From Father-Son Fishing to Revolutionary Ceramic Lure Manufacturing
One question from his four-year-old son Jesse changed Mark White’s professional life. “He asked if I could teach him how to fish,” says White, who moved to Kauai, Hawaii, with his wife in 1978 from his hometown of Palos Verdes, California. “I didn’t know anything about fishing, so we started with bamboo poles and worms.” White proudly remembers when Jesse caught his first largemouth bass under his tutelage.
The two fished more and more, continued developing their skills, and moved from freshwater to salt water. “We were using curly tail grubs, but as a person who likes to make things, I wanted to push the limits on the materials,” says White, who earned a master’s degree in Ceramic Arts from the California State University at Long Beach and worked as a professional potter making porcelain vases, flatware, and similar items. “I started experimenting with things like window screens, cutting them into strips, windshield wiper blades, and any weird stuff that I thought might be like what’s already in use, to see if it would work,” he said. “It was fun because I caught fish on everything I tried.”
Since White worked in ceramics, he wondered if anybody had made topwater lures like surface plugs from this material. An internet search revealed little and nothing commercial. In 2000, he started working on the idea. Six years later, he founded Mark White Lures with a trio of shapes. Prototypes of slants, pushers, and bullets are collectively White’s first lures. However, the real first is White’s founding of a successful business, now nearly two decades old, making fish-catching lures of ceramic rather than the more commonplace resin.
An Idea Takes Shape
White wasn’t the first to make ceramic lures, especially in Hawaii. That recognition goes to Peter Dunn-Rankin, a professor at the University of Hawaii, who is most famous for inventing the PILI and SuperLolo surface popping lures. Dunn-Rankin’s first products were crafted of porcelain and were not very durable. The professor marketed them in Micronesia, where they successfully caught fish. However, he didn’t develop the business.
Fast forward, when renowned Hawaii-based fishing writer, Jim Rizzuto, authored articles for Hawaii Fishing News about White’s ceramic lures. Dunn-Rankin read them and reached out. “He was super friendly, supportive, and wanted to share information,” says White. “He wasn’t a competitor but instead became a mentor.”
White says the first ceramic surface plugs he made didn’t swim well, but they cast far. “I thought, ‘There’s something here,'” White said. “I wasn’t sure what it was, but I started thinking of the ‘what ifs’ or turning something like this into a business. It was a pipe dream at first.” He experimented with ceramic trolling heads simultaneously, giving samples to anyone who would drag them. The first feedback was negative, saying the lures easily tangled lines. He expected a similar downbeat response from a friend who was a commercial fisherman.
“I said, ‘So Abram, how are those lures working out for you?'” He said, “‘They work.’ I was surprised and said, ‘They do? What are you catching on them?’ He answered, ‘Everything. I don’t know why you’re so excited.’ I say, ‘Because it’s my dream to turn this into a business!'”
A fisherman later caught a 600-pound marlin on White’s prototype pointed ceramic bullet with little slant, which underscored the lure’s fish-catching ability. So did the 800-pound marlin his friend Abram caught on another of his lures. “The marlin followed the spread, biting one lure and breaking the cable,” White said. “The fish kept following the spread and took a second lure, and that’s the one he landed it on. So, the joke was that the marlin liked the taste of the ceramics so much that one wasn’t enough.”
High-Tech Ceramic Innovation
The word “ceramic” puts people off at first, says White, because they think of it as a fragile material. Thus, he made the lure’s ceramic body more durable by moving beyond pottery to high-tech ceramics, which use different materials and are fired differently. The result is a strong, sturdy lure that commercial fishermen found nearly indestructible when catching ono (wahoo), compared to the damage this species can do to resin heads.
It took White a decade of research and development, mixing batches and testing them, making molds and testing them, to develop his line and launch his business. Thanks to Rizzuto’s article and an interview on the local TV show, “Hawaii Goes Fishing,” local tackle stores in Hawaii started expressing interest in selling the surface plugs, and then, with durability assured, the trolling lures. White offers a lifetime guarantee on all his lures.
The Smoker
White’s son Jesse makes the lures today as his father prepares to retire. He also commercially fishes aboard his Anderson Custom Boat’s commercial 22-foot hull. Jesse made his mark on the business by creating a ceramic funnel jet head commonly referred to as a “smoker.” “He started experimenting with some of my shapes by drilling holes and creating a ceramic smoker,” White said. “I didn’t think it would be successful because he drilled out the mass in the center and put holes in the base of the main hole. It was so lightweight. What’s amazing is that they stay stuck in the water even on the short corners. That tapered hole in the center sucks in the water and keeps it stuck down. Because of that, people are doing well with them, and it’s become our number one seller and producer. We make them in different colors and sizes to take skirts from five inches up to nine inches.” White adds that the two most successful smokers are white with red eyes and the black and blue, a cobalt blue with black bars on it.
Manufacturing Process and Challenges
To craft ceramic lures, White makes up a batch of slip and water, or clay slurry, of about 1,000 pounds in a 100-gallon tank. He then mixes, strains, and preps it to fill the molds. The molds have 10 to 30 cavities in them for the lures. To make the molds, he starts with a lathe and creates a shape based on calculations he’s derived from long-time trial and error. He must compensate for shrinkage, making his shapes about 15 percent larger so the skirts fit when the lures shrink during the firing process. Then, the lures are glazed. From start to finish, ceramic lure making is an extensive process. A line saver goes inside each lure to protect the line from abrasion. Orders are custom made. There are some 350 choices, with the three initial shapes, plus the smoker, in five sizes: five, six, seven, nine, and 12 inches, with a selection of nine colors and a few custom colors.
Persistence and Innovation
“The number of possible failures that I’ve had has been legendary in solving the technical problems,” says White, whose customers include commercial, charter, tournament, and recreational fishermen. “So many people have said, ‘This seems like such a hassle. Why don’t you just make them out of resin or plastic like everyone else?’ I tell them I’m as hard-headed about making this business work as the material itself. I just wasn’t willing to give up. Despite all the failures and the technical problems, making ceramic fishing lures was a challenge that I felt I was up to. The fact that it’s fraught with so many difficulties has made me want to do it more and be successful at it.”
Originally featured in InTheBite Magazine July/August 2025 Issue.
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