Oh, Those Great Balls O’ Fire!
July 30, 2004
Fishing my way through adolescence in the trout streams and lakes of the Sierra Nevada, I burned through an impressive number of green-labeled jars of Pautzke’s Balls O’ Fire salmon eggs. The “soft but satisfying” red eggs were so deadly on rainbows, browns and brookies that I rarely used anything else.
The small wild rainbows that used to live in the creek behind our house loved Pautzke’s eggs and so did the larger ones below the powerhouse in the main river. At the local trout pond, I used to pin a mini marshmallow to my hook to float my Balls O’ Fire above the weeds were the planters could see (and devour) them. And, every summer on the family campout, I’d absolutely lay waste to the truck trout that would get dumped under the bridge on our favorite creek.
Pautzke’s was my trout kryptonite all the way through high school, but in college, we began to drift apart. Suddenly, catching trout seemed a lot less interesting than chasing attractive co-eds and my fishing dropped off considerably. Of course, fishing got pushed even more towards the backburner when I got out of school, as jobs, marriage, mortgages and real life in general kicked in.
Somewhere along the line when I wasn’t looking, Power Bait came along and it seemed like the whole trout fishing world completely abandoned salmon eggs overnight. When I’d occasionally wander the aisles of a tackle shop, I’d see all those jars of high-tech, Technicolor dough where the eggs used to be and feel a twinge of sadness for my old friends, Pautzke’s. I had a tough time believing that some fluorescent chemical paste could be more effective than my tried and true Balls O’ Fire, but much of the trout fishing world had obviously been led to believe it.
Over the past several years, I have often wondered what the Pautzke Bait Co. was up to…how they were coping in this new world of dough baits. By chance, while fishing in British Columbia, I ran into Casey Kelley, who now runs the company. Casey is the grandson of Keith Williams, who purchased the business from his uncle and founder, “Dad” Pautzke back in 1946.
As it turns out, Team Pautzke is doing quite well, thank you. After reeling initially from the Power Bait onslaught, the company has come back strong with a new lineup of cool products that should get the trout (and salmon & steelhead) crowd fired up. Of course, Casey assured me that my old standby green label eggs are still being produced (phew!). In fact, he had a jar with him, which I eagerly opened. Man, a flood of childhood memories come rushing back when I took a big whiff of the jar’s contents!
Pautzke’s still pumps out some of their other old classics like Premium, Tyee and Cheese Giant eggs, along with a bunch of new colors as well. In fact, the day after I met Casey, I watched a buddy of mine catch a 22-pound wild buck steelhead on a spawn sack filled with the new orange Balls O’ Fire.
I wish Casey and the Pautzke gang well in the future and I thank them for all the memories. To learn more about Pautzke’s Bait Co., visit them on the web at www.pautzke.com
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