Red-Eyed Wiggler

There’s a good story behind many of the lures in my old tackle box. Such is the case with the wobbling spoon pictured above. Called a Red-eyed Wiggler, it was at one time manufactured by the Hofschneider Tackle Co. in Rochester, N.Y. I was twelve years old on the day I made a mental note to purchase one. And I doubt I ever clipped it to my line without thinking of two former Batavians who, back in the day, were virtually inseparable. You see, they were the reason I went out and bought a “wiggler”. Before I tell you about them, I first need to fast forward a few years.

I was an up and coming northern pike fisherman on the day I walked into Barrett’s Batavia Marine to see the late Paul Levins. I wanted Paul to show me how to make a slip-bobber rig for catching northerns. I was strolling between used gun rack and the counter when I heard Paul’s voice from the back of the store.  “That’s a nice pike,” he said.

It was a nice pike, big as any I’d seen up to that time. Having seen the fish, I walked right into the mix, immediately asking “Where’d ya catch it?” The proud angler was from the east end of town, I had seen him around, but didn’t know him personally. “Under the Jackson Street Bridge,” he replied.  It wasn’t long before I learned the pike in question wasn’t caught at said locale. As is common practice among anglers, I don’t blame him for trying to keep his hotspot a secret.

What’s more, at the time the fibber’s account made perfect sense to me. The reason being, it had only been a few years earlier that I was standing atop the old Lehigh Railroad Bridge – which was adjacent the South Jackson St. Bridge - when I saw a rowboat passing below. In it were the aforementioned pals who grew up on Batavia’s southside. Pat Pullinzi was doing the rowing while Mike Lovria tended to his fishing gear.

Pat Pullinzi

And as I stated previously, from their earliest years together, through St. Anthony’s School and all through their BHS years, Mike Lovria and Pat Pullinzi were inseparable. Whether they were fishing the Tonawanda, hunting upland game (pheasants were plentiful in those years) and chasing rabbits behind the late Mike Lovria Sr’s, beagle, the duo were practically joined at the hip.

It was a late spring afternoon when Lovria and Pullinzi passed below the bridge in a rowboat.  From my vantage point I could see a minnow bucket on the floor of the boat, probably full of chubs. In the bow were fishing rods, one of which had a Red-eyed Wiggler attached to the line. Word had it that, Earlier that day, one of the two – I’m not sure which – hooked and lost a big northern pike somewhere in the vicinity of Whiskey Run. When I saw the pair heading upstream they were returning in an attempt to relocate the big fish.  

Mike Lovria

In those years, being at such an impressionable age and desiring more than anything to catch a big pike,  the mental image of a young Mike Lovria and Pat Pullinzi rowing upstream in pursuit of a big northern was etched into my back pages. And it was only days afterward that a Red-eyed Wiggler occupied a compartment in my tackle box.  Forty-eight years later it's still there.