After spending 20 years as an Owensboro firefighter, Donnie Head, Jr., retired and decided to make the most of one of his hobbies.
Head had been a fisherman for years and he saw an opportunity to further explore one of his favorite pastimes. A few years ago he purchased Ignite Baits, and the rest is a busy and fulfilling history.
“I’ve got a passion for fishing and like to dabble in the tackle side of fishing,” he said. “I was building, tinkering around with jigs.”
Then Ignite Baits went up for sale. The local business poured soft plastic baits, whereas Head had been working with pouring his own lead jigs.
“One had to go, I couldn’t do all of them,” Head said.
Head now hand pours swimbaits in a shop behind his home in Owensboro.
“It’s open poured,” he said. “You physically use your hand and pour it out of a pyrex cup.”
Head uses different colors in the mold to create the bait, as the ultimate goal is to mimic the prey of the fish anglers are chasing.
Even though it started as a hobby and evolved into something more, Head said he too has had to evolve as time has gone on.
“I’m slowly expanding with different materials,” he said. “It started out with hand poured swim baits. Now I have some finesse series, which is a different creature. It’s an injection style. You’ve got to leave yourself open to expansion.”
The finesse series mimics a worm instead of a bait fish like the swimbait.
Head said even though he’s been successful, that doesn’t mean he wants to get complacent.
“There’s always something to learn,” he said. “That’s life. It’s a puzzle. When you’re fishing, it’s a puzzle that you’re trying to figure out. What are they reacting to today? Are they reactive? Are they lethargic? Are they chasing the crank bait or do they want a swim bait? Are they feeding on crawfish? Are they feeding on bait fish?
“You’ve got to try to figure out that piece of the puzzle and narrow it down to the lake and they have different patterns. If you find that pattern, you might be able to go to a different spot in the lake and have a similar pattern in the lake and duplicate that.”
While many use fishing as a way to get away and have time for themselves, Head said although it is relaxing, it can have the opposite effect.
“You can make it as stressful or relaxing as you want,” he said.
For him, it’s about the gratification and providing others that same level of gratification when they get the catch they’re yearning for.
“You get to go out there and create a lure and catch fish off of it,” he said. “There’s no better feeling than that. It’s cool that you just created this and someone is catching a fish off of it.”
He said it doesn’t matter what’s caught.
“I’ve caught a living creature that swims through the water,” he said. “It might be a dink, it might be a four-pounder, it might be a record. Who knows? You never know with that one bite.”
Head said most of his market is in the Tennessee Valley area and the bodies of water around Kentucky Lake, but his reach has hit a place much farther than that.
Head has not only sent his product to several states, but a couple of countries as well — including Germany.
It takes Head five to six days to finish a bait from start to finish as everything is handmade.
“You’re trying to replicate the same product each time,” he said. “Some of them come out different but not all creatures of life are the same. They’re really close to being identical but a crawfish gets a pincher missing, it doesn’t automatically die. They’re still fending for their life somewhere so they don’t get eaten. That’s different than one that has two pinchers.”
When asked why he does what he does, Head pondered for a moment.
He said while it started as a hobby, it also provides help for others.
“It’s a sense of accomplishment of being able to make something and have someone catch something off of it,” he said. “It’s pretty gratifying.”
