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Fishing News Latest Fishing News The Marvelous Mansfield Mauler Popular popping device had storied start
Fishing News Latest Fishing News The Marvelous Mansfield Mauler Popular popping device had storied start | The Marvelous Mansfield Mauler Popular popping device had storied start |
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| Written by Brandon Shuler | |
| Sunday, 06 July 2008 | |
 The original: The Mansfield Mauler was invented by Captain Bob Fuston in 1983 and became popular on the Texas coast the next year. Since then, the popping device has spawned many imitations. Photo by David J. Sams. Necessity is the mother of all invention. In the case of Captain Bob and the Marvelous Mansfield Mauler, the old adage couldn’t be more true. In 1983, the year of the great freeze, Captain Bob had a 92-year-old gentleman fish with him two days a week from April to September. As the gentleman got older, the winds of South Texas made it more and more challenging to work a soft plastic effectively. Captain Bob, a retired fireman from a nuclear plant, put his ingenuity to work and created the mauler. After a few false starts and a number of operational failures, Captain Bob created the mauler with a foot-long section of 30-pound mono and a sliding crappie cork. “The first attempts with the mono were not so effective,” Fuston said. “Casting caused the contraption to twist and foul up. I had to go back to the drawing room.” In those days, the Tacklebox in San Antonio was an Angler’s Eden and an early sponsor of Captain Bob. The longtime owner and lifelong friend of Fuston’s, Jim Cooper, suggested using a stiffer wire to create the shaft of the Mauler. “That was when I had the light bulb moment.”  Bob Fuston “The beads were the ticket,” Fuston said. “They added that extra tick that really got trout looking up. The mono leader and crappie cork just did not have that pop. They need that loud popping and clicking action to get their eyes up and them out of the grass.” Now made and catching fish, the contraption still needed a name. The freeze of 1983 glazed the edges of many Texas bays with ice. Large fish kills occurred up and down the Texas coast. The following season, catches were off and guides were struggling with the new influx of commercial fishermen entering the charter business after the 1984 gill net bans on trout and redfish. But an eccentric, red bandana-wearing guide from Port Mansfield was raising eyebrows with the fish he caught and the strange gadget he tied to his clients’ rods. Fuston said the success of the mauler came down to an early fishing trip with a journalist from Houston, when Ken Grissom, an outdoors writer, NFL-er Gerald Wilson and his wife, Marty, chartered Captain Bob for a weekend of fishing. “Marty had never fished,” Fuston said. “I was under pressure to get Grissom a story and Marty a fish in a slow fishery left over from the freeze. But on her second or third cast, boom, she caught her first redfish.” Grissom’s story launched the Mansfield Mauler from crazy contraption to coastwide fame. Grissom coined it the Marvelous Mansfield Mauler. “I really didn’t feel comfortable with the ‘marvelous’ so I dropped it and named it the Original Mansfield Mauler,” Fuston said. The name stuck. Imitation, however, is the highest form of flattery. Now every tackle company in Texas and many national tackle makers build some version of the Original Mansfield Mauler. Captain Bob retired from guiding in 2004. “My eyes were getting where I couldn’t see the fish and wading damn near became impossible.” Fran, his wife, and he retired to Glen Rose and he still builds each and every Original Mansfield Mauler found in tackle shops. He has slowed down production somewhat. “The old fingers and eyes aren’t what they used to be. I only make about a thousand a year now.” So look for the bright, nuclear-yellow packing with a bearded caricature and Fuston’s signature beard and you have the “Real Deal.” |
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 06 July 2008 ) |
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