Amargo Cedar is not a cedar plug

People hear “cedar lure” and picture a cigar. A cheap tuna plug. Painted balsa from a catalog. That is not what we carve.

Hooked works in Cedrela odorata. In Costa Rica it is Cedro Amargo. In English, Amargo Cedar. Tropical hardwood. Dense. Oily. It is not the soft cedar they turn into a 3-pack plug, and it is not Rapala balsa. Different tree. Different job.

Andrés picks the boards at the mill. Grain first. Density second. Nothing random. If the board rings dead, it stays at the mill. If the grain runs wild through the belly, it does not become a lure. That is the whole quality control: a person with a saw and a thumb, standing in a Costa Rican yard, saying yes or no.

We do not buy mystery blanks online. We do not paint cheap wood to look expensive. The mill is local. The workshop is here. The fish we design for — roosterfish, mahi, the Pacific pelagics off this coast — are the same water Andrés grew up on.

From those boards we cut the Core Series surface lures and the Amazonian Bloodline sinkers. Same wood. Different shapes.

Elite — surface. Built for roosterfish and the messy water they live in. Currently sold out. We are restocking. Do not treat it as available.

Venom — long-cast surface. Faster, more erratic. In the shop now.

Pink Poison — numbered Amazonian Bloodline sinker. Ten pieces. Never reissued. 1/10 is with the captain, not for sale.

A cedar plug is a shape. Amargo Cedar is a material. We do not hollow it. We do not laminate it. The weight you feel in the hand is the wood. Through-wire, marine resin, BKK hooks — those are armor. The fish still hits wood.

That is why we go to the mill. Plastic is consistent. This is not. A board from one tree will not swim like a board from the next. Andrés is not chasing consistency. He is chasing the piece that already wants to be a lure.

One more thing, because the catalogs lie about this: a cigar-shaped “cedar plug” is usually light wood, hollow or nearly hollow, made to skip in a straight line for tuna. Ours are solid Amargo Cedar, wired through, sealed like a hull. They do not skip the same. They are not meant to.

If you came here looking for a cedar plug, this is the wrong page. If you want a hand-carved Amargo Cedar lure from a Costa Rican workshop, that is the work. Limited runs. When a number is gone, it is gone.

Elite is out. We will bring it back. Venom and Pink Poison are the ones you can actually buy today.