Bubba is the fishing brand of American Outdoor Brands — it sits in its «Adventurer» line, alongside Schrade and UST. It is not hunting or shooting kit, and this page will not pretend otherwise: these are fillet knives, pliers, scissors and hook removers. If it belongs in this house it is for the same reason as Schrade or Old Timer: it is cutlery, and cutlery built for working with wet hands.

The non-slip handle is the constant of the brand. It appears on every one of its product sheets, under the same label, and it is what separates these from a kitchen knife carried down to the pontoon. Underneath runs the same construction across the whole range: a high-carbon stainless steel blade, full tang, titanium nitride coating — which flesh does not stick to and which stands up to salt water —, safety guards and a trigger grip recess under the index finger. The sheaths are moulded polymer, with a belt clip and drain holes: a closed sheath with a wet knife inside is a sheath with rust inside.

What orders its catalogue is not blade length but how much the blade bends. Every knife sheet carries a printed flex scale running from «none» to «extreme», and the fillet blades we carry sit at different points along it: the 9" is the one that gives the least — the manufacturer calls it «moderate» —, the 7" tapers towards the tip and the 8" sits at the far end of the scale, for detail work and for pulling pin bones. That is the difference that gets lost when all three are labelled «ultra flexible», which is exactly what happens on the sheet of two of them.

The 2024 catalogue runs to 103 pages and holds rods, electric knives, tournament scales, kitchen cutlery and clothing. Of all that, what comes in here is the part used with wet hands: the fillet blades, a folder, a blunt-tip dive knife, pliers, scissors, a hook remover and a honing rod.