More about Chris Morris and his Uncle Jessie lure:
A young angler with his 'Uncle Jessie' catch
NORTH CAROLINA ANGLER'S INNOVATIVE
LURE PUTS BITE ON RIVER PERCH
By Lee Tolliver
The Virginian-Pilot
HERTFORD, N.C. - The young osprey squealed with delight as its mother swooped down on her nest, a small white perch gripped in her talons. There are few better who fish the Perquimans River - with the possible exception of the guy in the boat watching the action that's taking place in the shoreline treetops.
Like the magnificent bird feeding her young, Chris Morris has been known to put a few perch on the dinner table. While Morris tossed a bait into the coffee-colored waters of this northeastern North Carolina wonderland, mom kept a close eye as her baby pecked away in a feeding frenzy.
Morris hoped the river's perch, both white and yellow, were as hungry as the fledgling. He knew he was throwing the right bait to find out. Morris is the designer and marketer of the "Uncle Jessie's Brand Fishing Lure", a spinnerbait-like lure he makes to catch these two tasty panfish. It didn't take long for Morris, who was born and still lives in Tyner, N.C., to match the osprey's success. "There's one," Morris said, setting the hook on a 1-pound yellow perch -- also known as a tiger or raccoon perch, "And it's a pretty good one."
The adult osprey watched as Morris brought the perch onto the deck of his 19-foot Javelin bass boat, screeching as if to object that an angler was taking food out of the belly of her offspring. But Morris slid the fish back into the water. This wasn't a trip to provide dinner. It was to see if the new blades on the Uncle Jessie worked as well as the old ones. They did. Midsummer isn't the best time to catch perch on the Perquimans or any other brackish stream. But Morris was able to catch several dozen in a couple hours. Mixed in were other species -- chain pickerel, bream, even a croaker.
I've caught 10 different kinds of fish on this bait," said Morris. "Citation-size bream, white perch, 6 1/2 pound bass, 10 pound catfish and a 22 1/2" brown trout. If you just want to go fishing, and you don't care what you catch, this a pretty good lure to use." Good as it might be, the Uncle Jessie was designed to catch perch -- a fish often looked on as lowly and one that is definitely worlds apart from the glamour fish he used to pursue. Morris, 51, spent the 1980's fishing bass tournaments. Perch weren't good for much other than a fish fry. But tournament angling grew old. Morris wanted to return to the roots of his life. "I just got interested in going back to church," Morris said. "I just felt a need to and as I did that my bass fishing time diminished. But I still wanted to fish."
Morris started fishing with a family friend Jessie Harrell, an elderly
gentlemen who attended the same church and loved perch fishing. A Beetle Spin
was Harrell's favorite lure. He caught lots of perch with it. As successful as
the lure was for his 82-year-old buddy, Morris knew from his tournament days
that there was probably something better. But there wasn't. At least not until
the day Morris tossed a Beetle Spin on the floor next to a Rooster Tail. I took
the spinner blades and wire off the Beetle Spin and attached it to the Rooster
Tail, and
tossed it in the water," said Morris, who is also the East Coast
distributor for IZORLINE, a popular fishing line. "I knew I was on to
something different. There was something about it that caught my eye and got me
thinking."
Morris was onto something. He toyed with the idea for several months and finally produced a prototype he distributed to a couple of perch anglers. He wanted to know what they thought about it. "The only question I got was where can we get more." "I sold 500 of them the first year pretty easy," Morris said of the $3.25 lure. "I'm over 3000 now, and I only take them as far as I can go in my truck, about a 75-mile radius."
"The bait has gotten better and better in the four years I've been making it, but I can't take the credit for it. The LORD has been my guide and I give all the credit to him. In the beginning I bent the wire myself by hand but I found a company that would bend the wire for me and they are all bent the same, which makes them better. Everything else is done by hand. I've used different style blades and I think this one today is going to be a hit."
Meanwhile, the osprey tired of watching Morris toss out his lure and catch perch after perch. She took off and effortlessly made a catch of her own. Morris smiled, "Nothing gets away from Uncle Jessie,' he said, using his bait's advertising motto, "But she's pretty good, too."
HERTFORD AREA MAN INTRODUCES POPULAR NEW FISHING LURE
By Fred Bonner
Carolina Sportsman Magazine
Jessie Harrell is an 81-year-old gentleman who lives at Cannon's Ferry, N.C. He's an avid fisherman who specializes in fishing the Perquimans River near Hertford and catching white and yellow perch. One of his favorite partners is Chris Morris from Tyner, N.C. They attended the same church and share a common love for angling in the rivers of eastern North Carolina. When Morris designed a new fishing lure it was only natural that the new lure be named after his companion, "Uncle Jessie."
Both men had their favorite fishing lures, which were the well-known Rooster Tail and the Beetle Spin. These lures had produced literally thousands of tasty panfish for the two fishermen but, like most anglers, Morris felt that something wasn't quite right with these two popular lures. Morris set about making a new lure that he named, appropriately, the “Uncle Jessie." It has turned out to be a very popular and productive fishing lure for anglers all across eastern North Carolina. Today's trip was no exception; we caught white and yellow perch, stripped bass, bream, largemouth bass and a flounder using the Uncle Jessie fishing lure. Chris Morris was an avid competition bass fisherman. He averaged fishing two tournaments a month until he burned out on fishing for largemouth bass. He turned from the world of fishing for competition to the more relaxing fishing for sport. His new quarry became the smaller white and yellow perch that are found in great abundance in the Albemarle Sound drainage area.
Looking for a better lure to fish for these panfish led Morris to design his new lure with the fisherman as well as the fish in mind. It's a hybrid lure that has adopted some of the better characteristics of both the Beetle Spin and the Rooster Tail. The Uncle Jessie lure weighs 1/4 ounce and is easy to cast like the Rooster Tail but it's made on a bent stainless wire in the familiar shape of the ever-popular spinner bait. The small cigar-shaped weight that one finds on the Rooster Tail is attached on the lower part of the lure in front of the Mustad triple grip treble hook. Just in front of this weight is a swing blade, a roto blade or an in-line spinner blade. On the upper arm of the Uncle Jessie is a matching blade of the same type.
Differing from the traditional spinner bait the Uncle Jessie utilizes a Mustad Triple Grip treble hook with multicolored rubber attractors tied around it. Morris feels that the Mustad Triple Grip treble hook increases the lure's ability to hook-up when a fish strikes the lure and minimizes losses after the fish is hooked.
Morris recently invited me to meet him in Hertford to go out on the Perquimans River with him and give the Uncle Jessie a try myself. I didn't need much coaxing to accept his invitation. The Hertford area and the Perquimans River are one on the most beautiful areas of North Carolina. The town maintains a good boat-launching ramp with quick access to the main river. Dark tannic acid stained water and lots of huge cypress trees standing in and around the water's edge makes fishing in this area an unforgettable experience even if you don't catch fish. Any angler knows that there's no such thing as a bad day on the water.
Morris grew up in the Hertford area and, as the son of a commercial fisherman, he quickly learned the ways of the waterman. Being in a boat on this river is a way of life to him. Modern ways of angling have led Morris to the glitzy, high-powered bass boat and his bright red Javelin boat took us down river at speeds of well over 60 miles per hour. Our first stop for the day was the deep hole on the south side of the Perquimans where the sand was dredged out as fill for the new bridge built over the river. Morris had been having great luck on perch in this area and we hoped to duplicate his recent trips. Morris feels that the perch and other predatory fish move into the shallows to feed during the hours of darkness then retreat into the deep holes in the cooler water. The perch school-up and, where you find one, you usually find more. Today was no exception. As he predicted, the Uncle Jessie was a delight to cast. You have the weight of the Rooster Tail with the fish-attracting flash of the Beetle Spin. It also ran deeper than the Beetle Spin. If the water was deeper, then you reeled slower and the lure settled into a deep running mode. If the water was shallow, you reeled faster and the lure moved up in the water column.
Morris moves along the deep holes until he starts having strikes and boating fish, then drops the anchor to work the area until the action slows. If he fishes out one hole, he'll move to another hot spot along the river. One such hot spot for Morris has been the slough that makes-up at the mouth of Sutton's Creek off the "Red Brick House." Another productive spot has been the deeper water just off shore from the well-known, top secret, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) training base at Harvey's Point. We found both species of perch and striped bass in these holes and caught quite a few while listening to the dull "whumps" of explosives and the rattle of small arms fire. I wouldn't have been surprised to have seen James Bond come crawling from the bushes along the shore and saying "007 at your service, sir" Apparently the fish didn't mind all the war sounds of the "spies-to-be" because this spot turned out to be our most productive spot.
For the day we caught white and yellow perch, largemouth bass, bream,
striped bass and a flounder all on one lure. I'm convinced that the Uncle Jessie
can be one of the better lures for our waters. It produced well for us that day
and should produce well for other anglers in the future.