Jack Allison Smithwick, former owner of Smithwick Lures, died February 22 in his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. He was 74.
Jack A. Smithwick’s father, Jack Kenneth Smithwick, founded Smithwick Lures in 1947. Their first mass-produced lure was the Devil’s Horse, which continues to be a favorite topwater lure of bass anglers, more than 55 years after it was introduced in 1949.
Jack A. Smithwick is probably best known for naming the Smithwick Rogue, one of the top-producing spring-time bass fishing lures of all time.
"I named it, and I don’t know why the name came to me," he said in an interview in 2002. "We had the bait, and I thought of the name ‘Rogue.’ I looked it up in the dictionary, and it was a term applied to an unruly animal that hangs around a herd, yet stays apart from it.
"The ‘Rattlin’’ part came later. The original Rogue did not rattle. In 1971, we put some rattles in it. You could shake it, and it would rattle. From then on, we called it the Rattlin’ Rogue. In my opinion, the better bait was the one that didn’t rattle, but it wasn’t as easy to throw as the one with the rattles. The one that rattled took over the marketplace from that point."
Jack A. Smithwick was an avid fisherman and golfer. He had a B.S. in Geology from Centenary College in Shreveport (1952) and an MBA from LSU (1954).
Smithwick sold his lure company to PRADCO-Fishing in 1991. He was preceded in death by his parents, Jack K. and Allie M. Smithwick and by his wife, Marge E. Smithwick.
He is survived by his family: Diane Pernici, Claire and Glenn Kernaghan, Jack A. "Bo" Smithwick Jr., Emily Peyton, Julie and Webb Willmott and Andrea and Mike Beitel.