Legend Biography

Bill Huntley of Athens, AL is one of the legendary figures in the bass boat industry.
Huntley got into bassin’ back when the only tournaments were five guys putting up five bucks each on a Saturday morning to see who could bring in the biggest stringer. And stringer it was, too--there was no such thing as a livewell, and if there had been nobody would have used it--you fished for dinner, not for sport. In 1967, the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society – B.A.S.S.—was founded and the rest is history; a history in which Bill Huntley looms large.
Bill was in the medical supply business but his passion was bass fishing, mostly chasing smallmouths on Pickwick Lake. He came up with a new design for a spinnerbait--he was apparently the first to use ball bearings on the blades--and his Bumble Bee Bait Company soon took off. With the boom in bassin’, he was soon making lots of money in the lure business--he left his day job behind about 1968 and jumped with both feet into the fishing industry.
It was a time when dedicated, high-speed bass boats were just coming into vogue, and Huntley saw all sorts of things the boats needed to be safe, comfortable and more fishable.
His first invention, invented around 1970, was a device to put the trim handle on the throttle control for outboard motors. When he founded a company to make the devices, he simply named it for the initials "throttle-handle--thus "T-H Marine" was born. Bill and his two partners sold these by the thousands, but failed to patent them and the major outboard makers soon came out with their own versions.
The next major invention was the "HOTFOOT a spring-loaded throttle control like the gas pedal in an automobile, but with the added safety of a toe-hook allowing manual shut down if the spring ever fails.
By 1984 the company had dozens of products--and considerable value and Huntley was able to buy the company, and from that time on it's been a Huntley family enterprise.
T-H Marine now has 200 employees, 2500 products and ships boating equipment all over the world. His son Jeff, a Harvard Business School graduate, has been president since 1994, and grandson Jeffrey Jr. handles marketing.