Bomber Baits 1981/82 Catalog

Just before Christmas we published the 1980/81 Bomber Baits Catalog, and we got a lot of good feedback from that on Facebook. Today in Bomber Baits 1981/82, we’re going to take a look at the following years offerings.

It may seem a bit redundant to show these catalogs so close to each other in time but they serve a purpose. They show the progression of the company, which is important to collectors and fans of the baits.

But, because this catalog is so close to the previous year’s catalog, I’ll cut the text short and only point out the differences between this catalog and the other. If you’d like to read a more verbose rendition, click on the link to the 80/81 catalog in the lead-in paragraph.

To start off, the 1980/81 and 1981/82 catalogs sport identical covers. This isn’t new as from the 1950s through at least the mid-1970s, Bomber’s cover never changed. Why fix something that isn’t broken and saves you production costs.

Where the difference lies is on the first page of the catalog. In the previous edition, this page was reserved for the Bomber Model A. In the 1981/82 edition, this was reserved for the new Bomber Smilin’ Minnow. The Smilin’ Minnow was introduced in 1981 and came in those catalogs as a black-and-white insert. In this catalog, the Smilin’ Minnow takes center stage in full blown color.

The color chart shows 26 colors, including 11 “photo print” finishes. Bomber doesn’t give any dimensions of the bait but does say that it’s a medium deep diver with a range of 4- to 15-feet. That seems a bit of an exaggeration to me and I never recall getting this bait much deeper than 9 feet in my own experience.

The bait is also touted as having a realistic head, mouth, eye, and gill features, common in the industry at the time where every tackle manufacturer was trying to outdo each other in realism. Also incorporated into the bait was their new “ultra sound vibration.” I’m not sure if they meant to hyphenate the words “ultra” and “sound” meaning that the lure gave off soundwaves in that spectrum or not.

The following 17 pages of the catalog mirror the 1980/81 edition so I won’t get into those pages.

On page 20 we see another change, in this case a drop from the line-up. In the previous edition, this page was reserved for the Flare Hair Jig and the Flare Hair Spinner. In this catalog, it appears that Bomber has discontinued the spinner version of the bait.

From here on the catalog remains the same through the last page.

Another difference is on the back cover. As with the last catalog, there’s a great image of Floyd Mabry holding a string of fish, but this year, instead of featuring the Bomber Model A crankbait, they’re featuring the Smilin’ Minnow.

Also with this catalog, I had an insert as well as a Jobber Price List. The insert featured two new Slab Spoons, the 9100 series that weighed in at 4 ounces and had four different configurations and the 9000 T (3/4-oz) and 9000 T HD (2 1/2-oz). More information on these spoons was available in the Jobber Price List.

That’s about it for this catalog. I do want to mention that these catalogs are now in the possession of a fellow catalog nut I met at the NFLCC Pigeon Forge meet this past week. I was able to trade him the 1980/81 and 1981/82 catalogs for a couple Bagley’s catalogs I didn’t have. Those catalogs will be appearing here soon.

If any of you readers have catalogs that you would like to share with the readers of the Bass Fishing Archives, please leave a comment below. It’s our full intent to build our catalog gallery to include as many manufacturer catalogs as possible and have the best reference to be found anywhere.