Small L. Cooper Goo Goo Reproduction

[EricW]

I'm not sure what the name of this plug is but I recently acquired one and decided to reproduce it. Mine ended up coming in at about 1 inch longer. It is one of Leo Coopers earlier small swimmers.

It has the bead eyes and a different lip bend than most of his other plugs. The lip is bent with some small straight bends instead of a curved shape like his other eel swimmers. I unfortunately do not have any Goo Goo hook hangers, but I was able to steal one from my stash of Arbogast lures.

The lip and beads are vintage original goo goo parts and the hooks are vintage mustads.

I learned something about one type of the eyes used in Goo Goos in the process. When I was drilling out the bead for this plug I realized it looks just like the indented eyes that were used before the amber eyes. I had thought those were a doll or craft eye. But they are actually beads that are drilled and painted black. To confirm, I extracted one from the yellow plug in the pictures. Those beads are exactly the same as what I found in the batch of Cooper stuff that I had acquired.

I hope to make a few more of these in some different colors.

[EricW]

Here are some more pics...

[numbskull]

Any fish you catch with that is going to feel special. Very cool.

[the greek]

Great looking plug and interesting too. Funny you posted this. I just finished this over the weekend. It's a copy of the popper you gave me at plugfest. I turned a few and decided to thru-wire them. May just make a few with screw eyes to see how close I can get. Thank you for the popper body. I kept it to put away with the few things I do save.

[Rockfish9]

Those look great... anything cooper

[vineyardblues]

greek , that thing is nice