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The story of a lure designer

ADUSTA Lure DesignerーR.NakanishiーThe story of a man who dedicated his life to creating fishing lures~

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An encounter with endless play

I was born in an ideal environment for fishing, with a dam lake just a five-minute walk from my house and a clear stream a ten-minute walk away. I remember my grandfather taking me fishing for small fish like minnows from a young age. I think that's why fishing and fish became such a familiar part of my life.

When I was in second grade of elementary school, a friend invited me to try lure fishing, saying, "Apparently you can catch black bass in the dam next to the school, why don't you try lure fishing?" So I grabbed my casting rod, spinners, spoons, and a fluorescent 2-inch crappie grub with a jig head and went bass fishing, and that's how I first learned about lures.

Those Days When I Longed for the Lure of My Dreams

First year of high school. Originally, I aspired to be a painter, but I failed in that path and was wandering aimlessly, thinking about my future. In the midst of that, my first fateful encounter arrived. By chance, the person sitting next to me in class ended up teaching me "real bass fishing."

A single 48cm fish caught on a buzzbait was the trigger that pulled me deeply into bass fishing. That became the encounter with my lifelong best friend. It was around 1994, right in the middle of the Second Bass Boom. Famous brand lures that caught fish well were so popular they were impossible to obtain.

I frequented tackle shops daily hoping to get one, but I spent my days unable to find them. During that time, my best friend taught me that lures could be made from wood and that they were called "handmade lures." I had always been confident in arts and crafts. "If I can't buy it, I have no choice but to make it myself," I decided in my heart.

I read the articles on lure structure and design featured in specialized lure magazines of that time over and over again, teaching myself lure production. In an era when there wasn't as much media as there is now, in a remote village in the mountains of Nara, this was the only way to study lures. Looking at magazine articles and photos, based on imagination and delusion, I carved bodies from scrap wood, painted them with poster colors, and coated them by dipping them in one-part urethane.

Once finished, I would conduct actual fishing tests. A never-ending game of asking the fish for the answer. As I continued repeating this, the feeling of "wanting to reproduce the lure I longed for" eventually shifted into the sense of "making lures to enjoy the kind of fishing I personally find fun."

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Onto the Path of Continuous Creation

The end of 1998. I was frantically making lures to get a job in the fishing industry as a lure maker and designer. A fishing friend I met in the field told me, "There is a lure brand looking for production staff."

That was the trigger. In order to take my works to the interview, I decided to condense all the knowledge and know-how I had accumulated and create a traditional-style pencil bait, which was the trend at the time. Scraping together money from my small salary from a job I had just started, I bought a small wood lathe, carved an exquisite shape that skated smoothly, and set the weight based on the specific gravity of the material.

I also gathered the Olympus airbrushes I had longed for, strived for the deepest possible color expression, and after overcoming various failures, I knocked on the door of that lure brand with a few finished lures. However, I was rejected twice at the interview. Even so, thinking "this next time will be the last," I challenged the third interview with lures I had put all my strength into, and finally received an "OK." I was able to stand at the starting point of making lure creation my livelihood.

Fateful Encounters

Not long after getting a job in the fishing industry, two fateful encounters occurred that defined the direction of my lure production.

The first was the encounter with Mr. Kato of Native Kato Craft. He was a great senior who taught the basics of coloring, aluminum foiling, and the philosophy of making real-style lures to me, who had previously created mainly traditional lures.

The second was Mr. Nishine of Nishine Lure Works. In 1999, Mr. Nishine, who was producing wood handmade lures under the brand name "Dream Rush," returned from Canada and visited the workshop. After hearing various stories about wood lure production, as he was leaving, he picked up a piece of cypress wood I had in the workshop and asked, "I'll carve something for you; what should it be?" When I requested the Oikawa, a fish familiar to me since childhood, within a few minutes the piece of wood transformed into a lure with beautiful curves that possessed a sense of life.
That piece of wood was not just for show; it incorporated a shape that functioned perfectly as a lure.

I was fascinated by that moment; it was a shocking instant that made me turn at once toward the pursuit of real finishes, away from the traditional style I had mainly produced until then.

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Exploration of the "Tool" for Fishing

What I value in lure production is that "a lure must be a tool for catching fish" and the "fusion of performance and sculpture." A lure is ultimately a "fishing tool," and I believe its reason for existing as a "tool" is realized only when it can be used in practice and catches fish.
Then, as the final stage of design, I apply the sculpture and decoration. I believe the appearance of the lure is a part deeply related to the angler's psychological motivation to "keep throwing and keep using," based on the thought "this might catch one" or "I want to try catching one with this." If we focus only on "catching fish," this decoration could be called the height of waste, but it is precisely one of the playful elements that can be packed in because it is lure fishing.

If you truly just wanted to "catch or harvest fish," it would be more efficient to use bait or traps rather than lures. So why do we choose to catch fish with lures? Isn't it because there is "the fun of competing in wits with the fish," "the fun of casting the lure," and "the fun of admiring the tackle"? I believe the lures embodied by ADUSTA are the fusion of "performance" as a fishing tool for thinking through the game, and "sculpture/decoration" that allows one to keep casting and admire the tool.

The Fish That Guided Me

I have caught big fish, have fun memories with fish, and the emotion of the moment of landing one is countless. However, what stays in my heart the most are the frustrating experiences like losing a fish, line breaks, or failing to set the hook. Unlike other memories, these are somehow vividly burned into my brain, and when I stand at a similar fishing spot, they come back to me as if they happened yesterday. Among them, the moment of fighting a fish I hooked using a Zeal Uncanny Chap 5/8oz in the backwater of Takayama Dam when I was a high school student is still deeply engraved in my heart. That fish I am still chasing. I drew out a bite that felt like a vacuum with the drift exactly as I planned, and for the first time in my life, the drag of my baitcasting reel—which was tightened to the limit—gave way; the excitement and joy of that fight and the frustration of losing it will never disappear in my lifetime. The single-minded desire to meet that fish again guides me, and my days of creating new fishing tackle continue.

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A World of Longing

Fishing in the Teles Pires River in the Amazon was a great adventure deeply engraved in my heart. Since long ago, as an aquarium enthusiast, I had longed for the environment and fishing of the Amazon.
I was obsessed with the tropical and ancient fish inhabiting the Amazon River, and I continue to be fascinated that fish full of wildness, which cannot be caught in Japan, live in the nature of the Amazon. In the midst of that, a dream-like chance arrived in 2017: a fishing trip to the Teles Pires River, a tributary of the Amazon in Alta Floresta, Mato Grosso State. Traveling from Japan via Dubai to São Paulo, then to Cuiabá for an overnight stay, followed by an hour on a Cessna—after about 3 days of travel—I arrived at the fishing lodge.

Located near the equator, it is an ideal environment where the sun rises at 6 a.m. and sets 12 hours later at 6 p.m. If you look into the water, the fish I longed for and used to see in tropical fish shops, like the Blue Eye Pleco, Tiger Shovelnose, Corydoras, and Characins, were living there. Animals, birds, and insects that you wouldn't meet in Japan unless you went to a zoo were gathered on the banks, and I could see them in their natural state. For a fisherman, it was a perfectly fulfilled world where one could not wish for more.

Meeting the brilliantly colored fish that live in the black water of the Amazon brought a special joy and emotion that cannot be experienced anywhere other than the Amazon River.

Toward the Future

The environment surrounding game fish continues to change rapidly in recent years, whether in freshwater or saltwater, including changes in species caught in each region and drastic changes in catch volumes. On a global scale, evolution at the product material level is also required due to environmental pollution issues like microplastics and lead. In this context, ADUSTA aims to base its production on environmental compliance standards and strive for the protection and conservation of the field environment so that anglers can enjoy it for a long time. And always, I want to go to the same fields as you, suffer in the same way, lean into the simple and close feelings of "I wish it were more like this," and while communicating with the fish, I want to create cool lures that are easy to catch with, easy to use, and can be kept being used as tools.

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R.Nakanishi Profile

Born in Nara Prefecture


Home Lakes: Takayama Dam, Murou Dam


Motto: On-ko-chi-shin (Discovering new things by studying the past) / Know Thyself


Influential Artist: H.R. Giger


Career: Joined a fishing tackle brand in Kyoto in September 1999. Responsible for product planning, development, design, and prototyping. Also handled video filming/editing, catalog production, photography, web-related tasks, and sales. Left in 2014.


Joined Tsuda Syokai Co., Ltd. in 2015. As a lure designer/photographer for the brand ADUSTA, which develops lure fishing products for the global market, responsible for planning, development, design, prototyping, promotional activities, photography, and video filming/editing.

Hobbies: Fishing, making things, photography, aquariums, silver accessory making.
 

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