Greg Thummel tied his first fly as a kid, but it wasn’t until he was an adult that he hand-lathed his first offshore lure. He called it his “Bigeye Bullet,” a much-improved version of the classic Green Machine that’s keel-weighted so it runs better through the water and has a bevel on the front and back to give it the eat-me action of swimming chub mackerel. Greg gave a couple of his newly crafted Bigeye Bullets to friends, but he didn’t splash the lure for himself until a buddy with a 35-foot Bertram invited him out to fish for the day off Ocean City, Maryland. “It was hilarious because I put it on a flat line at the end of the Daisy chain,” Thummel said.  “We had ballyhoo out. We had everything out. But my Bigeye Bullet was the only thing that continually got hit every single time.” Thummel owns GT Lures in Westmont, New Jersey, and continues to make his Bigeye Bullet today.

Early Beginnings in Fishing

Born and raised in Telford, Pennsylvania, Thummel started trout fishing in the freshwater lakes of the state’s Pocono Mountains at the age of four. Four years later, he was tying his own flies. He got to fish with fly-fishing legend, Joe Humphreys, who now has a fly-fishing program in his name at Penn State, also Greg’s alma mater. His grandfather also angled with the late Charlie Fox, a famous fly-fishing author from the same state whose books on the sport are classics. Fishing definitely runs in Greg’s family.

Family Influence and Coastal Adventures

Family ties also led Hummel to the Jersey Shore in 1974, when his uncle bought a marina in Stone Harbor. Even before that, his dad told him tales of working as a mate on many of the charter fishing boats out of Cape May. One of these was the Fishin Fool, run by Capt. James “Doc” Lummis, who pioneered white marlin fishing out at the 19 Fathom Lump. So Greg spent the summers fishing off the marina docks in Stone Harbor, and the rest of the year fishing for trout in the Poconos.

Transition to Offshore Sportfishing

Sportfishing exploded for Thummel when his dad bought their first offshore boat, a 25-foot Mako, in 1989. They didn’t have to rely on others anymore. The two took the Mako off the Jersey coast in search of giant tuna and sharks. Then, they moved up to a 27-foot Phoenix. Both were called Thums Up, a play on the family name. Summer vacations from Penn State also saw Greg working as a mate on a boat called the Double Header, which ran out of Barnegat Inlet, and he also mated on a few boats homeported in Brielle.

Professional Life and Global Fishing Expeditions

Sportfishing remained a recreational hobby through Hummel’s professional years in TV news in Philadelphia. He worked as a photographer for several stations, winding up the last 14 years of his career with Fox News. He did photography, editing, and field producing, and ran the boom-mounted jib camera in the studio. He also took several trips to Costa Rica. After his father’s passing, Greg moved the Phoenix to Golfito, where he ran a charter boat operation for a number of years. He did have crew on site, but many times would run the boat when he was there. Over the years, he’s also fished in the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Bermuda, Canada, and Mexico.

The Start of Lure Making

Greg started making lures as a kid after he read in a fishing magazine about fashioning lures out of the foam grips for rods. Since he dabbled at rod building during those early days too, he had lots of material lying around. He remembers turning a foam grip on a lathe to make a little chugger head and putting rubber skirts on it. He doesn’t remember fishing it, but thought it looked cool as hell.

“Lure-making clicked in my head sometime in 2009 or 2010,” he says. “I saw a lot of the Hawaiian lure makers’ prices go through the roof. I had gotten out of TV news by then and said to myself, ‘I can do that.’ I didn’t have any experience working with the resins in the lure industry, so I just started experimenting. I knew lure design from growing up lure fishing out of Barnegat and Stone Harbor. I fished with Bob Schneider and Joe Yee products and some of the original Murray Brothers stuff like the Lite-N-Glo #2.”

The inspiration he drew on in lure-making dates to his trout fishing days. “In fly fishing, the motto is to match the hatch,” Thummel said. “So, you tie your flies to match what’s hatching. Then later, when I started tuna and marlin fishing, I’d think the same thing.  Obviously, a lure is different because it’s running at speed versus a fly floating through the water. Still, the idea is to match the colors and movement of the lure to the bait you’re trying to copy. Then, with a lure, in my opinion, the color of the flash in the head is extremely important because that’s what the fish sees most. For example, if they’re feeding on Skippy’s, you want a purple or silver lure with that kind of flash with a little bit of black in there too to match. You also need something that will give you that rhythmic action of how a skippy would swim.”

Creating the Bigeye Bullet

It took him about a week to make his Bigeye Bullet lure. Before that came online research on resins, making molds, and pouring the heads. He knew what he wanted; it was just figuring out how to get to that endpoint, and then, to replicate it. He made the prototype, turning it on his lathe to get his vision of the perfect lure. By this time, he was in the lure-making business, though he says he was crafting lures out of personal necessity too. A 10- to-11-inch lure is a size that 90 percent of the fish swimming off the Jersey Shore will eat. In a spread, Thummel puts his Bigeye Bullet on the left flat. He fills in with his Double XL Flathead on the right flat, a small Warthog on the left short, a Secret Weapon on the right short, a Santiago on the left rigger, a Large Tube on the right rigger, and a four-barrel jetted Bigeye Bullet on the center rigger.

The Bigeye Bullet’s Success

“It’s been deadly,” Thummel says about the Bigeye Bullet’s performance. “It’s won well over a dozen tournaments now, mostly tuna tournaments or the tuna division of billfish tournaments, because that’s what it’s targeted towards. But it did win the Key West Billfish Tournament back around 2014 or 2015.” Greg found out about his Bigeye Bullet’s claim to fame in Key West through serendipity.

“I was at a fishing show here in New Jersey,” he said. “A guy walks up and saw the Bigeye Bullet on the table. He says, ‘They’re not just good for tuna.’ I said, ‘I know’ and just kind of laughed. He’s like, ‘No, really.’ So, I asked him what he meant. He told me his son runs a charter boat in Key West and he won the Key West Billfish Tournament the year before with one. They caught two blues and a white. So, it was funny how I found out, but I’m sure there are more billfish tournaments that it’s won.”

Passion for Marlin Lures

Tuna aside, Greg considers himself more known today for his marlin lures. “Marlin have always been an obsession,” he said. “I love tuna fishing and still make all the tuna stuff.  Nothing has changed. But there’s just something about marlin fishing that sucks you in.  My first marlin lure was just your basic Hawaiian plunger. Always was in love with a Hawaiian plunger. I thought it was cool. But I do it a bit differently. I don’t want to give too many secrets away, but let’s just say there’s more to the shape of a lure than the profile.”

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