By Jack A. Smithwick
In about 1947, when I was a young lad, my dad began carving fishing lures cut from the handles of brooms my mother kept around the house. It first began as a hobby. Dad was a salesman for a local business machine company and he began giving these prized, handcrafted lures to his business machine customers to set himself apart from other salesmen. What started as a sales promotion move soon grew into an activity that began to occupy most of his "spare time." Soon tired of buying new brooms (and banished from the kitchen when mother thought he was looking for another broom) dad felt compelled to move his hobby to the garage and began purchasing wood for his lures from a local lumberyard.
In 1949, fishermen soon learned about the success others enjoyed with dad's handmade fishing lures and began hounding him to purchase the lures in larger numbers. It was this demand that made him realize that this fishing lure business was getting serious. Soon after that realization, he took his first steps to "mass produce" his lures by purchasing a small wood lathe from Sears Roebuck and Company and moved it into his garage shop.
The first fishing lure he produced with this new "mass production" equipment was the renowned "Devil's Horse." Since most anglers used level-wind style reels, dad designed the Devil's Horse first as a heavier, slow-sinking fishing lure, one that was easy to cast with these reels. Later, with the advent of spinning and spin-cast reels, he began to turnout a lighter, floating model of this now locally popular and productive fishing lure.
The growth of the Smithwick Lure Company is legendary. From its humble beginnings in my family's kitchen in 1947 to its sprawling manufacturing facilities today, the fishing lures have become the favorites of generations of anglers. The continued development of new lures, new colors and the latest in lure finish technology is a tribute to the foresight my father, Jack K. Smithwick, demonstrated back in 1947. All of us at the Smithwick Lure Company are proud of the standards he established for quality, value and performance, all attributes anglers have come to know and expect from Smithwick Lures for more than six decades. This is how he set himself apart. Set yourself apart - with Smithwick.