Pat Woodall was working for a South Florida sporting goods distributor when he met Jim Pfeffer in the early 1950's. They developed a friendship that evolved into a business relationship several years later.
In the mid
1950's Pfeffer authorized Pat Woodall to produce banana lures made out of plastic and to use the Pfeffer name. His company, Pat Woodall Specialties, contracted to have the lures manufacured and began selling Jim Pfeffer Plastic Banana Lures. The baits were made in two sizes and a dozen colors, in addition to silver and gold metallic finishes. Lures were packaged in several styles of cardboard boxes.
Woodall was an enthusiastic fisherman and often used his own lures. According to a 1958 story in The Palm Beach Post the only plug caster we noticed was Pat Woodall, who again proved to anyone who cared to watch, that large mackeral will whale the daylights out of the right kind of plug. Working his new all-silver No. 220 Banana Lure just beneath the surface with brisk snaps of the rod tip, Pat hauled aboard close to 40 large mackeral. A rod tip with backbone seemed to enhance the performance of the plug.
It is unclear how the original agreement between Pfeffer and Woodall evolved, but Pat Woodall also began selling wooden lures about a year later. His first wood lure was a silver metalized version of the Jim Pfeffer Orlando Shiner. He soon began selling painted vesions of the Shiner in several sizes, as well as Jim Pfeffer Cast Top, and Dilly lures. The wooden lures were usually stamped with the Jim Pfeffer name on the belly and were painted in more or less the same colors and patterns used by Pfeffer. For a period of nearly fifteen years, until Pfeffer's death in 1970, both Pat Woodall and Jim Pfeffer were making Jim Pfeffer lures out of wood.
It is fairly easy to distinguish Woodall's lures from those made by Jim Pfeffer. All Pat Woodall wooden lures have spray painted gill marks. All of Jim Pfeffer's gill marks were painted by hand.
Pat Woodall's business relationship ended when Jim Pfeffer died. The business was acquired by Vic Densmore and Jim Heaberlin, who began making Jim Pfeffer lures.
Pat Woodall wrote a large chapter in the Jim Pfeffer story. His lures were made of of a high quality and they are widely collected today.
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