KAILUA-KONA, HAWAII — ACTIVE YEARS LATE 1970s – PRESENT

Bomboy Llanes is one of the most familiar faces in modern Kona fishing — a charter captain, taxidermist, and lure maker from a deep island fishing family who, tellingly, only ever trolls his own designs. He came up under his father, the tournament-winning captain Kenny Llanes (who has his own page in this archive), learning to pour and polish lures as a kid in the late 1970s while his friends were out playing.

His designs lean hard on bait imitation and color. The first lure the family ever made, the Scarface, is shaped and finished to pass for a bonito — flashy red-chrome foil included — because that's what the big blues are chasing. His bullets are tuned to the pink and brown squid that show up off Kona in summer. He hand-signs everything he builds, keeps a catalog north of 35 shapes that grows every year, and has more recently linked up with MagBay to widen the range.

The fish back it up. Bomboy is a two-time grander catcher, and both of those thousand-pound-plus blues came on lures he made himself. One of his models, the 1041, takes its name from the 1,041.5-pound marlin landed on it in November 2014. Years before that, in 2003, he weighed a 1,258-pound blue at the Firecracker Open that long stood as the largest blue ever taken in a tournament — and it was also the first grander ever caught during Kona's quiet November offseason.

As a museum and archive, we're honored to document the work of Bomboy Llanes and the Llanes family's Kona fishing legacy. (Swap in your distributor line if you carry the brand.)

Notable shapes: Scarface, Supernutt, 1041, Baby Bomb / Mini-G bullets, Hawaiian Shrimp Bullet, Magilla

Identification tips:

• Bomboy hand-signs his lures — the signature is your first authenticity check

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