Blue Water Candy Lures – The Details Make the Difference

For 23 years Capt. Jodie Gay knew the pressure of fishing for a living, and the rewards that come when everything you put in the water is just right. He specialized in hook-and-line fishing in the open ocean, trolling for tuna, dolphin, wahoo and king mackerel in pretty much the same way sport fishermen do. He also made money bottom fishing for grouper and snapper, on trips that might keep him on the water for two or three days and nights. By the time he decided to quit commercial fishing, in 2002, Jodie Gay had figured out a thing or two about what kind of rigs and techniques help fill up a fish box.

Commercial or Sport, the Rigs are the Same

“I wanted to get off the ocean, and spend more time at home,” is how Capt. Jodie explains his decision to quit the commercial fishing life. But he didn’t leave the business empty-handed. The result of Jodie’s two decades on the water is Blue Water Candy, a fast-growing line of tackle that has quickly attracted a devoted following among recreational anglers, charter boat captains and tournament pros.

“I started making my own rigs when I was still fishing for a living,” he says. It started with a certain head shape that he knew would work, but nobody had for sale. He figured out a way to make his own mold and pour the lead himself. Once he started tinkering, improvements and innovations followed one after the other. When Jodie sold his last commercial boat, he had already started Blue Water Candy Lures.

Made in the USA

Several things make Blue Water Candy Lures a different kind of tackle company. First, it’s a family business. Jodie, his wife Terry and their daughter Jessica make most of the products themselves in their home in Hampstead, NC. As their orders have increased, the Blue Water Candy family has grown larger, to include a network of part-time employees who work in their own homes making rigs to the same exacting standards set by Capt. Jodie. The extended family includes stay-at-home moms, commercial fishermen, and charter boat mates stuck “on the hill” in the off season.

Quality is another thing that distinguishes Blue Water Candy products. In a world where most fishing tackle is imported and/or assembled by people who wouldn’t know a tuna from a cuckoo clock, it’s a breath of fresh air that one company is doing things the right way.

“A rig,” says Capt. Jodie, “is exactly as bad as the weakest joint in it. You can’t have five good crimps and one bad one. With that, what you’ve got is nothing but a bad rig.” Just to make sure that doesn’t happen, every BWC knot and crimp is double-checked to be tight.

Blue Water Candy uses only the highest quality materials in everything they make, whether it’s a small featherweight skirt or a 6-arm titanium dredge rigged with 48 lead-headed skirts. The skirts and witch-style lures are tied by hand, one at a time, in the USA. So are all the pre-tied ballyhoo and bottom fishing rigs. And even as demand for his tackle keeps going up, Capt. Jodie says it’s going to stay that way.

The Bling is the Thing

At first glance, Blue Water Candy skirts, jigs, daisy-chains and bottom rigs look familiar. But fish don’t just glance at a lure. Remember, the fish is inspecting it in his element, not some fluorescent-lit sporting goods store. Look closer at a Blue Water Candy skirt and you’ll see what Capt. Jodie calls “bling.”

“Most companies make their skirts with just nylon hair,” he says. “We liven it up with the bling-bling. Usually it’s some combination of mylar . . . something to give it life.”

“When the fish are hungry and stupid they might bite anything. But the difference shows up on a slow day. That’s when one of ours with the bling-bling will out fish the others by four-to-one.” Blue Water Candy skirts and witch-style lures are available for you to rig yourself. Or you can buy them pre-rigged on wire, fluorocarbon or plain mono.

For spinning- and casting-rod terminal tackle, Blue Water Candy has a line of surf and bottom rigs for drum, grouper, black sea bass, cobia and other fish that require a strong connection on the business end of your line.

Blue Water Candy is the only maker of horse ballyhoo rigs designed especially for giant bluefin tuna. These feature 10-0 and 11-0 hooks tied on either 330# mono or 220# fluorocarbon.

A Toothy Testing Lab: Blue Water Candy’s SKA Fishing Team

Jodie Gay may have retired from commercial fishing, but he still gets out on the water to test some of his designs in the demanding world of the SKA king mackerel tournament circuit. For 2008, Team Blue Water Candy is a top-five contender in the SKA’s Division Two Mercury Trail series for boats 23-feet and under. The team finished second at SKA Nationals last year, just missing the top prize when their 52-pounder was beaten on the last day by a 53-pound king.

The SKA has been a good proving ground – and you can trust that any Blue Water Candy king rig you buy is the same quality and styles as what Capt. Jodie fishes in tournaments. Blue Water Candy has a broad line of king rigs available, including 5-packs skirted and 10-packs and some very sexy-looking ribbonfish skirts.

Something New in Vertical Jigging

Blue Water Candy has recently announced a new lure just for bottom fishing with Freestyle jigging gear called the Roscoe Jig.  It resembles a squid and is designed to be used with assist style hooks and rings.  The main body is painted in light emmitting pearl GLOW with several accent colors available to choose from.   There is a small fin on the backside to help the jig cut through the water quickly. 

 

While designed for bottom fishing during product testing they discovered that it worked equally well the middle of the water column too!   Great for Grouper and other bottom dwellers as well as AmberJacks, Tuna, Dolphin and others fish that feed on squid.  It comes in two sizes, 5 ounce and 7 ounce.

Try On One of the BWC “Skirts for Reel Men”

Before your next offshore trip, why not order a sample of Blue Water Candy rigs from TackleMonkey.com? Put them to the test yourself by fishing them in the spread right next to whatever you’ve been using. We think you’ll get better results – more hookups, more consistently, with no fish coming unglued because of defects in the rigging.

Just go to www.TackleMonkey.com and click on the Blue Water Candy link in the bottom left-hand corner.

Try them, and you’ll know why we say “Reel Men” get their skirts (and rigs, dredges, daisy chains and spreader bars) from Blue Water Candy.