The Original Frogman?

In today’s Friday Finale historical photo, he detested tournaments, fished out of a small wooden boat he built himself and was able to cartop around, and was an early proponent of catch and release. He was inducted into the National Freshwater Hall of Fame as a legendary angler in 2006, passing away a year later in March 2007 at the age of 85.

We’re talking about Bill Plummer, inventor of the Super Frog, sold by Harrison-Hoge. If you grew up fishing in the 1960s or early 1970s, then you undoubtedly saw the ads featured nationwide for his frog that “Murders Bass.” In later years, you could find such notables as John Fox and Al Lindner acting as spokesmen in many of the ads touting the frog. It sold millions and made Bill rather wealthy. Bill and his frog were even written about in Sports Illustrated in 1978.

The frog even claimed a U.S. Patent (see below), No. 2,789,387 for a “weedless fishhook” that was filed in 1956 by William J. Plummer, Jr. of Westboro, MA, and granted a year later on April 23, 1957. In part, it reads, “Experimenting with all available weedless hooks from time to time, it has been repeatedly discovered that few if any of the marketed constructions are able to cope with the various types of fish cover, for example, lily pads, floating moss, algae, and various kinds of brush and debris. The object of the instant invention is to provide a novel structural adaptation which is structurally distinct, is susceptible of attaining the desired end, and which has proved to be highly practical and effective in solving the problem of successfully catching fish regardless of the varying types of fish cover the fisherman is called upon to cope with.”

After taking an early retirement thanks to the residual checks from sales, Bill would go on to fish 5 to 7 days a week for the next 40 years, catching thousands upon thousands of bass from the local lakes and ponds in the Northeast. He kept things simple, using the frog and two other baits he later developed, the Banshee (spinnerbait) and the Water Demon (bottom bumper), along with a jig and pork eel, probably his favorite, or at least most productive, bait.