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Millions and Millions of Mepps
Fishing Lures - Mepps Fishing Lures
Fishing Lures - I watched the rhythmic flash as the
silver Mepps spinner throbbed
through the clear water of Lake
Julian in Colorado’s high country.
Suddenly there came another flash, followed
by a wrist- jarring jolt. The tip of
the spinning rod almost doubled, and
the line sliced a barely visible V in the
mirrored surface of the lake. I was
solidly attached to a two pound cutthroat,
the native trout of this region. A
few minutes later, the fish lay in a
meadow ablaze with diminutive alpine
flowers more than two miles above sea
level.
As I looked about me at the jutting
peaks of the Colorado Front Range, it
seemed strange that the little Mepps
fishing lure, made in a factory in
Antigo, Wisconsin should have satisfied
its destiny in that wild place so far from
home. And there you have my personal
Mepps spinner yarn. There are thousands
more tales like it, for this inauspicious
lure has earned itself a lasting
place in the hearts and folklore of many
thousands of loyal Waltonians.
Any fisherman worth his salt knows
what a French spinner is, and most recognize
the Mepps name as the best
French spinner around. But not well
known, even among Wisconsinites, is
the story of how this alluring device of
brass and steel has assumed a role of
increasing importance in the fishing
community.
The Mepps spinner was invented by
Parisian engineer, Andre Muelnart, in
1938. Muelnart, an avid sport fisherman,
soon realized through personal
experience that he had devised an extraordinarily
successful machine for capturing
finny monsters. If the trade
name, Mepps, seems odd to you, it’s
probably because, like so many words
in our age, it is an acronym. M.E.P.P.S.
stands for Manufacturier D’Engins De
Precision Pour Peches Sportives or
Manufacturer of Precision Equipment
for Sport Fishing.
The lure first came to Todd
Sheldon’s attention in 1951. A lifelong
outdoorsman, Sheldon, then in his late
thirties, was having a bad day on the
famous Wolf River. He had flailed the
water to a froth with all manner of
American-made contrivances to no
avail. Finally, out of desperation, he
tied on a badly tarnished Mepps that
had been languishing among his tackle
ever since it had been given to him by a
GI returned from Europe two years
before. To his utter astonishment, he
creeled four trout totaling more than
twelve pounds within two hours. This
is the first and most important of a host
of Todd Sheldon’s Mepps spinner stories.
At that time Sheldon was the owner
of a thriving sport shop on one of
Antigo’s main streets, right on the route
of hordes of vacationers headed for the
northern lake country. He began to
stock the lure, but his supply line was
tenuous at best. Frank Velek, the GI
who had given Sheldon his first spinner,
struck up correspondence with a French
girl, who sent spinners to him in
exchange for nylon stockings. But the
lures were selling faster than the girl
was wearing out stockings, so Velek
arranged to supply Sheldon with spinners
directly from Muelnart’s factory.
Once the lure started circulating,
other fishermen experienced catches
like the one Sheldon took from the
Wolf, and they were bagging all kinds
of fish, not just trout. The spinner’s
reputation grew. Soon Todd Sheldon
sold his store to devote full attention to
the rapidly expanding import trade.
By any standard, the growth of
Sheldons’, Inc., has been phenomenal.
What started in a room ten feet square
at the back of the sports shop has
become one of the largest employers in
Antigo, occupying a corporate quarters
enclosing almost 50,000 square feet.
But this is not the story of an expanding
physical plant. This is the story of an
exceptional fishing lure and how it has
touched the lives of countless people,
from the Sheldon family, to those
whose daily bread depends upon a
once-obscure spinner tarnishing in the
pocket of a fishing vest, to millions of
fishermen who swear by Mepps.
Mepps is anything but obscure
today. By 1960, sales of the spinners in
the United States had topped 500,000.
In those ancient times, Sheldon had set
a personal goal of annual sales reaching
the staggering total of 3,000,000.
“My Dad set that mark,” company
president Mike Sheldon relates,
”because that was more than any lure
had ever sold on this continent.” He
adds with pride, “Our sales went sailing
right past that goal.”
If this seems much ado about a single
fish-capturing contraption, it is not
quite that simple. The Sheldons, on
their own and through expert anglers
throughout the nation, maintain a steady
and vigorous program of field testing.
By this means, they have arrived at a
bewildering assortment of lures. There
are now about 5,000 different spinners
that bear the Mepps name.
The basic lure consists of
a metal shaft to which a
slightly concave oval blade
and a hook are attached. The
blades are usually a gleaming
silver or gold, and as they are
drawn through the water,
they rotate around the shaft,
flashing irresistibly. The surface
of the blade may be
smooth of textured, plain or
adorned with stripes and
dots, or painted with hot or
neon colors to satisfy the
fancy of most anglers and
every fish. The shafts are
equally flashy, decorated
with plastic and metal beads
in vivid hues.
The hooks,
too, are works of art, dressed by hand
with tufts of natural squirrel or buck tail
in shades of purple, fluorescent red,
gold, or natural grays, browns, and
blacks. Hooks were not always so
gaudily attired, but that is another of
Sheldon’s Mepps yarns.
Todd was out fishing several years
ago, and he had caught his limit of
trout. He met a young boy who also
had a limit, but his trout were all bigger
than his, so he asked him what kind of
lure he was using. He showed him and
said it was made of squirrel tail. Todd
began experimenting with squirrel tail
right away.
In fact Mepps dressed the hooks of
some of its lures with a number of different
kinds of hair and hackle. Bear
was tried as was fox, coyote, badger,
skunk, deer, even Angus cow. But no
other tail had the fine quality and provided
the action in the water the squirrel
or buck tail did.
As soon as they were convinced of
the effectiveness of these natural dressings,
Sheldons’, Inc. was in the market
for squirrel and buck tails. “Squirrel
Tails Wanted” reads a large sign near
their plant on Wisconsin’s highway 45.
The sign amuses most passersby, but
intrigues others so much they stop to
find out what Sheldons’ is all about.
This is fine with the firm, which welcomes
inquisitive visitors and offers
them tours of the facilities on weekdays.
Still others stop because they
have tails to sell.
The best squirrel tails come from
Wisconsin, where the late fall season
assures that the animals are in “prime”
pelt (in full winter hair), when they are
taken. About 3-million squirrels are
bagged nationwide annually, and
300,000 of the tails eventually find their
way to the business end of a Mepps
spinner. For buck tails, only the tail of
the white tailed deer is suitable;
Sheldons’ buys about 100,000 of these
in an average year.
Processing the tails is a major
undertaking. First, each is trimmed.
Then they go through a large laundry
room where banks of automatic washing
machines launder them, not once,
but several times to remove every last
bit of oil and grime. Between scrubbings,
they are laid out in neat rows and
dried. After this scrupulous cleaning,
the fluffy tails are ready to be dyed brilliant
hues and then tied to the spinners
by Sheldons’ experienced workers.
The Sheldons have heaved their
brand of hardware at lunker salmon and
trout in remote waterways all the way
up to the Arctic Circle. The paneled
wall of Todd Sheldon’s trophy room is
the showcase for a truly distinguished
array of trophy salmon, trout, and arctic
grayling, all of them, naturally, victims
to the siren powers of the Mepps spinner.
Sons Mike and Bill, as well as
Mike's son Michael, have tested the
family product and their own mettle in
the Alaskan back country as well.
But though “Alaska fever” draws
them to the northernmost state frequently,
the requirements of staying on top of
what is essentially an import business
have prompted a bit of European travel.
Mike visits the factory in
France at least once a year.
Even on these jaunts to the
Continent, however, the
Sheldons have always
remained unreconstructed
fishermen. They have
fished for trout all across
Europe, and with enviable
results.
But it isn’t just expert
fishermen who do well
using Mepps lures. People
from all over the nation
send in accounts of their
catches to Sheldons’, complete
with supporting photographic
evidence.
The firm publishes
scores of these unsolicited
testimonials each year in its informative
and entertaining full-color Mepps
Fishing Guide. This Montana angler’s
Mepps story is typical:
This year I’ve personally caught
approximately 500 trout on Mepps. No
real monsters but 78 between 2-1/2 and
4-3/4 pounds.
In addition to such tales, and illustrations
of the vast assortment of Mepps
lures, the Guide offers valuable information
and statistics about fish and
fishing. Its homespun style makes the
guide one of the few catalogs in history
that’s genuinely fun to read. Best of all
it’s free.
In their various sizes and shapes,
Mepps spinners have proved the undoing
of every game fish on this continent,
with some oddities thrown in.
Along with seventy pound tarpon and
sixty pound lake trout, the tally includes
a forty-four pound carp, snapping turtles,
and even alligators.
So, from Antigo, a community of
8,000 surrounded by the rich glacial
potato fields of Wisconsin’s Langlade
County, a new term has entered the dictionary
of the fishing fraternity. Mepps!
Since 1938 the Mepps
folks have made more
than 350-million Mepps
spinners. . . one at a time!
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