Sadu Lures
Sadu Frehm built Hawaiian-style trolling lures from Florida, carrying the islands' plunger tradition over to the Atlantic side of the sport. He began making lures in 1985, after spending time working alongside Bart Miller.
The shape that defined his work traces back to a mystery lure. As Sadu tells it, sometime in the 1970s the captain for actor Lee Marvin handed him a lure to try; he hooked and fought a thousand-pound marlin on it for half an hour before breaking off — and then never saw another lure quite like it. The shape stuck in his memory until 1985, when he finally recreated it, and Sadu Lures was born.
His plungers are best known for their underwater action and bubble trail, and for a genuinely distinctive novelty: small lights set inside the head that blinked when the lure got wet. Vintage Sadus — the Blinker Plunger and the Calcutta among them — are sought-after collector pieces, and for years Sadu remained close to the collector community, helping verify his own lures. He sadly passed away recently, leaving behind a body of work that carried the Hawaiian plunger tradition to the Atlantic.
