JOE YEE

HONOLULU, HAWAII — ACTIVE YEARS c. 1960 – 2024

Joe Yee is regarded by many as the most influential and successful trolling lure maker who ever lived — his lures are credited with catching more grander marlin than any other handmade brand. Born in Honolulu in 1928, he grew up on Oʻahu drawn to the ocean and surfing. As a teenager he met Duke Kahanamoku and went to work for him shaping surfboards, learning to work fiberglass by hand — a skill that, paired with his later trade as a post-WWII aircraft mechanic, gave him an unusual command of shaping and resin. Around 1960 he began pouring hard heads for marlin lures in his spare time, working from the basement of his Honolulu home under the name Joey's Custom Lures.

What set Yee apart was equal parts design and discipline. He built every lure by hand, one at a time, working in shell, doll eyes, and his own colored resins, and he flatly refused to mass-produce even as global demand came calling. Because nothing was templated, no two of his lures are exactly alike — even within the same model. As his fame grew through the Hawaiian International Billfish Tournament, he began traveling to fish and sell at events in Cabo San Lucas, Tahiti, Guam, and the U.S. Gulf Coast, befriending anglers, captains, and figures like entertainer Don Ho along the way.

His designs became the vocabulary of the sport. The Super Plunger — his most famous shape — sits alongside the Crackerjack, Apollo, 505, 501, 24/7, Evil, Straight Runner, and Peanut as some of the most copied lures in big-game fishing. The Hawaiian plunger style itself grew out of earlier refinements by George Lum and Chester and David Kaita, and the early plunger work of Gene VanderHoek; Yee's Super Plunger became its definitive, world-traveling expression.

The record speaks plainly: his lures account for numerous IGFA world records and countless thousand-pound fish, most famously Ray Hawkes' 1,166-pound blue, caught on a Super Plunger in 1993 — still the IGFA men's 50-pound line-class world record. He had a grander caught on his lures as recently as 2021, and in 2022 he was inducted into the IGFA Fishing Hall of Fame. "Papa Joe" passed away in 2024 at the age of 96. The craft has stayed in the family — from Joe to his grandson, Steven Kegley, whose own work appears in this archive under KEGZ.

Following his passing, we've remained closely connected with the Yee family and are honored to be one of the last remaining distributors of his lures. From time to time, the family releases a small number of original pieces that have remained tucked away in his workshop.

Notable shapes: Super Plunger, Medium Plunger, 501, 505, 707, Apollo, 24/7, Evil, Crackerjack, Straight Runner, Streamline, Peanut, Popo (Grandma)

Identification tips:

• Many Yees left the shop unlabeled — ID leans on shape and hand-built character, not a maker's mark
• Telltale signs: distinct head shapes, unfinished or "bumpy" saddles, hand-poured irregularities
• Hand-set shell, doll eyes, custom-mixed colored resins
• No two identical, even within one model; values high and rising, fakes common — authenticate via provenance, the family, or you could show us!

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