Local Luremaker: Billy Riker – RuRu Lures

January 23, 2012 by Jimmy Fee

Billy Riker was fishing the surf at night on Block Island (during his honeymoon no less) and ran into a pile of huge spearing with bass funnel-feeding on them. The bass ignored everything he threw, and when another angler came down and joined him, the bass ignored his lures too. “The other guy left, and I assumed he was going home,” Billy told me, “but he came back a few minutes later and started hammering fish.”

The previously fussy fish were all over whatever the surfcaster had gotten from his truck. Respecting the angler’s space, Billy casted on and left the beach without asking what he was using. The following morning while out at breakfast breakfast, Billy was approached by that same angler who asked him, “Why didn’t you ask me what I was using?” At that, the fisherman showed Billy the plug.

“It looked like an old Musso-style needle with a bit lopped off the front and a metal lip jammed in.” When Billy got back to his workbench, he began making a lure to those dimensions and created the RuRu Lures Eely.

The plug is 6 inches long and weighs 1.4 ounces. Its body is slender (like a needlefish) but it has a metal lip added.

Though the lure isn’t as long casting as a needlefish, Billy admits, when the bass are on sand eels or spearing, this plug will often cull out bigger fish. “The hits are vicious,” Billy said.

The RuRu Lures Eely Metal Lip Swimmer

Billy’s been making plugs for a long time, going back to when he would make lures with his dad as a youngster. When he got out of college and got into woodworking, Billy returned to plug building. At first he was making plugs for himself and giving them to a few friends, but as the demand for his lures grew, Billy found it to be a bit too expensive to give the lures away. With the help from plug builders Rob Koch and Larry Welcome of Northbar Lures, Billy got RuRu Lures – named for his wife who so graciously allowed the honeymoon surfcasting – off the ground.

Billy still gives out his plugs to anglers he runs into on the beach from Island Beach State Park to Montauk Point. One day during a bunker blitz, Billy handed a young, struggling angler one of his pencil poppers after noticing the budding surfcaster struggling to reach the fish with a small plastic minnow plug. A few moments later, Billy was helping that same 14-year-old angler beach a 48-pound striper that fell for the RuRu Pencil.

The RuRu Traditional Pencil

The line of RuRu lures available for purchase includes nine plugs; the aforementioned Eely and Pencil Popper, three sizes of Danny plugs, the New Jersey Needle, a Conrad Junior, and in limited numbers, a jointed swimmer and a massive 9.25-inch and 3.7-ounce pencil popper he calls the Emgred Death Machine.

If you don’t see Billy at The Berkley Striper Club Fishing Flea Market on March 4^th, you can check out his plugs and order some for yourself at his website: RuRulures.com.

Every other Monday we’ll be featuring a Northeast local lure or rod maker on Fishing On The Job. Know a local company that should be included? Shoot me an email at jimmy@onthewater.com