Devil's Horse: It Began as a Broom Handle

That's right--Jack S. Smithwick's first Devel's Horses, later renamed Devil's Horses, were carved out of old broom handles his wife had around the house. The year was 1947, which makes this lure a mere youngster by antique lure-collecting standards.

A salesman with a Shreveport, LA, business-machine company at the time, Smithwick started carving these handcrafted lures as a hobby. He would pass them out to customers to set himself apart from other salesmen.

Mrs. Smithwick eventually grew tired of Jack taking her brooms and banned him from the kitchen. He subsequently started buying wood from a nearby lumberyard and went to work carving his lure designs in the garage. By 1949, word-of-mouth advertising was bringing anglers to his door with requests to purchase his lures.

Recognizing the potential business opportunity that existed if he could produce greater numbers of his lures, Jack purchased a wood lathe from Sears and Roebuck Company and moved his new business into a shop garage. The Devil's Horse was the first mass-produced lure made with this equipment.

Because most anglers were using level-wind reels, Smithwick first designed the Devil's Horse as a heavier, slow-sinking lure, to make it easy to cast with these reels. When spinning and spincast reels came along, he started turning out a lighter, floating model of his now locally popular and productive lure.

The growth of the Smithwick Lure Company is legendary. From its humble beginnings in the family kitchen in 1947, to its sprawling facilities today, the lures have become favorites of generations of anglers nationwide.

They're the go-to choice during largemouth prespawn in the southern states. Bass fishermen in Florida ALWAYS have a Devil's Horse tied on during the prespawn. Likewise, it's popular in the northern states for its legendary ability to attract prize smallmouths throughout the summer and fall.

The key to the Devil's Horse is the slender minnow profile and an action that lets you create maximum surface disturbance without moving the lure out of the strike zone. Fore and aft props create resistance with every twitch, so anglers can work the bait longer at the edges of shoreline weeds, near wood cover, along the edges of docks--in short, anywhere fish are holding.

Few topwater propbaits are as legendary as the Smithwick Devil's Horse. The unique buoyancy of handcrafted wood, combined with the props fore and aft, mimics the commotion of a fleeing shad and makes it one of the most effective bass topwaters in history. The lure creates tremendous topwater commotion with each twitch of the rod, but the props keep it from moving away from the strike zone.

The continued development of new Smithwick lures, new colors, and the latest in lure-finish technology is a tribute to the foresight of Jack K. Smithwick. The standards he established for quality, value and performance are attributes anglers have come to know and expect from Smithwick lures for more than six decades.

Smithwick Lure Company was sold to PRADCO in 1991.