The Birth of Stingerz custom gaffs
It was several years ago that I first attended the Fred Hall Show. I've always wanted to go, although I was always busy or doing something that kept me from attending. Finally one day, I was able to make it to the show along with my brother. I was very impressed with the abundance of different fishing gear and equipment on display available from so many different vendors. At the time my brother and I just bought our 45’ Hatteras Sportfisher and we were looking to purchase quite a bit of gear to prep the boat, and one of the items on the list was a custom gaff. Seeing all the different gaffs available, I didn't really see much of a selection as far as custom made gaffs from the ones that were available. I wasn't really impressed with them and I knew that I could build the same thing that they were calling custom. So again, being the artistic and creative individual that I am, I told myself and my brother, "We’re not buying a gaff, I'm going to make us one." So, coming from an industry that built nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, I was accustomed to fabricating a lot of different components. With that being said, I built our very first gaff, an that was the birth of Stingerz Custom Gaffs. To make a long story short, it started with a Mustad gaff hook that I mounted on the outside of a Calcutta bamboo wrapped with a few different colored cords and epoxied. The gaff pictured above was the original stick. It wasn't the custom gaff that it is today but in the same standards as what most gaff builders call custom and still make it this old school way. The gaffs I actually built were a bit fancier when it came to wrapping with the cord and that pretty much was the custom gaff no paint, no fancy hooks, no names, just raw bamboo. There's nothing wrong with the old school way I actually still admire the old school look and I made them for a lot of local anglers here on the west coast and some out of state. As time went on, I started to change the way I was building them and applying more artistic designs as well as incorporating more colors. I developed better looking gaffs, perfecting the techniques of gaff building but also sticking with the true and tried old school Calcutta bamboo. This is considered one of the strongest and toughest of all the bamboo species. Not to mention, all hooks installed into the stick are secured in 5 different ways, and I don't mean installing 2 pins and calling that 2 different ways. Most builders only secure the hook in either 2 or 3 ways but SCG has come up with a method that's more secure to keep the hook from ever coming off. Calcutta bamboo has been around a long time and used by many boat anglers, charter boats, and well known Captains here in California- especially in San Diego which is home to the largest fleet of long range charters in the fishing industry. All Stingerz Calcutta bamboo is individually hand selected from prime grade stock coming from a very reputable source from the US. We at SCG are striving to evolve and are pushing to design the absolute best Gaff the fishing industry has to offer.
"Stingerz Custom Gaffs where all stickz are sick."