The Plugs of Danny Pichney

The Plugs of Danny Pichney

The year was 1976 and the place was Brenton Reef off Newport, Rhode Island. I was fishing with the fiendishly clever and fanatically secretive striper ace, Fran Sargent, in his stealthy tin beater boat. Never heard of Fran Sargent? That was the way he wanted it; he made the Mad Russian (the furtive winner of four Vineyard Derbies) seem like a socialite. Even if you had heard of Fran, you never saw where he fished and you never, ever saw him land a fish, though at the end of the day, you might have noticed his boat sitting a few inches deeper in the water. If Fran had been sloppy or exhausted, you might have seen a massive square tail poking out of an overstuffed fish box, but in all the years I fished with him, I saw him drop his guard only once. The fish buyers at Spooner’s in Westport, Massachusetts, knew the score, but almost no one else knew about his incredible haul of striped bass.

Anyway, the conditions looked promising that day in Newport, with an overcast sky and easy rollers coming in from the southwest; however, the fishing had been dismal and even Fran, the best striper man I ever fished with, could not conjure up a bass. We had been messing around with Atom 40s and similar plugs, but could not get them to swim right. We got a few swirls, but no hookups.

“Well, okay,” sighed Fran. “I guess I should try one of these plugs that Charley Soares gave me.”  

Fran reached into his canvas sea bag and pulled out a large silver-and-blue plug in a clear plastic wrapper. This was the legendary, almost mythical plug turned by the hand of Danny Pichney himself. I had heard rumors of such plugs, but they were basically impossible to obtain in my area.  No tackle stores that I knew of in New England carried them back then. Robert Vasta told me that he had to buy his first Danny plugs in the 70s out of the back of Charlie Kay’s truck at Breezy Point jetty.  Steve Campo noted that there were a few shops in New York City and Long Island that carried Danny plugs, but I assumed they did not last very long on the shelves.  In southern New England, Danny Pichney plugs were available only to a few sharpies who had access to Danny himself.  Luckily, Charley Soares was one of those sharpies, and he had given us a few of the plugs in the hope that he could curry favor with the notoriously tight-lipped Fran Sargent (all for naught, but that is a different story).

Danny Pichney’s hand-turned wooden plugs were functional works of art and, since his passing more than 30 years ago, have become highly collectible.

Fran unwrapped the plug, and I gawked in wonder at this original Danny in the “Mullet” color.  It was the most beautiful plug I had ever seen as it shimmered in the faint sunlight.  It seemed a shame to risk sending such an exquisite creation into harm’s way, but Fran brushed off my objection, snapped it onto his line, and made a long cast downwind to a hidden reef, a reef with no white water showing. It betrayed its presence only as a slight watery hump as the seas rolled over it.  It did not look very promising or particularly fishy.

None of us were prepared for what happened next.  The plug traveled about two feet on the surface of the water and wiggled a few times, leaving a perfect wake.  It then disappeared in a cloud of spray and was the last we saw of it.  It was barely wet when a striper exploded on it and took off. Fran’s Squidder reel whizzed and his heavy, 9-foot blonde Lamiglas rod doubled over.  Even with 50-pound Dacron line and the drag screwed down as tight as he dared, Fran could not control the fish; it went to the bottom, ran over some barnacle-covered rocks, then his line went slack.  Fran, muttering various unprintable invectives, reeled in his limp line that ended with a frazzled leader of 60-pound monofilament where the plug had once, ever so briefly, been attached.  

Both of us were stunned.  Here was a plug, fresh out of the package, still smelling of paint and epoxy.  Unlike the Atom 40s and other plugs we experimented with, we did not have to fiddle with the eye.  This genuine Danny plug swam perfectly right out of the bag, but not for long.  I had never encountered a lure with such a short lifespan.

In an era before computerized CAD software, Pichney meticulously documented the precise dimensions of a plug that had the perfect action.

No wonder the original Danny Pichney plugs had a mystique about them.  Not only were they well-nigh impossible to obtain, they were far and away the best surface lures of their era.  From that day forward, I had a fascination with these creations.  Eventually, I contacted Danny and ordered a few shipments.  What he sent me was a grab-bag of various models and colors (some were experimental).  Some we used, and some I stored away as collector’s items.

Besides the surface swimmers, we also used a Pichney plug called the “Conrad,” a large, weighty hardwood subsurface lure that ran deep.  When the surf was heavy, we reached for Conrads because they traveled below the white water instead of wiggling around fruitlessly in the suds like a surface swimmer.  The Conrad had a slow, seductive rolling action that proved irresistible to huge striped bass.  In our experience, Conrads in the blue/pink/white “herring” color were the best fish catchers. The most violent strikes I have ever experienced were on these plugs during pre- and post-hurricane swells off Sakonnet and Newport.  It felt like my arms were being wrenched out of their sockets.  

After our explosive first experience with the Danny surface swimmer, Fran Sargent and I fished exclusively with original Pichney plugs when we could get them.  Once, we even ran into Danny himself, who was fishing with Charlie Soares off Cuttyhunk.  Danny was using a conventional Penn Squidder with a stiff casting rod.  He told us how the fish were on a “wood diet” that day, which we did not doubt.

I fished big Danny surface swimmers and Conrads for a decade or so until I was lucky enough to get in on the legendary striper blitzes on Block Island in the 80s.  Although Danny had reluctantly made a few needlefish, it was the Gibbs, Gags, and Super Strike needlefish that dominated Block Island during those glory years.  The one exception appeared to be the stubby, single-hook needlefish Danny made for Tim Coleman.  The golden age of large wooden swimming plugs had started to wind down.  After that, interest in the original Dannys waned, and they faded away, except for lure collectors who prized them above all others, especially the rarest models and colors.  

Danny Pichney collectible Conrad juniors
A display case packed with Conrad juniors.

One of the reasons that Pichney lures are so valued by collectors today is that Danny ran a small operation out of his basement and made a limited number of plugs. As he explained in an interview with Tim Coleman, when he first started selling plugs, he tried to keep his operation under wraps so he did not get overwhelmed with orders.  It took Frank Keating, a fishing writer for the Long Island Press, three years to find out who was making these amazingly effective lures. Of course, this secrecy just enhanced their mystique and desirability.  

Today, there are countless plug builders churning out beautiful Danny-style plugs, and it is easy to forget how it all began.   Danny Pichney (1921-1988) was a machinist from Jackson Heights, New York.  He worked for Con Edison in Long Island City; in his spare time, he enjoyed fashioning his own fishing lures.  Besides, as he explained to Tim Coleman, in the old days he could not afford commercially available plugs. Danny was a resourceful scrounger, collecting old pallets from Con Ed or discarded props from local theaters to use as wood for his lures.  If the wood was not thick enough, he glued two slabs together to get something thick enough to turn on his lathe and then carefully position the heaviest wood on the bottom of the plug.  According to Steve Campo, Danny bartered for all sorts of materials such as grommets, hooks, bucktails, stainless lip material, and plastic packaging material.  As a result, there was some variability in the materials used in his lures.  Unlike today’s super glossed, air-brushed plugs, Pichney plugs have small diagnostic marks, streaks, and nicks, but the finish is extremely durable and long lasting.  No one knows, or is willing to say, what Danny used for his secret paint and epoxy coatings, but it was some sort of volatile organic compound that is probably not legal today.  Or at least I hope so.  

The finish on all of Pichney’s plugs is extremely durable and long-lasting.

In 1966, Danny teamed up with another legendary lure builder from that era, Don Musso (who went on to create Super Strike lures).  Unfortunately, this collaboration ended acrimoniously in 1973.  One issue was a dispute over the 6-inch surface swimmer.  According to Musso, Danny sold the design to Lupo Lures without consulting him first.  The 6-inch swimmer, a scaled down version of the 7½-inch surface swimmers that Fran Sargent and I used, was supposedly an original design by Musso.  He realized that by tapering both ends of the lure (in the shape of a tuna, as he explained), he could make it travel with a better wiggle and a smaller swim plate than the Atom 40 or other similar lures; thus, a legend was born.  Unfortunately for Musso, from then on, this lure was named the Danny when maybe it should have been called the Donny. 

By all accounts, Danny Pichney was a generous and very personable lure builder and fishing companion.  I found him very engaging in the long phone conversations I had with him, and others who knew him better felt the same way. Robert Vasta said this: “He would make any plug you wanted. He would always work with you. Actually, he looked for input from fishermen all the time.”  Steve Campo knew Danny very well and called him an “awesome” person. 

The Pichney Conrad plug had a different genesis.  It was named after Conrad Malicoat (1936–2014), a skilled artisan from Provincetown, Massachusetts, who was famous for his art and elaborate brickwork.   Malicoat was a resourceful craftsman; he built one of the historic dune shacks at P-Town from scrap lumber and driftwood.  He also loved to fish the Backside Beach and Race Point, sometimes with the crew from the Striper Surf Club in Brooklyn.  Conrad needed a lure that would run deep in the rips off the Cape, so he created a huge oak plug for his own use.  According to a surfcaster from the club named Timmy “Tuna” Lendino, in about 1972, Joe Caparetta, a fellow club member, found one of these lures on the beach one night at Race Point.  It was a breezy evening and Joe needed a heavy plug that could cut through the wind, so he snapped on the Conrad.  He caught a huge bass (at least 50 pounds, according to Lendino) on his first cast.  Joe brought the lure home, showed it to Danny, and asked him to make something comparable.  After a number of improvements by Danny and Don, another legendary plug was born.  By all accounts, Malicoat had jealously guarded his lure, refusing to show it to anyone, including his fishing buddies in the Striper Surf Club.  According to his niece, Orin Dunigan, Conrad had a “hot Irish temper,” and when he found out that a commercial version of his plug was being made, he was furious.  He gave up striper fishing forever, snapped all his fishing poles in half, and never talked to his friends at the club again.

Steve Sylver, a highly skilled cabinetmaker and lure builder from Cape Cod, made a few reproductions of the original Malicoat Conrad for some friends.  These replicas bear little resemblance to the Danny Conrad.  The Malicoat plugs are huge, tough, beastly affairs of oak with massive brass screw eyes to hold the hooks instead of the more elegant thru-wire construction that Danny and Don used for the Pichney Conrad.

There is a mythology about the materials that went into Pichney Conrads.  Everyone assumes that they were all made of rock maple, but Steve Sylver told me that Danny used whatever hardwood he could scrounge, not just maple, but oak and, especially, ash.  The first handful of Pichney Conrads were thicker than the later ones.  The rumor is that Danny made them from axe or sledgehammer handles, which means that these early models were made of hickory.  In any case, the Malicoat and Danny Conrads share the same name and same deep-diving ability, but the construction seems quite different to me. 

Danny Pichney Conrad and Conrad copy
The “Conrad” is a large, weighty hardwood subsurface lure that runs deep. It is ideal in heavy surf because it travels below the white water instead of wiggling around fruitlessly in the suds like a surface swimmer.

Another bit of Pichney mythology involves the single tail hooks on the swimmers.  During the heyday of big plug fishing, the story was that Danny had invented the use of a single hook on the tail to enhance the lure’s action.  Steve Campo has a more prosaic explanation: Danny never used a vice to tie the bucktails to his tail hooks, but used his hand to hold the hooks instead.  Campo said Danny found it much easier to tie them onto a single hook instead of a treble.  Steve Sylver noted that this “innnovation” can be used to date Pichney lures since the earliest Danny plugs have treble tail hooks while the standard later plugs have single tail hooks.

Besides the surface swimmers and Conrad plugs, Danny made a wide variety of other lures such as darters, trolling plugs, and needlefish in various shapes and colors.  He made over 20 models and over 90 model/paint combinations, many of which are quite rare.  The most common Danny plug is probably his 6-inch surface swimmer or the 5½-inch Conrad.  The rarest and most collectible Pichneys are his needlefish, sandeel, reverse squid, pencil and regular poppers, and jointed plugs.  There are many different models between these extremes.

Danny made many metal-lipped swimmers.  The surface swimmer came in at least three standard sizes:  7½-inch, 6-inch, and the cute little 4½-inch swimmer.  Steve McKenna also has a 5-inch version that Danny called the Small. 

The Conrad also came in various sizes: 7½-inch, 5½-inch, a small size at 4¾ inches, and the Peanut at 4¼ inches.  The Conrad Peanut was a thin, heavy plug and usually had a groove around the head for an eel skin.  This was a favorite plug of the Narragansett crowd.  Occasionally, Danny cut a sharp angle on the face of the 5½-inch Conrad, lures called Slope-heads that are fairly rare.

The so-called Bootleg subsurface plug looks like a surface swimmer that has been on a diet.  Bootlegs are not common, but Danny made even rarer, thinner plugs called the Sandeel and Jointed Sandeel that were his answer to the Rebel and Redfin plugs popular in the 70s with the Cape Cod crowd. 

Danny Pichney Bootleg subsurface
The so-called Bootleg subsurface plug looks like a surface swimmer that has been on a diet.

A more common family of lures from Danny is his Trollers, which he made in many colors and three sizes, the largest of which is a whopping 8 inches long. A Troller has a long, gradually sloping head and Pat Abate provided some background on it: “The troller was influenced by Ronny Lepper, a New York firefighter and charter captain. The boat sharpies in the New York Bight were modifying Creek Chub Giant Pikies by planing or sawing sloped heads on them and repainting them. Ron went to Danny and asked him to come up with a better version. He did.”

Just to complicate things even more, Danny also made a swimmer with a rounded head that was sort of a wooden analogue of the Atom plug.  There were at least four sizes ranging from 7¼ to 4¾ inches.  The length of the mid-sized Junior version appears to have some variability, like so many other Pichney lures.

Danny also made darters in various colors and sizes, including a 7¼-inch darter with three hooks and a smaller one with two hooks.

Danny Pichney darter
Pichney made darters in various colors and sizes, including a 7 1/4-inch darter with three hooks and a smaller one with two hooks.

Danny’s needlefish are hard to come by but were made with 1, 2, and 3 hooks.  Danny called the single-hook version he made for Tim Coleman the Shorty Feathertail, but it was nicknamed the Pocket Rocket by the Block Island crowd.  Tim also called it his wooden Hopkins.  Danny was not too keen on needlefish, so there are not a lot of them out there.  The ones in colors beside his solid white or black are like hen’s teeth these days and highly prized by collectors.

Danny Pichney needlefish
Pichney was not too keen on needlefish, so there are not a lot of them out there. The ones in colors aside from his solid white or black are like hen’s teeth these days and highly prized by collectors.

In my conversations with Danny, he told me that the lures he really did not want to make—because they were so difficult—were large, jointed plugs.  Consequently, these, such as his giant jointed pikie, are among the rarest and most collectible of the Danny plugs.  He did make a number of smaller jointed plugs called eelies. One model is the Sloped Headed Eely and another, rarer lure, is known as the Flat-nose Eely, which was one of the deadliest plugs in my surf bag.  

Danny Pichney jointed plugs
Pichney felt that large, jointed plugs were the most difficult and time-consuming to make. Consequently, these are among the rarest and most collectible of the Danny plugs.

The color schemes that Danny chose to use on his plugs greatly affects their value and collectability.  The white or Mullet pattern (royal blue back, silvery sides, and a white belly) is the most common. The rarest and most desirable finishes for a collector is the Cape Cod sandeel color (burnt orange over white), the light-green-over-silver color, and the mackerel or fish-scale pattern. 

Of all the old saltwater plugs, I consider Pichneys to be the most collectible for various reasons.  First, consider the price.  Most of today’s collectors are hardcore surfcasters from the 70s and 80s, and we are fading out these days (alas), so the number of collectors is getting smaller and the prices have dropped.  Another reason is that the lures age so well.  Unlike old Atom plugs that have a muddy color from faded varnish, the Pichneys today look as fresh and sparkling as they did when first made.  When I take one out of its plastic wrapper, it looks exactly the same as when I first saw one some 50 years ago with Fran Sargent. I guess the biggest reason that I am intrigued by these lures is that they are just so beautiful to look at and bring back memories of a bygone era of striper fishing.

The price of original Danny plugs is currently very reasonable.  You can probably buy a pristine original surface swimmer or Conrad in its wrapper, untouched since Danny himself packaged it, for about $50 to $80; slightly used versions sell for less.  The rarest Pichneys cost over $100 if you can find them, but they do come up for sale now and then.

There is a small, tight-knit community of Pichney collectors who communicate online.  Most of the buying, selling, and trading of these lures is done through the “Buy/Sell/Trade” forum on the StripersOnline message board.  Pichney plugs occasionally show up on eBay, at estate sales, or in “divorce” sales, when a disgruntled spouse sells off a collection for pennies on the dollar in a yard sale.  A fishing friend of mine lost all his Pichney and old wooden Atom plugs in just such a fire sale.

So, what happened to Danny Pichney’s jigs, designs, and equipment?  They went to Bobby Glauda, who apprenticed with Danny as a teenager, making plugs and learning his techniques.  The lures that Bobby makes are known as Beachmaster lures, and are similar to Danny plugs but with a more polished appearance.  And like the original Pichneys, Beachmasters are hard to find.  They occasionally show up in tackle stores, but are quickly gobbled up. The arrival of Beachmaster lures in the 1990s may have sparked the current resurgence in high-quality, hand-crafted wooden plugs.

Learn More About Pichney Plugs

If you have questions about Pichney plugs, the best place to start is with the StripersOnline plug collector’s forum. Russ “Bassdozer” Comeau created a comprehensive list of the various Pichney and early Musso models and colors at bassdozer.com. Another resource is the Saltwater Lure Collectors Club. They hold an annual show at White’s of Westport in Westport, Massachusetts.  Here, you will get a chance to see or buy some original Pichney lures. 

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Source: https://onthewater.com/the-plugs-of-danny-pichney

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