About Burdick’s Baits, LLC
The Custom Catcher Story

The Custom Catcher story began about 30 years ago, as my father and I dreamt of a quick change lure system with multiple interchangeable bodies that could be easily carried in our pockets as we walked the shorelines of lakes and streams. Our vision was to have a wide selection of lures with us, but not be bothered lugging around a tackle box that required us to sit down each time we wanted to make a cast at a new location. Ideally, we wanted the ability to quickly and easily reconfigure the lures that we carried in our pockets, leaving our hands free to fish as we walked the shorelines.

Since a design like this did not exist, we made several attempts over the years to create something like we envisioned, but continued to come up short. Once I retired in 2009, at the top of my list of projects to pursue was creating the modular pocket lure system that my father and I were unable to finish.

One day, while trying to detangle a ball of mixed-up hooks, snaps, paper clips, and leader clamps from my fishing room drawers, I ended up holding a string of two or three paper clips and a treble hook that were all hooked together, with an aluminum leader clamp caught on the string trapped between the eye of the hook and the last paper clip. After further detangling, the paper clips hooked together end to end, the treble hook was caught through its eye, and an oval aluminum tube became trapped on the string as well. As I picked the mess up by the paper clip, the two clips fell in a line with the treble hook, and the oval sleeve caught on the string… and there it was! By pure accident I had created the simple quick change system I had dreamt of for years!

I immediately went to my shop and begin constructing my first jointed minnow lure out of the end of an old broom handle to confirm my thoughts. I now had the system I had always wanted, and Custom Catcher was born.