A social-media friend sent a link last week to You Tube videos about using “feminine napkins” as bait for catching bass, catfish, lake trout and rainbow trout.
He considered the videos “LOL,” and said the anglers were “true innovators” who offered some great tips for fishing tampons on the water or through the ice.
Maybe so, but I don’t want to catch fish that bad.
Besides … attaching tampon pads to jig-heads or fashioning lures from tampon applicators is neither novel nor innovative. And just because you produced a You Tube video that several thousand people watched doesn’t make you a legendary lure manufacturer like Buck Perry, Tom Mann or Nick Creme.
And you’re certainly not an originator. Some of us remember the 1980s and 1990s when the environmental group Clean Ocean Action sold $6 fishing lures made from recycled tampon applicators, which they dubbed “Tampoons.” The applicators were free and in endless supply. They washed onto New Jersey shorelines by the hundreds of thousands whenever outdated sewer and stormwater systems overflowed into the Atlantic Ocean.
This 2022 display by New York artist Duke Riley — titled “Monument to Five Thousand Years of Temptation and Deception V, VI, VII” — features fishing lures made from plastic trash Riley picked up on Atlantic Ocean beaches in the Northeast. The entire display measures 82.5-by-68.5-by-4 inches.
COA has long conducted spring and fall “beach sweeps” to remove trash from New Jersey beaches. The cleanups attracted 158,000 volunteers who contributed over 947,000 hours of labor between 1985 and 2021. Throughout those 36 years, tampon applicators were common in the 7.94 million pieces of flotsam, jetsam and assorted junk collected by COA crews.
I know what you’re thinking: “What’s the difference between flotsam and jetsam?”
Answer: Money, possibly. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, ocean trash isn’t just odds and ends. Flotsam and jetsam have specific meanings in maritime law, though both are associated with boats, ships and barges.
“Flotsam” is debris not deliberately thrown overboard, often during accidents or shipwrecks. And jetsam? Think "jettison." Jetsam is debris deliberately thrown overboard from vessels in distress, usually to lighten their load. Flotsam can be reclaimed by its original owner, but jetsam can be claimed by whoever finds it.
Safe to say, tampon applicators are neither jetsam nor flotsam, though they’re often found amid both, albeit in declining numbers. A 2021 COA report listed 3,211 tampon applicators in the year’s two beach sweeps, down nearly 18% from 3,896 found in 2019.
Trigger alert: A 1993 COA press release referred to the 4-inch plastic applicators as “beach whistles.” Apparently, children who find beached tampon applicators often blow into them to make noise they find entertaining.
OK. Back to fishing lures: There’s a reason most folks haven’t heard of the Tampoon. Even at $6, these lures apparently failed as cost-effective fundraising items. COA’s staff and volunteers made the lures by cleaning each tampon applicator, inserting a wooden dowel through its center, and attaching treble hooks in the bottom and a screw-eye in the front. They painted the Tampoons various colors, including classic pink or white. COA suggested fishing them with a flyrod, or trolling or casting them with weights.
Trouble is, making Tampoons was labor-intensive and they didn’t sell well as curios or fishing lures. An Associated Press article in January 1993 quoted a COA spokesman who said Tampoon sales were “about 300” the first two years. Even after the AP article ran in newspapers nationwide, only 75 new orders trickled in the next two weeks.
Not to boast, but I have a Tampoon hiding somewhere in my myriad fishing tackle in the garage, basement, workshop or boats. The COA spokesman sent me one after I interviewed him by phone for my outdoors column of March 14, 1993. I recall my Tampoon came with a small instruction sheet, like those packaged with other fishing plugs, spoons, spinners, jerkbaits and plastic baits.
My column shared the Tampoon’s history and some helpful tips: “Collected from the beaches of Sandy Hook, New Jersey, Tampoons are washed twice before assembly. Use Tampoons as you would soft plastic jerkbaits, giving the Tampoon a ‘wounded baitfish’ action. Are you ready to step up to the ultimate recycled fishing lure? Are you ready to fish with a Tampoon? Insist on genuine Tampoons!”
The Tampoon never enjoyed the fame of renowned lures like the Mr. Twister, Mepps spinner, Luhr-Jensen J-Plug or Eppinger Dardevle spoon. Even so, COA’s 1995 annual report said the Tampoon was featured in the Smithsonian Institution’s “Ocean Planet” exhibition in Washington, D.C.
We should also note that COA’s leaders weren’t the only folks to look at a tampon applicator and see its potential as a fishing lure. A June 2022 article in the New York Times by Melena Ryzik profiled artist Duke Riley, who has scavenged tons of plastic trash from New York waterways and crafted many items into an array of artwork and fishing lures.
Riley’s creative “upcycling” of straws, vape pens, squirt bottles, tampon applicators, dental-floss picks and empty shotgun shells is so exceptional that his collections are featured in museums, art galleries and other high-profile settings around New York and New England. His centerpiece at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2022, which was titled “Death to the Living, Long Live Trash,” featured hundreds of fishing lures made from discarded plastics. His sprawling display also featured scrimshaw carved from other plastic trash.
You might scoff at such talent, artwork and recognition, but when’s the last time you made anything from flotsam, jetsam or other floating junk and had it end up in a museum, art gallery or the Smithsonian Institution?
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