If you have not heard, there has been some sad news in the striped bass world, Bob Pond of Attleboro, MA, the creator of the Atom Striper Swiper fishing plug (made by Bob’s company Atom Manufacturing) recently passed away at age 92. The first fishing lures made by Bob at Atom Manufacturing were introduced in 1945 and were revolutionary in design. In the 1940′s almost every striped bass angler was fishing with bait on the bottom; when bass were feeding on the surface, fishermen figured the stripers couldn’t be caught. On one such day, Pond was fishing the Cape Cod Canal. ” I’m sitting under the Sagamore Bridge,” he remembers, ” and there was a fisherman there, but I couldn’t see him. All of sudden I saw a striped bass rolling on the surface… and then it started coming toward shore. That’s when I realized there must be an angler down there. Well, I was entranced because outdoors writers in Boston were writing about (catching fish on the surface). I waited until he got the fish to shore, and went down to have a look. ” This guy had the fish on the bank, but it was totally covered with a Turkish towel. He had his hands on his hips, and he looked at me and shook his head… I realized I wasn’t going to get any answers from him so I just left.” “Two or three weeks later I was standing on a pile of rocks fishing. I looked down and there was this thing floating around my legs with some color on its back. I picked it up. It was a Creek Chub plug and it must have been (the other fisherman’s), because nobody else had been fishing there, and nobody was fishing plugs. “It was all scarred-up. The hooks were broken, the paint was all off, it was a mess, I put it on and went down to the breakwater, and caught fish one after another.” Pond brought the lure back to his shop and made two similar plugs from curtain rods. His lures were larger and heavier so they would cast farther. “It was the fourteenth of October, and I went down to the Cape Cod Canal… I caught 14 fish with that new plug. The next morning, I caught another pile of fish.” Atom Lures were born. Pond bought a lathe and all the other tools he would need, and that winter, he turned out 400 plugs. They were on the market the following spring and have endured in their effectiveness for striped bass fishermen all along the east coast and through out the country over the last 50 years.
In 1965, Pond founded Stripers Unlimited . The group’s first purpose was to be a clearing house of information about striped bass fishing in New England. Anglers from New Jersey and other Mid-Atlantic states would visit the the Northeast during the summer to go fishing; a membership in Stripers Unlimited would provide them with a yearbook containing information about fishing spots, tackle shops, and other members they could contact. Soon, Pond turned Stripers Unlimited into a combination clearing house for biological information on striped bass and an activist organization for conservation measures to protect the fish. In the 1970 yearbook, he wrote of the need for more research on hatchery-raised stripers. Then he sank his own money into the research and did the work himself, as he would for the next 28 years. Though he maintained close working relationships with scientists in the academic communtiy, Pond often was at odds with biologists employed by government agencies. Government biologists, he said, were more interested in computer modeling than in hands on field work. They could learn more about bass, he said , by examining the reproductive organs of bass in a fish-processing plant than by sitting before a computer screen. (In one of his campaigns, Pond asked anglers to save the gonads of the fish they caught so he could exmaine the organs). In public hearings, Pond sometimes would catch government biologists mis-stating accepted scientific fact. Those catches did not endear him to fishing regulators. Nonetheless, he says, “reluctantly,” the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Comminission recently awarded him the Dr. David L Belding award for Marine Conservation, a prize given to the person ” who has done the most to promote conservation and sustainable use of the Commonwealth’s marine resources.” Although he’s retiring from the tackle business, Pond says he will continue the work of Stripers Unlimited .” There is so much to do , ” he says, “so much to do” In many ways the now Stripers Forever is a continuation of Stripers Unlimited ; as many as half of the Stripers Forever Board members served at Stripers Unlimited. Dick Russell, author of Striper Wars, was an old friend of Bob’s and consulted him while he wrote that book. Dick sent the following words about Bob Pond to to share with the Stripers Forever membership.
“The passing of Bob Pond at 92 is a great loss, for he was the true pioneer of striped bass conservation. Without Bob’s sounding the alarm about the striper population in the mid-1960s, long before anyone else thought there was a problem, this magnificent fish would likely have disappeared from Atlantic coastal waters. After creating the legendary Atom plug used with success by so many anglers, Bob devoted his life to preserving striped bass for future generations. It is our job now to carry his legacy forward. Thank you, Bob Pond, and may you rest in peace. - Dick Russell.”
We share those sentiments and will remember Bob each time we throw an Atom Popper towards the rock or out in the surf in search of that feeding striped bass.
