The Furry Beginnings
I’ve been asked by a lot of people how the idea behind ‘Furry Lures’ came to be and I have always maintained that I would love to tell the story the right way; just a tale about an Aussie bloke making lures for other Aussie blokes chasing Aussie native fish!
First of all, I am definitely not a pioneer in the lure making industry; and I certainly can’t claim to have the intuition for design like Jamie Flett and his iconic ‘thingy’ creature baits from the early mudeye lure range. Nor can I claim to come from a skilled line of craftsmen that can carve timber lures like butter sculptures that seem to melt in your mouth as you add them to your online shopping basket!
Nonetheless, the concept of ‘Furry Lures’ actually started whilst fishing with a close mate throwing big surface lures at Lake Eildon. For those that aren’t aware, old school (non scope) Cod fishing (partially at Eildon) is a daily grind. I am talking about hours and on end of nothing more that the mesmerising sound of a surface paddler, the frequent sip of a XXXX Gold, the hum of an electric motor and the exchange of banter between two (or more) mates all with a common goal to see someone land an elusive Eildon Cod.
And now for the weird bit: I absolutely love a fishing theory! And more often than not I keep ticking the mind over during these sessions with a large lump of ‘What If’ questions followed by the iconic development of yet another theory on cod fishing. And so, there I was, one Saturday morning as I started to battle with the morning summer swell on Lake Eildon (caused by an unruly combination of wakesetter boats and jet ski’s) that I start to ponder… ‘why do we use large buoyant lures to chase implosion feeding fish?” And then I thought “why don’t we use more natural materials to imitate these ‘creatures’ trying to swim to safety across the lake quicker than Ian Thorpe in the 2000 Summer Olympics?” And that, in essence, was the day that Furry Lures began. From there, the original ‘Girthfunkel Paddler’ emerged and has continued to develop through many prototype phases to where it is today.
Obviously, for those that are familiar with the Furry Lures brand this doesn’t yet explain the more renowned swimbait range. This actually started as soon as I became frustrated with being limited to only throwing my prototype Furry Lure Surface Paddler in low light hours and I quickly realised I needed to develop something for the subsurface game. Now, I would love to tell you how I dabble in some from of specialised hydro-engineering that examines the fluid dynamics of lures through water but alas this is not true. In all fairness, the swimbait head was designed purely on trial and error and hours upon hours at a local weir on a Sunday morning equipped with nothing more than a latte, a smooth sanding disc and a rough idea. I also quickly managed to find what I thought was the perfect combination of natural materials for the ‘furry tail’ section to re-create a soft and subtle style of swimbait. A tangent of this was the 'Yowie' style swimbait, which is based off the original Slow water game changer (SGWC) design from Chris Adams and using Yowie brush from the beast brushes name. Credit where credit's due, you will probably notice a lot of design influence from Chris's flies throughout the furry range as he did provide a lot of input and advise to someone willing to try something new (thanks mate).
Moving forward the progressive concept became an original (OG) casting fly - a 4 piece articulated fly that is lightly weighted with bulky materials to push water but also tapered to get action through the tail - what I am aware of as the first of it's kind in Australia. Somewhat akin to a very large and weighted bucktail changer, requiring both synthetics and natural material to get the required density to move water. The Furry jig fly was also born during this transition towards a castable fly that was a subtle yet large presentation in the water - But, to avoid the politics of the fishing world, there are so many new options of these available now I can't help but feel they completely skipped the years of prototype/design phase but that is just the industry these days.
So where to now? At this stage I am trying to make these as available as possible with the goal to do regular lure drop. At this stage everything is hand tied and sourced from local shops so there is a lot of time and effort that goes into each lure and I like to think each furry lure has its own unique character.
Finally, I guess I can only speculate you are interested in lure making and new products if you got this far through the article but for me I would love to see more support for smaller Aussie lure makers. I mean, the only guarantee is that no lure is ever made exactly the same and is 100% unique. And really, in a world focused on commercial consistency you really can start to appreciate the beauty of having something that is distinct and swims the other way. Who knows, those true ‘unicorn’ cod might also think the same way but I guess you could say that would be another hypothetical theory on my behalf.