Koya Lures

HŌLUALOA / KONA, HAWAII — ACTIVE YEARS c. 2010 – PRESENT

Eric "Koya" Koyanagi is the maker who carried the old Hawaiian craft into the modern tournament era — and he came to it honestly. He grew up around lure-making: his father was a backyard lure maker himself, and some of Eric's earliest designs grew straight out of lures his dad had built. He learned the craft properly under his mentor and longtime friend Joe Palacat, the maker behind the original JP Lures, who taught him the tricks of the trade and would later entrust him with the original JP molds and the rights to reproduce the line. One thing sets Koya apart from most makers: by his own admission, he's not much of a fisherman. Working from a hillside shop in Hōlualoa with a sweeping view of the Kona coast, he designs by asking — meeting captains at Honokōhau Harbor and the local tackle shop, taking their feedback, and adjusting tapers, shapes, and weights almost in real time.

That collaborative method produced the lure that made his name: the Poi Dog. Introduced around 2011 as his first big marlin lure, it presents the silhouette of a small tuna — dark back, mirrored silver belly — and it raised a pair of 900-pound-plus blues its very first summer. It's since been called the top-producing big-marlin bait in the world, accounting for granders year after year (it took two of Kona's six granders in 2015 alone). Its signature forward-set eye, an idea Koya credits to his mentor Joe Palacat, is part of why it draws such committed strikes.

Around the Poi Dog sits a full arsenal — the 861 and 614 (each named for the weight of the marlin it caught on its first run), bullets and jetted bullets, hard heads, tubes, straight runners, and Kona plungers, with the keel or "belly weight" he popularized on slant-faced heads as single hooks replaced doubles. He works from molds for roughly 40 to 50 shapes and turns out hundreds of lures a month, every one still hand-sanded the traditional Hawaiian way. Among his peers he's regularly named at the very top of the craft.

We've built a close relationship with Koya over the years — close enough that he created a special custom line of lures in collaboration with us, designs we developed together. One of them announced itself in style, winning a tournament in Mexico on its very first swim — fitting for a maker whose lures, like the 861 and 614, have a habit of producing the first time they touch the water.

Notable shapes: Poi Dog, 861, 614, Maximus, Kona Plunger, Hard heads, bullets/jetted bullets, straight runners

Identification tips:

• Koya is known for forward facing eyes in his lures. He has a distinct style of lure making in that his shapes are slight variations of what we are used to seeing and he has polished saddles. Only a few lure makers have polished saddles, such as Wes Leslie and Kerwin Masunaga. 

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