HAWAII (KONA / LAHAINA) — ACTIVE YEARS 1970s – 2000

Rick "Big Eddy" Rose was a larger-than-life Hawaii charter captain and lure maker whose life read like an adventure novel. Born in Richmond, Virginia in 1927 and of Portuguese descent, he heard the call of the sea young and joined the merchant marines, traveling the world — a chapter that, by his own well-worn legend, once landed him in a Russian jail and left him with a throat scar he carried the rest of his days.

The merchant marine eventually brought him to Hawaii, and he settled in Honolulu in the early 1960s to begin his professional fishing career. His first boat, the Judy Ann, was among the very first charter boats working out of Kewalo Basin; by the mid-1960s he had moved it and his growing family to Lahaina, Maui. He was, by every account, a hard-driving, no-nonsense skipper — proud to be the first boat out of the harbor and the last one back.

The record backs up the reputation. Rose caught an 1,100-pound-plus blue marlin — still mounted at a friend's home in Kihei — and as a captain presided over at least three more granders. In 1985 he ran the Aerial 4 for an episode of Mike Sakamoto's Fishing Tales while his granddaughter Kim fought a 545-pound marlin. He fished right up until his death in 2000 from melanoma and, fittingly for a man who looked out for his crew, spent his final years as an outspoken advocate for wearing sunscreen.

As a museum and archive, we're honored to preserve the legacy of Capt. Rick Rose, one of the great characters of Hawaii's charter era.

Notable shapes: (His lure catalog isn't well documented publicly — to be confirmed)

Identification tips:

• Documentation on his specific lure shapes and markings is thin; rely on provenance and your own shop knowledge

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