HONOLULU, HAWAII & BAKERSFIELD, CALIFORNIA — ACTIVE YEARS EARLY 1970s – PRESENT

Steve Coggin's story runs from a Honolulu seawall to a California workshop. Born in Kenya to British parents and raised first in California, he moved to Oʻahu at age 11 and grew up in Hawaii Kai, where as a teenager he struck up a lifelong friendship with Honolulu dentist Dr. Young Park after helping him dock his boat. Park became his fishing partner and his lure-making mentor — the two would shape and sand lures using the dentist's grinder. Coggin's first lures, in the 1970s, were brass-tube-and-resin "swimmer baits" tuned to the slow speeds of the old Hawaiian sampans; when faster fiberglass boats arrived, the swimmers fell out of use and he evolved his designs along with the fleet.

Coggin left Hawaii at 22 and spent more than two decades roofing in Marin County, California, before turning lure-making into a full-time craft. Today he builds Coggin Lures (also branded COPA Lures) by hand, one at a time, from his shop in Bakersfield, California — but the work is pure Hawaiian tradition. His lures are instantly recognizable: slab shell or brilliant dichroic-glass inserts, handmade resin eyes, and as many as three resin color pours per head, each nose hand-cut so no two come out identical. Collectors say you can pick a Coggin out of a pile on sight. As one of the sport's second-generation makers, his shapes have been widely imitated across the industry.

His signature is the Tado — a scooped-face, jetted plunger packed with shell chips and gold-and-silver glitter — which grew out of work he and Dr. Park did on a larger lure in the late 1980s, when almost no one was building big lures. It's been his calling card for more than thirty years and has produced a long list of tournament fish, including a 595-pound blue Coggin himself landed on a blueback Tado to take second place at the 2009 Kona Firecracker, fishing alongside his son Sean.

As a museum and archive, we're honored to document the work of Steve Coggin, whose lures carry the Hawaiian tradition of lure making.

Notable shapes: Tado, Jetted Tado, Tado Mauna Kea Pusher, Copycat Plunger, Extreme Copycat Plunger, Copa Teardrop, Blue Hawaii, Big Slant, Malolo Flying Fish, Peanut Dart, 1970s Peanut Swimmer

Identification tips:

• The dead giveaway is the insert shape — Coggin's mother-of-pearl slabs and dichroic-glass inserts are cut in a distinctive elongated "surfboard" shape
• Inserts are vivid: real-shell slabs or bright iridescent dichroic ("dichro") glass, paired with handmade resin eyes and multiple resin pours
• Very distinct saddles: deeper cut grooves that are rounded over

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