Antique fishing lures draw enthusiasts to show Sunday

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The Canadian Antique Fishing Tackle Association show Sunday in Owen Sound capitalized on that old verity that lures are made to catch fishermen, not fish. 

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Enthusiasts checked out the show which offered a smorgasbord of nostalgia and a showcase of lures too nice to chance losing on the end of a fishing line. These ones were keepers. 

Lures were displayed under glass in cases which filled many of the 48 tables in the Harry Lumley-Bayshore Community Centre’s Bay Room. 

“It is a very common saying among fishing people that ya, they’re made to catch the fishermen, not the fish,” said Mike LaFond, of Durham. “And most tackle companies have figured out how to do it very well.”  

He helped organize Sunday’s show. Vendors came from different parts of Ontario, as well as Quebec and New York State. 

LaFond said he loves old fishing tackle and is an outdoorsman through and through. 

His partner enjoys Norval Morrisseau’s art, while he likes displaying his old lures. “To me this is a way of life. And if I’m going to put something on the wall, to me this is art — versus some picture that has no historical or sentimental meaning to me.” 

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He noted a display of gigantic, eight-inch locally made metal trolling lures used for deep water lake trout fishing. The lures in the case were made by Owen Sound companies — Wright Brothers, Morrison Brothers, T.I. Thompson and Col. Telford — in the early part of the 20th century. 

These lures have flat, shiny metal arrowhead-shaped bodies to catch the sunlight and the fish’s eye, with colourful red and white trailing feathers and hooks.

“As a club, this is our passion. If we don’t maintain that history, it’s going to be gone,” the 53-year-old said. For LaFond, “they’re time capsules for sure.” 

The antique fishing tackle association began around 2002 and has about 50 to 75 members, mostly in Ontario. Its newsletter features tackle makers of bygone days. “We’re trying to maintain that history,” LaFond said. 

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Interest in certain rare lures has driven up prices. A Haskell Minnow lure in a U.S auction last month sold for $37,000. An internet search finds that lure was patented in 1859. But the club LaFond belongs to focuses on Canadian lures and their stories. 

“We have some lures that will sell for $3,000 to $5,000,” he said. 

In one of Grant Rowland’s display cases was a school of silver and copper coloured lures shaped like fish, each so finely detailed and unique that the thought of actually fishing with one and possibly losing it seems farfetched.

“These lures really didn’t work. But they look nice. So that’s why they survived,” said Rowland, who brought cases of antique gear up from his home in Guelph. 

“No one fishes with them. The beaters they will,” he said. “There’s more effective lures now. Fishing time’s valuable. You don’t want to throw a lure that’s going to spook a fish. You never know.” 

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He said most people started collecting old fishing lures in the 1970s in the United States. Collecting in Canada began in the early 1980s, he said.  

Len Wood, of Strathroy, helped LaFond organize the antique tackle show. The association has been presenting these shows since about 2002, he said. People come for the history and nostalgia of the gear, he said. 

One man in his 70s he spoke with that morning said he’d been looking in his grandfather’s tackle box and found a lure which he’d seen in a book which said the lure was made in 1882. Wood, who is 76, has collected many types of lures. 

He used to specialize in companies like Hex, a long-gone Brockville, Ont. company which made lures. Now he’s been collecting lures which particularly “jump out at you.”  

The new lures aren’t necessarily better than old ones for catching fish, he said. Some are overtly designed to target the fisherman, as if catching a fish would be a bonus.  

One of them, by Heddon, features a stubby red and white body with markings just like a can of Budweiser beer. It has a spoon at one end and a head stuck on the top. 

“A novelty,” Wood remarked. “And there were a number of those out there.”

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