Seiji Kato, the Master of Lure Building and the Winning Practitioner

Do you know what is common among these lures? Peanuts 2, Shoreline Shiner, Team Daiwa Vibration (TD Vibration), Bevy Shad, Flash Minnow, Pointer, Flick Shake, Vayron, Cross Tail, Scad Minnow etc.  

These are lures which Mr. Seiji Kato has developed in his career.

As you see, these lures are from three brands, Daiwa, Lucky Craft and Jackall. It shows his superiority in the technique of lure building. He could make wonderful lures in any organization, with the basis of his fishing experience, mainly as a tournament angler.

In this article, we will see his careers, and review some of his lures with their development backgrounds.

Before his professional career

His life history and his career, in this article, is the summary from his own homepage.

Seiji Kato was born in 1960, in Chiba prefecture. He experienced fishing at the age of 5 to catch the crucian carp with his father. Later he started to go fishing alone to catch goby, and he learned fishing for Hera, a Japanese crucian carp. (You can understand this Hera fishing in my blog post.) 

His turning point was when he moved to Takamatsu, Kagawa, at the age of 14. There he learned lure fishing for snakeheads. Taking advantage of the rich nature in the region, he learned trout fishing in streams. Surely, it enriched his experience to see and analyze nature to know about fish. 

The important event for the fishing industry came when he was about 15 years old, when he knew of black bass. His first bass was caught in Ishitegawa Dam, in Takamatsu, Kagawa. Then he traveled to the famous bass fishing lakes, Kawaguchi-ko Lake and Shoji-ko Lake. In these lakes, young Seiji had a bitter experience, that he could not get any fish. I dare say it is lucky for our industry that it drove him more into bass fishing. During his college days, he dedicated himself more into fishing, lure fishing and fly fishing. 

Starting of his professional careers

After graduating college, Mr. Seiji Kato entered Daiwa Seiko (currently Globeride Inc.) Yes. It was the Daiwa who had been producing Daiwa branded fishing tackles. Then, he spent a few months in a fishing retail shop for his job training. After this, he was assigned to be a salesman in Toyama. During this time, he spent most of his time fishing for charr and black seabream. It was the time he came to know of Biwako lake, as it was a very good place for bass fishing. 

He experienced fishing in the lake in 1984, and he caught a lot of bass. It trapped him into bass fishing, driving him to visit there every week. Amazingly he caught over 50 pieces of bass every week there. Two years later, he took part in a tournament of bass fishing, and was defeated completely. It inspired him to join more tournaments to win there. Since then, all of his fishing was either for tournaments or practice for tournaments.

Later on, he started his new career as a product developer in Daiwa in Tokyo. Starting from his first product, Peanuts 2, he developed the TD (Team Daiwa) series, Shoreline Shiner series etc. It gave him chances to speak with famous bass pros in the US and to get the knowledge from them. The products developed at that time sold well with gaining good reputation that Mr. Kato used them to win tournaments.

Next career as a pure lure designer

In 1994, he joined Lucky Craft. There he had to do everything by himself. Starting from the mock-up carving out of plastic block, testing by himself, amending the shape, he reached to finalize the shape. Then, he had to design the mold and make first molding prototypes for his test again. The list of his work continues. He had to select colors, design the packages, design the graphics of advertisements, and sell them to retailers. 

Around this time of his career, he was focusing on developing the lures to win tournaments. The products developed during this period were Bevy Shad 50, Flash Minnow, Sammy 85, CB200 etc. Bevy Shad 50 was used in the tournament held in Kawaguchiko Lake in 1994. Flash Minnow let Mr. Otsuka win Japanese tournament, JB Classic. In the RedmondRegional Championships, Sammy 85 gained the winning lure badge. He used CB200 to win the tournament, too. Another lure to raise his reputation was B’freeze (called Pointer in the US.) Mr. Seiji Kato happened to have given it to Dennis Hoy, who was on the same boat in a tournament. It became the winning lure used by Mr. Hoy. Additionally, this Seiji’s minnow was used by Kevin VanDam to win in the elite series. 

Jackall and his latest company

After his career in Lucky Craft, he founded the Jackall company in 1999. The concept of Jackall’s lure building is to be a lure with which anyone can catch, with the clear product concept and to have the challenge to realize something new. 

He continued his path to produce winning lures. These are Flick Shake, Cross Tail, Aragon, DD Squirrel, Scad Minnow 95 etc. 

In 2024, he made his new company, REVONIK Lure Laboratory. This is a kind of concept shop, which is only open for the reserved visitors. While there is no official website of his new company, according to the people who visited there (pre-open for industry people,) this facility includes the lure workshop, big water tank, swirled pool to test lures, and shop. We are excited to hear more news about it.

Lures produced by Seiji Kato

The first one is Daiwa Peanuts 2. He got his knowledge about crank baits from Rick Clunn, in his first visit to Japan in 1990. Mr. Kato could hear his ideas about crank baits directly and could see him fishing. Mr. Kato said that this experience affected a lot in the design of crank baits. The time he made his Peanuts 2 was that the Big O was imported and that the Japan made crank bait (Bass Hunter and the first generation Peanut) started hitting the market. The use of crank bait as a pilot lure was spreading but some key factors were still missing. Then Seiji came out with the well shaven Peanuts 2 for Japanese anglers.

Next lure is the Bevy Shad 50 of Lucky Craft. Seiji says that the development of this lure started from the idea that he wanted to have small minnows that allow him to fish with a quicker tempo. At that time the market recognition of shad was for stop & go or jerking, but his new shad put more emphasis on the pause to let a fish bite. It established the position of shad, in comparison with minnow. His shad stays in the posture of head down, while the minnow stays parallel. With jerking, shad moves to the side, diving, and minnow moves to the side without diving.

The B’freeze name comes from combining the words, “be” and “freeze”. As the name tells you, it is the lure to make a swift move with ideal pause following in accordance with the rod movement. This lure was so popular that we can say it allows people to recognize what “jerkbait” is. 

According to Mr. Kato, the important point in minnow shaped lure is the rhythm of lure actions, which is ideally synchronizing with the real bait fish.

Next is the worm, Flick Shake of Jackall. 

This worm was born from the experience from the bass pro angler, Mr. Hata, who was a team angler of Jackall. When he competed in a tournament in Korea in 2004, he saw a local tournament angler was catching a lot with jig head wacky. It made him study a lot about this rig, to reach his conclusion to use the bent or wrinkled worm. I assume the jig-head wacky may have added some benting effect and his conclusion was to realize it with a worm as it is (hence pre-bent worms).

Seiji found it effective, with finding the completely new movement of the worm. It brought good fishing results to him, and immediately decided to make it into a product.