Clarkston man assembles handmade steelhead lures
LEWISTON – With a few deft moves, Ray Rhimer twists a length of .32-gauge stainless steel wire at his home office in the Clarkston Heights.
He threads it on a length of one-fourth-inch milled brass tubing, adds a couple of beads, a clevis, swivel, brass blade, split ring and hook. Another twist of the wire and it’s nearly done. He sticks a hand-cut decal to the blade for a bit of flash and hands a visitor the finished product – a spinner ready to tempt a steelhead.
If you fish for steelhead at Heller Bar, you probably know Rhimer. The 86-year-old angler has been fishing there for nearly 70 years. For decades he’s sold handmade spinners by word of mouth with his friend and longtime fishing partner, Wayne Schulte.
“I started fishing up at Heller Bar and in that area in 1957,” Rhimer said. “When my dad passed away – he made spinners – I took it over and kind of upgraded everything and did things a little different.”
While the final assembly looks quick and easy, Rhimer said the entire process is labor intensive. He cuts to length and mills each piece of brass tubing that make up the bodies of the lures. He cuts and assembles the decals and procures all the components. In the end, it’s more of a hobby than a business.
He sells them for $2 each. That’s more than half the price an angler would expect to pay for a Blue Fox or Mepps spinner.
“The people can’t afford to pay $5 or $6,” he said.
Rhimer and Schulte, who retired from lure making a few years ago, once sold them for $9 per dozen and then raised the price to $18 a dozen. They’ve been $2 each for the past 10 to 15 years, impervious to inflation.
How to fish them
He advises, at a run like the one just downstream of the mouth of the Grande Ronde River at Heller Bar, to cast at about 2 o’clock and flip the bail and let the current take it downstream. It should bounce off the bottom as it swings toward the shore – repeat.
“If the water is faster, then you go to 3 o’clock and let it go down.”
If the lure isn’t hitting the bottom on occasion, you won’t catch anything.
Good old days
His career as a steelhead angler predates the arrival of slackwater on the Snake River and the build up of the hatchery system designed to mitigate for fish declines caused by dams. In those early days, the B-run steelhead could push a mind-blowing and reel-spooling 30 pounds. The smaller A-run fish weighed about 5 to 8 pounds, which is similar to today.
They were mostly wild fish then.
“We had a lot of slow days. They didn’t have that hatchery up there on the Grand Ronde way up there,” he said. “Then they built that big dam up there in Hells Canyon – Idaho Power – and they shut all of that (areas upstream of the dam) off. Big mistake.”
The season started earlier than it does now.
“We’d start on Labor Day and we would fish till about Oct. 8 or 9, and then we would switch and bring the boats down and drift up and down down there across from the (Red Wolf) golf course.”
He and Schulte both lived at Spokane and were produce managers for a grocery chain.
“We only had one day off, that was Sunday. We would leave Spokane at 2 a.m. and come down here and fish and come home Sunday afternoon.”
He later moved to Montana and would stay in a camper at Heller Bar during the fall. After retirement, he moved to the Grande Ronde and later to Clarkston.
Eric Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmitribune.com.