Myth Behind the Popping Cork

There is an old saying that necessity is the mother of all invention. In the case of Captain Bob and the Marvelous Mansfield Mauler, it cannot be truer. In the late 1983, the year of the great freeze, Captain Bob had a 92-year-old gentleman fish with him two days a week from April to September. As the gentleman got older, the winds of South Texas made it more and more challenging to work a soft plastic effectively. Captain Bob, a retiree as a fireman on from a nuclear fire station, put his ingenuity to work and created the mauler.

As all great inventions go, the yet unnamed contraption started with a few false beginning that ended with a number of operational failures. Captain Bob first created the mauler with a foot long section of 30-pound mono and a sliding crappie cork. "The first attempts with the mono were not so effective," Fuston says, "casting caused the contraption to twist and foul up. I had to go back to the drawing room."

The drawing room, in the case of most hardcore anglers is a tackle shop. Fuston's version of a mad scientist's laboratory has since changed hands but in those days, the Tacklebox in San Antonio was an Angler's Eden and an early sponsor of Captain Bob's. The longtime owner and lifelong friend of Fuston's, Jim Cooper, suggested using a stiffer wire to create the shaft of the Mauler.

"That was when I had the light bulb moment."

Fuston and Cooper utilized the wire and replaced the crappie cork with a small diameter, two to three inch sliding orange cork. To eliminate the twisting that was inherent with the mono-shaft, Fuston haywired swivels on each end of the 10-inch wire section and added two beads on each side of the cork to keep it from sliding over the swivel knots.

"The beads were the ticket. They added that extra tick that really got trout looking up. The mono leader and crappie cork just did not have that pop," Captain Bob says. "They need that loud popping and clicking action to get their eyes up and them out of the grass."

The Mauler now made and catching fish was still yet to receive a name. However, that was all soon to change. The freeze of 1983 glazed the edges of many Texas bays with ice. Large fish kills occurred up and down the Texas coast. The Laguna Madre did not dodge the cold weather and reported, in some isolated places, water temperatures of less than 40 degrees.

The following season of 1984 not only faced the battles of the Red Fish Wars but also felt the decimation of the winter fish kills. Catches were off and guides were struggling with the new influx of commercial fishermen entering the charter business after the 1984 gill net bans on trout and redfish. However, an eccentric, red-bandana wearing guide from Port Mansfield was raising eyebrows with the numbers of fish he caught and the strange gadget he had tied to his clients' rods.

"The success of the mauler came down to an early fishing trip with a journalist from Houston." Ken Grissom, an outdoors writer, NFL-er Gerald Wilson and his wife Marty chartered Captain Bob for a weekend of fishing and an opportunity for Grissom to get a story on the Laguna Madre.

"Marty had never fished. I was under pressure to get Grissom a story and Marty a fish in a slow fishery left over from the freeze," Fuston remembers, "but on her second or third cast, boom, she caught her first redfish."

Grissom's subsequent article launched the Mansfield Mauler from crazy contraption to coast wide fame. Grissom coined the new fandango the Marvelous Mansfield Mauler.

"I really didn't feel comfortable with the 'marvelous' so I dropped it and named it the Orginal Mansfield Mauler."

The name stuck. Imitation, however, is the highest form of flattery. Now every tackle company in Texas and many national tackle makers build some version of the Original Mansfield Mauler.

Captain Bob retired from guiding in 2004. "My eyes were getting where I couldn't see the fish and wading damn near came impossible." Fran, his wife, and he retired to Glen Rose and he still builds each and every Original Mansfield Mauler you find in Wal-Mart and tackle shops. He has slowed down production somewhat.

"The old fingers and eyes aren't what they used to be. I only make about a thousand a year now."

If you want to get your hands on a true Texas legend, the Original Mansfield Mauler, made by Captian Bob, himself, and his wife Fran, look for the distinctive bright, look for the nuclear yellow packing with a bearded caricature with Fuston's signature beard and you have the "Real Deal."