Bill Hurley Lures

"Bill Hurley Lures"

Waiting in the wings and ready to take up the Gauntlet were a host of Bay State plastic-bait pacesetters, such as Bill Hurley from Northampton. Bill Hurley's major splash on the soft-plastic scene was coutesty of his Cape Cod Sand Eels, which feature a dead-on jighead with realistic "night eyes" and a body infused with pure sand-eel oil. Originally designed for stripers, it wasn't long before tuna trendsetters were casting them into pods of pelagics from the Northwest Corner on Stellwagen to the backside of the Cape. These lures sure took tuna, but the original problem was that they were intended for bass and the hooks weren't "tuna grade."

Bill Hurley fixed that in short order with a longer heavier jighead and body called the Rat Tail. At a total of 10 inches, this lure cuts a wide swath in the sea and sure gets noticed. A sport diver, Bill slipped into the suds to watch how his prototypes performed, and that was how he concocted the lure's eerily bright "night eyes" and tuna-tempting moves. There's one issue that stems from the realistic look of the sand eel - they can fool more than just fish. Bill winces every time he hears of an incident, there have been reports from anglers that seals have a tendancy to grab onto the Hurley lure. This begs the question: if a lure can fool a mammal, is there any wonder how a fish will react? There will be no resting on his laurels for for Bill Hurley; he has in the works an improved head with a wired-through extra strong Gamakatsu 10/0 hook, and he has teamed up with BioEdge to create an improved scent. For a modest guy such as Bill to label the wiggle of the new jig-head as "killer," it has to be good.

From On The Water Magazine, July 2010
Excerpt from "Soft on Bluefin" by Ron Powers