains on each island such as Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa and Haleakala magnify the dominant tradewinds and force the winds into the gaps between each island. These channels are extremely rough and unpredictable, and having to navigate them single handedly without modern weather forecasting and without modern navigational tools is a massive feat in itself. George’s grander bit towards the end of the trip, in the Kaiwi channel off Koko Head, Oahu. George endured the 3.5 hour fight and was able to secure the fish and drag it back to Honolulu harbor. There was quite a bit of controversy surrounding this catch, as the belief at the time was that there were only black marlin in Hawaii. George was certain that his catch was a blue marlin and fought the IGFA to recognize his catch. In the end, he was able to demonstrate that his catch was, in fact, a blue marlin, and became the all tackle world record holder for pacific blue marlin. George’s first son was born 3 months later in January 1955, and given all of the excitement and recognition behind his recent prized catch, he decided to name his son Marlin Parker. Most fishermen will quickly recognize Marlin’s name, as he is one of the winningest tournament captains in history, and has continued the family lineage running his own charter business in Kona and has his own line of very successful trolling lures. George made a few resin lures in his life in addition to the towel rack lure, but was primarily a live bait fisherman. He never sold any of his resin lures commercially until 1968 when he and Marlin invented “the hookless lure”. Marlin Parker was a boarding student at Lahainaluna at the time, and had a dried marlin bill on his desk where he was supposed to do his schoolwork. Marlin’s mind was always much more focused on fishing than school, and one day while he was procrastinating about doing his homework, he started twirling around his nylon key chain and incidentally whacked the key chain on the marlin bill on his desk. Those of you who have held a marlin bill know that the texture is similar to 60 grit sandpaper, and the bill’s coarseness caused the nylon key chain to stick to it. Marlin ended up unbraiding the keychain and got it wet, hit it on the bill, and it completely stuck and got wrapped up in the bill. It was at this point that he realized that you could actually catch a marlin by getting a rope stuck on its bill. When Marlin returned to Kona on a school break, he showed his discovery toGeorge in the living room of their house and they ended up playing tug of war with the unraveled nylon completely sticking to the bill. George saw an opportunity for a new creation, and hollowed out the back of an old lure, ran some rope through the back to create the first hookless lure, and the very next day ran it and caught a marlin on it without a hook. Lure fishing for marlin historically has a low hook up ratio because their bills are so hard and bony that it is hard to get a hook to penetrate, but the Parker’s saw this hookless, rope lure as a means to dramatically improve hook up rates while also not hurting the fish they were catching because there is literally zero harm to catching a fish with a rope….they are just getting their bills tangled up in it. The amazing part is that Marlin really came up with the original idea behind this creation when he was only 14 years old. All told, the Parker’s attempted to go into commercial production with the hookless lure, and went as far as to get a patent on it. However it was considered by the IGFA to be an entangling device and they disallowed them from being used in tournaments. The buzz and production of them fizzled out shortly thereafter. Marlin, to this day, is a huge advocate for the hookless lure and will occasionally use them. He frequently had clients call bullshit when he would tell them the story of the hookless lure and that they couldn’t possibly work. So he would bet them whatever money they had in their pockets that he’d catch a fish on the hookless…. and as long as the bite was decent he would almost always catch one. Marlin used them all the time in the 70’s and 80’s and still has them rigged and ready to this day. Another interesting fact about George Parker is that he was the only person with a dive helmet in Kona in the 1950’s, and as a result, he was tasked by the Kona boating community with servicing all the moorings in Kailua Bay. Keep in mind that this is before scuba diving came into existence, and also before there was a commercial harbor in Kona. He subsequently lobbied for 10+ years to get Honokohau Harbor built, more than anything because he was tired of having to service everyone’s moorings! He ended up picking the current site for the harbor, and Honokohau Harbor came to fruition in the early 1960’s due in large part to his efforts. A side story about George being in charge of mooring maintenance in Kailua bay is that he called his house in Kona “Bali Hai” and hung a big koa sign outside the house which was his alarm during southerly storms. When the sign would bang the side of his house he would immediately get up no matter what time of day or night, run down to Kona bay, jump off the pier, swim out to his boat and take it up to Kawaiahae so it didn’t break off the mooring and blow onto the rocks which was common place for boats moored at Kailua bay. In 1968 he received the second highest Coast Guard recognition that a civilian can receive, the Congressional Silver Medal of honor. It all happened because a giant southerly storm pushed in one day, so he went to Kailua bay, jumped in to his boat and was heading up to Kawaihae. This was one of the biggest storms he had ever seen, and it came with a massive southern swell. While on his way up the coast, George came across a sailboat that was on the verge of getting pushed into the rocks on the shoreline. Being the water man that he was, he timed the sets, throttled up hard, and rushed the Mona H into where the sailboat was. One of the crew on the sailboat had already been thrown off the boat into the water. George was able to rescue him, and mind you that he was on the boat by himself, so all of the driving and rescuing is being done single handedly. After rescuing the first person, he had to rush back outside before the next set of waves, then jams back in, throws a rope to the captain and drags the boat out of harms way and up to Kawaiahae. He ended up saving 2 lives, and kept the boat from getting destroyed, all while a Coast Guard C130 buzzed above and witnessed everything. He was awarded the Silver Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism and bravery on December 20th 1964. George was also an Integral member in starting the Hawaii International Billfish Tournament with his brother Phil Parker and Peter Fithian. Established in 1959, the HIBT is the longest running fishing tournament in Kona, and the second longest running fishing tournament in the world. It brings in teams from all across the world each year, and is known as the tournament that created the baseline for the standards and guidelines by which modern big game fishing tournaments follow. There are many fishing stories about George over the course of his life. A few of Marlin Parker’s favorites are, one summer day in 1965, Marlin got a call from his dad on the CB. George was out on a holo holo day and took 4 of his buddies out to go fish. George normally ran 5 rods, and told his 4 friends to figure out how they wanted to handle the rod allocation when they got a bite. They insisted that he take one of the rods so that everyone would be responsible for 1 of the 5. As luck would have it, of course his rod is the first to take a strike. 11 hours later he gets the fish to the boat. As soon as they gaffed the fish, sharks started swarming and took minimum of 200 lbs from the belly. Although George’s grander in 1954 is the only verified grander to his name, this fish weighed in at 960 and would have easily eclipsed the 1000lb mark had it not been for the shark frenzy at the end of the fight. Another story comes from 1998 at the end of George’s fishing career. His last boat was called the New Horizon, which he was fishing on when Marlin called him because Marlin had just caught 2 ahis in the porpoise. George drove over and Marlin witnessed him hook up on his first pass just behind the school of porpoise. At 86 years old he ended up catching and landing an 836lb marlin and he even put the gaffs in that fish himself. At 87 years old, at the urging of his Georges wife, Marlin had to finally take the keys away from him and get him off the boat. George passed away at 96 years old in 2008. He lived an amazingly full life and his impact on modern day fishing and the Kona fishing community will never be forgotten.