GREAT OUTDOORS: In praise of the 50-cent Szuch lure

I have spent many days around the lake over the past 50-plus years doing a variety of outdoor activities, and along the way I've met some unique characters.The list is long, but the gentleman that gave me the most variety of useful lake smarts unbeknownst to me at first turned out to be related to me.Steve Szuch was married to Jenny Ellis, the sister of Jim Ellis, who married my grandmother's sister, Hazel (Geller). If there are any genealogists reading this, please e-mail me to let me know how I am related to him.Among other things, he was a commercial boat pilot employed to help install the submerged pipeline to the Toledo Water Intake, a commercial fisherman and finally a wholesale and retail "bait minnow dealer."He relayed to me how the route for the intake pipeline followed a clay ridge that is now obscured by the massive siltation that has occurred from decades of soil erosion in the Maumee River watershed. It was formerly used by spawning lake whitefish and yellow perch.He switched from catching big fish to minnows (emerald shiners) when the emphasis on the lake's walleye harvest allotment went from commercial landings to recreational harvest.In his free time, he was also an independent investor, free-thinking inventor, tinkerer, ace mechanic and outdoorsman. He liked duck, rabbit, pheasant and frog hunting, perch fishing and ice fishing from his finicky snowmobile or homemade "Heap."The "Heap" was a wood-covered buggy constructed on a VW Beetle frame. It was painted green and white, left over from painting his docks along his Cooley Canal home. He always had a lot of undertakings in various stages of completion, referring to them as "insanity projects" to keep his ever-ticking mind from getting stale.He relayed to me his simple, but often successful stock market "system" of watching several companies closely enough to become familiar with their share's value. When they dipped to prices below where they "should" be trading, he would buy and hold them until he could make a profit.This technique has worked for me whenever I have played the market as a hobby with stocks of local interest or well-known national companies that I have chosen to follow.I went out "minnowing" with him and learned his techniques of catching them by using lanterns on floats, easing alongside of them with the boat and substituting the light from the lantern with a bulb controlled with a rheostat that could be dimmed to draw them within reach of the net.The care that he took while handling the fragile baitfish during capture and transport and then keeping them healthy until needed stayed ingrained with me whenever capturing my winter supply.It did not take long for me to notice that his hand-tied perch rigs out-fished my standard issue wire perch spreader at least 2:1 the first time we took out his minnow boat, seeking "Erie gold." After I made the switch that day 35 years ago, I haven't used a spreader since. I became the guy who began catching perch 2:1 against other people using spreaders and became the one to tie "Szuch rigs" for them.Perch rigs, crappie rigs, bullhead rigs, drop shot rigs -- whatever you call them, he was way ahead of the crowd by using this now more-popular way of catching yellow perch.He also used a homemade lure to catch walleyes in the years when the lake froze in his familiar fishing hotspots around the Toledo Water Intake.While available, the main body of it only came in one color and was sold for 50 cents. He modified it using a tiny drill bit and adding two split rings and a treble hook. When jigged, it called in nearby walleyes by playing unique, high-pitched notes when the metals clinked and clanked underwater.The U.S. mint does not make them anymore, but all-silver Kennedy half-dollars can be found at any coin shop. The photo shows his simple, but effective design.