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John ELLIS

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    Posted: 19 May 2014 at 11:36am
Can anyone tell if John is still with us and/or contact details..

Working on a sort of bio on him and the stumpie origins and evolution.

I have gleaned a lot of info from the many LL posts but always room for more..

Screamin' John - your magazine extracts has been a wealth of information - thank youClap.

wadey Cry


www.reeldealfishing.com.au
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote reel deal Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 May 2014 at 11:40am
Further update......

THIS IS NOT my words - copied n pasted from elsewhere....... unidentified author..

The Stumpjumper Story

SJ - old

The StumpJumper story can be traced back to 1986, where it began appropriately enough, on the Victorian banks of the mighty Murray River.  In those days, an angler by the name of John Ellis was spending a lot of his time chasing cod in the river near his home base of Cobram and in the backed up waters of nearby Lake Mulwala.

Now anyone who does a lot of lure fishing will know that if you are being serious about catching cod, then snags are a fact of life. In fact,    if you aren’t getting snagged occasionally, then you probably aren’t getting down to where the fish are. To make matters worse, Mulwala    (and to a lesser extent the Murray River itself) probably has more drowned timber per hectare than just about any other stretch of freshwater  in the country. And while all that timber makes it cod heaven, it sure can be an expensive place to toss lures.

Obviously, with John doing a lot of cod fishing, he needed to have a lure which didn’t snag every second cast and even then, he realized he was going to need lots of them. So what does a bloke do if a lure with the specific attributes he wants is not readily available and even if it was, he couldn’t afford to keep buying them anyway? Easy, you make it yourself of course, which is exactly what John decided to do.

As we now know, John’s first wooden StumpJumpers fitted the local cod fishing environment perfectly. They dug down deep, had great buoyancy to help them jump over the stumps (hence the name) and were as tough as nails. In fact, they were so good that by 1987, there was enough demand for John to go into commercial production and he needed some way to speed up the lure making process.

Being the inventive bloke that he is, John knocked up a machine to automate the shaping of the lure bodies. He describes it as a cross between a copy lathe and a profile cutter and it enabled him to pump out somewhere between 20 and 30 lures a week. He must have done a great job with it because he assures me the original machine is still around somewhere. Interestingly, those early wooden Stumpies were built from   Western Red Cedar. Keen lure collectors might be interested to know that John estimates he produced somewhere around 1500 wooden-bodied StumpJumpers all up. They originally came in only 10 colour patterns and had flat aluminium bibs. Speaking of bibs, John did play around with some plastic bibs in his wooden lures but only in very small numbers. He also started looking at the concept of ‘slide-in’ bibs, which gives you some idea of how far ahead of his time he was.

By 1991, freshwater fishing was a boom industry in this country and there was an almost insatiable demand for John’s cod lures. The only way for him to go close to satisfying it was to swap from the traditional wooden bodies to plastic, which is what he eventually did. However, even at this point, John continued to be an innovator and he believes his were the first Australian made lures to be moulded out of ABS plastic, which has since become the industry standard. In recent times, the demand far outstripped supply and subsequently the lures are now being manufactured offshore, but John’s input and strict standards have assured that the lure is as tough as it was, if not tougher, than the earlier models.

With the change to plastic, John was also able to introduce what is still about the world’s only truly successful interchangeable bib system.

I asked him how he came up with the idea for the snap-in, snap-out bibs and believe it or not, he got it from a simple clothes peg!

As unlikely as it sounds, it’s an idea that really works. With the deep diving bib, the No.1 StumpJumper is a great cod lure, but switch to the pointy,  shallow running bib and you have a minnow lure capable of taking saltwater speedsters like mackerel and tuna or even barramundi. Not many other lures can do that! Of course, going plastic also allowed John to increase his size range. These days, there are four different sizes in the Stumpie line-up and it doesn’t matter whether you are stalking fussy feeders like trout or bream or smash and grab merchants like dog tooth tuna, you can find a StumpJumper in a size and running depth to match.

I am still looking..Tongue..
www.reeldealfishing.com.au
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote westy Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 May 2014 at 2:26pm
Mate great read only have 7 timber stumpys but love them all
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote steiny Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 May 2014 at 6:00pm
Interesting read...thanks Wadey!
cheers steiny
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote gavk Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 May 2014 at 7:08pm
Love the stumpy's, but have noticed lately the bibs seem "cheaper", very flimsy and a few not swimming very well at all. They also seem thinner as my older bibs won't fit in the newer lures...hoping they go back to however they were being made before.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote justlooking Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 May 2014 at 11:01pm
Stephen Booth did an article in the Kad Club newsletter.
Dave Magna did an article for AFN.
John is still upright and fishing 3 or 4 times a month !!!
Go early - Stay late.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote stinger Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 May 2014 at 12:03am
BUT HES NOT OPAL MINING ANYMORE,,,,,,
REMEMBER FOOLS RUSH IN WERE ANGELES FEAR TO TREAD
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Baboon Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Jul 2014 at 7:57am
What are timber stumpys goin for these days I've got a few I mite wanna sell
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jaybonnie Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Jul 2014 at 10:38am
$500 to $1000 depending on condition and colour
THE CODFATHER
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote dalbykayakin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 Jul 2014 at 7:15pm
Or $150-$300 each depending on condition and colour if you buy the ones I buy
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote ashleyanne Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Jan 2015 at 1:34pm
Hi, 

I am looking at purchasing a timber stump jumper for my partner who is an avid fisherman. It is his birthday coming up and i would like to purchase one to start a collection for him. I am now realising how difficult they are to find! 

I am not really a fishing person so have no idea where to start. Any tips on where to start to look would be of great help! 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote CaptainCranky Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Jan 2015 at 1:51pm
Just by putting this up on the site you may have a chance.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Trouti Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Apr 2015 at 7:28pm
Just joined this forum from a recommendation from a lure collector in Townsville, I am looking to off load 2 original cedar wooden stump jumpers in perch scale pattern, good condition and 3 hand signed ken Henry seekers! I'm from Albury and fished around cobram and mulwalla when I was a kid, used flatfish and French floppies, when stump jumpers first hit the shelves in the mid 80's advertised as a lure that jumps stumps I ripped into a tackle store in cobram and bought a couple for me and my brother. 28yrs later I've still got them and they really didn't get a lot of use!
Ken Henry who made seekers in bendigo was a good mate of my uncles and when I was 16 fishing torrumberryweir with my uncle he introduced me to Kenny who was trying out his first batch of lures, he had about 15 beautifully hand made painted lures on the rim of a bait bucket in the bottom of his boat.
He asked me to pick the colors I liked and I did and he through 3 of his lures to me. My brother and I used 2 of them but by some stroke of luck the 3rd lure never hit the water. Its in pristine condition, about a decade go when i realised how rare this seeker was i wrapped it up in felt and tucked in a safe spot.I've had these lures for the same length of time as the stumpers but it's time they went to a good collector for the right price?
Any info would be helpful?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Aussbasstony Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Apr 2015 at 7:33pm
Mate take good pictures of the lures and post adds in the classified section of this forum.

If you have problems adding pictures ask one of the guides on the site and they can add picture to your post.

But I'm sure if you have stumpy,s for sale you would have already got hammered with private messages.

Good luck and just take your time selling them .

Looking forward to seeing the pictures.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Trouti Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Apr 2015 at 7:38pm
Thanks aussbasstony I'll have a crack at posting some pics
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Aussbasstony Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Apr 2015 at 7:44pm
Originally posted by Trouti Trouti wrote:

Thanks aussbasstony I'll have a crack at posting some pics

Mate I just checked your profile, you don't have access to the classified section of the forum yet, you will have to wait a very short time untill Tony or one of the guides allow you.
Different world in there mate.

Cheers
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Trouti Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Apr 2015 at 7:49pm
Yeh had a feeling this is why I couldn't find the classified section, saw couple of other posts asking exact same question, no dramas!!
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