KAILUA-KONA, HAWAII — ACTIVE YEARS c. 1968 (PROTOTYPES) / 1981 (COMMERCIAL) – PRESENT (brand continues; Miller d. 2018)

Few names in big-game fishing carry the weight of Black Bart. Bart Miller arrived in Hawaii as a touring golf pro, taking a club position at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu — then caught his first marlin and a couple of big tunas on a borrowed boat and never looked back. He threw out his suits, took a deckhand job for a few dollars a day, and inside a year was running his own boat and shattering the island record with 110 marlin in a single season. He went on to win the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament in back-to-back years and did the same in the islands' tuna tournament. A magazine editor, struck by his aggressive style, headlined a story "Black Bart," and the name stuck for life.

Like the pioneers before him, Miller turned to lures because almost no one was building them — so he made his own, starting with basic shapes in the late 1960s and refining them by feel over years of testing. His design philosophy was genuinely his own: where most makers obsessed over how a lure looked and moved, Miller fixated on how it sounded, arguing that fish hear far more than they see. He began selling lures around 1981, reached the major mainland catalogs by the late 1980s, and eventually moved production to a machine shop where each head was molded, balanced, engraved, dated, and signed — bridging handmade tradition and repeatable precision.

His defining moment came in March 1984, when he brought a colossal blue to the Kona scales aboard his Merritt, Black Bart. Announced at 1,656 pounds — the weight that named his most famous lure, the 1656 — the fish was officially corrected to 1,649 after a support rope was caught on the scale, but either way it electrified the fishing world and sent his reputation global. Miller spent the rest of his life chasing a "tonner," the elusive 2,000-pound marlin, and mentoring the next generation of makers. He fought Parkinson's disease for his final decade without complaint and passed away on March 6, 2018, recognized among the 100 most influential people in billfishing. Today Black Bart lures are found in nearly every serious lure spread on earth.

As a museum and archive, we're honored to document the legacy of Bart Miller, whose lures remain a worldwide gold standard.

Notable shapes: 1656 (Angle Face); Pelagic/Extreme Breakfast; RPP; Super Plunger; koa-wood plunger and Bully Head (early 1968 prototypes)

Identification tips:

• Modern Black Barts are machine-molded and balanced, then engraved, dated, and signed — the engraving/date is a key authenticity marker
• The 1656 angle/slant face is the flagship profile
• Early hand-built Miller prototypes (e.g., 1968 koa-wood pieces) are museum-tier rarities — provenance essential

Below, you’ll find our ever-growing digital archive showcasing every lure that has come through our shop. This collection is constantly evolving as new lures arrive, making it a living record of rare, limited-production lures. We will continue updating this database regularly, building what we aim to be the largest digital archive of offshore trolling lures in the world.

If you have any further information or any lures you believe deserve to be showcased, please reach out to us at ren@luremonger.com