Andy Poss Can ’ t Catch a Break
COLUMN
FOR THE RECORD
Contrary to popular belief , not everyone who deserves it gets 15 minutes of fame . Relatively speaking , Andy Poss only got about 13 minutes ’ worth .
You remember him . He ’ s the guy who introduced the Alabama Rig to the bass fishing world in 2011 . Its acceptance among anglers was tentative at first , but then it exploded over the tournament landscape like a rocket . First , Paul Elias used one of Poss ’ contraptions in an FLW Tour stop at Guntersville to catch a four-day limit of 102 pounds , 8 ounces and win by more than 17 pounds over Robert Behrle . A month later , Dan Morehead tied on an Alabama Rig and caught a 61-4 fourday sack at Kentucky Lake to claim the Costa FLW Series Championship .
Morehead ’ s win at Kentucky Lake was the capper , the event that turned interest in the Alabama Rig into a mad rush . Poss had a deal with Mann ’ s Bait Company to market the rig , and for a while the money was rolling in . Then two things happened , though not at once . First , seemingly every tackle company
COLIN
MOORE
Andy Poss Can ’ t Catch a Break
that marketed bass baits began to knock off the rig , which is standard operating procedure in the lure business . Then , the two major tournament organizations , FLW and B . A . S . S ., banned the rig from their pro circuits .
Poss couldn ’ t do anything about the bans , and to a certain extent he couldn ’ t do anything about the knockoffs . The latter is what really hurt , but uniqueness is a rare commodity in the fishing world . Though there are dozens of soft-plastic stick baits that more or less look like the Yamamoto Senko , out on the water they ’ re not a Yamamoto Senko .
The real problem for the Alabama entrepreneur is that variations on his theme worked , even the rigs fabricated by guys hunkered down over their garage workbenches . Depending on where and when they were fished , the knockoffs caught bass – sometimes lots of them . There were rigs with all sorts of spinner blades and wire arms that were shorter , longer , thicker or thinner than the Alabama Rig ’ s wire arms , and rigs with heads of different shapes and sizes . The name was
trademarked , but even that wasn ’ t bulletproof as fishermen still use the A- word to describe any version of a castable umbrella rig .
The design of the original Alabama Rig is patented , too , though it didn ’ t seem to matter much , either . Poss is still hoping for a beefier utility patent , which would provide more protection for his castable umbrella rig , but it ’ s been held up in Washington , D . C ., where the wheels of the U . S . Patent and Trademark Office turn exceedingly slow . Poss has spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to stop the bleeding through cease-anddesist orders . Though his deal with Mann ’ s has gone away , he still sells the Alabama Rig through Tim Horton ’ s profoundoutdoors . com website .
“ The lawyers are still very optimistic ,” notes Poss . “ We did what the lawyers and big-business people said , but everybody knocked it off so quickly . We notified companies in 2012 that we had a design patent , and if the utility patent is granted , every single one of them making rigs that copy the Alabama Rig will be infringing on it .
“ We are on 6- and 12-month intervals now with reports from the patent office . Usually it takes no longer than 8 to 12 months to get a patent ,” Poss continues . “ The process for us has been roughly 36 months . They want us to jump through hoops if we make any little change . I ’ m having a hard time choking this all down .”
Poss ’ wife , Tammy , says her husband got the idea for the Alabama Rig from a TV mini-series called The Blue Planet . In one episode , predatory fish were shown chasing baitfish . Poss noticed that as long as the baitfish stayed in a massive school , they seemed to confuse and confound the tuna chasing them . Once a few baitfish broke away from the pack , however , tuna went after them and scooped them up .
Poss , who once gathered and sold mussels in the Tennessee River chain of lakes for a living , wondered if Pickwick Lake ’ s bass would behave in the same fashion when a small school of shad raced away in front of them . Sure they would , and even if the umbrella rig was already in existence and widely used to troll for inshore saltwater fish and stripers , apparently nobody ever considered that it might be just as effective for bass .
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FLWFISHING . COM I juLy 2017