Lazy Ike: Still catching fish, 83 years and counting | News, Sports, Jobs

And plenty of those lures will be cast into streams, ponds, rivers and lakes during this Fourth of July weekend. Watch out, northern pike, walleye, bass and musky!

Lazy Ike is its name – a name with a bit of mystery behind it. The lure certainly was not “lazy,” evidenced by the millions of fish it has helped land over the years, and no one is totally sure who or what its namesake “ike” may have been. (To this writer, Ike is most associated with Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president and U.S. Army general, but he wasn’t a household name at the time and he certainly wasn’t lazy.)

“There is just one thing I came to expect with them – I’d always catch fish,” said John Lennon, a lifelong Fort Dodge fisherman. “I had good luck with them. It was such a productive lure, it had a nice wobble to it, it didn’t matter if you retrieved it slow or fast. The action was so natural to them. Its coloration and finish made them look like a real bait fish.”

Lazy Ike lures are collected by fishing enthusiasts all over the world. They can be found on Ebay and other online sites, at auctions and garage sales. There’s a Facebook site – Lazy Ike Collectors Group – that has 375 followers. Many of the lures have never been removed from their original box. They are traded and they are handed down from generation to generation. The Lazy Ike itself came in a variety of sizes from the Fly Ike up to the Musky Ike and in dozens of colors, red and white being the most iconic.

-Submitted photo

A Lazy Ike lure and its box

The lure was first produced and marketed by Kautzky’s Sporting Goods, an iconic Fort Dodge business with roots to 1897 when Joseph Kautzky, an Austrian immigrant, started a gunsmith business called Kautzky Manufacturing Co. that over the years expanded into other lines of sporting goods. The family lived above the shop at the southeast corner of the City Square.

As legend has it, there was a Fort Dodge fisherman named Newell Daniels who in the mid-1930s was hand-carving what was to become the “Ike.” Kautzky’s son, Joseph Kautzky Jr., saw Daniels fishing with the wooden lure near the dam on the Des Moines River and remarked “look at that lazy ike.” The name stuck.

Daniels hand-made the lure for Kautzky’s from 1938 to 1940 before turning over rights to the company, according to a history of the Lazy Ike written by Keith Bell on his website, https://www.mybaitshop.com/pages/lazy-ike-corporation. Daniels’ work was taken up by “Pop” Shuck who hand-made them until around 1945 when lathe production of the lures began. Once that happened, sales took off – from 60,000 Lazy Ikes in 1947 to more than 900,000 in 1953. Wood production ceased around 1960 when the plastic version was made. Kautzky’s produced many baits, but the Lazy Ike was its star.

“Tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, were produced,” Bell said from his My Bait Shop business in Neenah, Wisconsin. “Lazy Ike is one of my two favorite companies, the other Creek Chub Bait Company, which it bought in 1978. I love the way they look. Lazy Ike just continued to produce. Simple in design but deadly on the end of a line, the Lazy Ike just endures. Today they are collected and beloved just as much as they are fished.”

Jim Askelson’s grandmother was Marie Kautzky Grant, who with her brothers, Joseph Jr. and Rudy, took over Kautzky’s when Joseph Sr. died in 1938. The three were partners in the company, known as Kautzky Sporting Goods and Lazy Ikes. Ownership changed hands in 1961 when it was sold to a newly organized West Des Moines firm known as Lazy Ike Corp. Operations in Fort Dodge continued without change. In 1979, Lazy Ike Corp. filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. It continued to operate under the terms of the bankruptcy agreement until being acquired by Dura-Pak Corp. of South Sioux City, Nebraska., in 1981, and then eventually PRADCO Fishing, its last owner.

“In its day, it was quite a lure,” said Askelson, of Stewartville, Minnesota., who has about 800 Lazy Ike lures in his collection. “I can remember sending brochures to Japan and Germany and all over the world. They were sometimes so hard to get that guys would buy them and then rent the lures, paying so much to use them.”

Kautzky’s started out on the City Square, moved up to North Eighth Street and then to 522 Central Avenue. The business was destroyed by a fire on Dec. 8, 1956. To this day, charred Lazy Ikes that survived the fire are collected and displayed as “Fire Ikes.” The sporting goods store reopened at 510 Central Ave. and remained there until the family sold its interest. It later moved to a location on Fifth Avenue South and was there until it closed in 1988. The building is now occupied by Decker Sporting Goods.

Bill Dowd recalls that his first job, at age 13, was mowing the grounds at the Lazy Ike manufacturing plant built north of the city, on 31st Avenue North, next to where the Fort Dodge Tennis Club is now located.

“In inclement weather, I was moved indoors to ‘count lures’, for the production line. Counting lures did not really occur. I actually dumped plain, white lure halves out of a big freight box into smaller ones on a scale. Each large box was full of either right side halves, or left side halves. An exact weight target would determine precise number of halves, which I would then move, still separated left from right, to the end of the production line, where several women were employed to assemble the halves, add the hooks and fishing line ring, and move them to wherever each batch was painted. The people in the assembly area were very busy, but social and friendly.”

Sam Hartman of Fort Dodge worked at the factory in the summers of 1965 and 1966; his mother Dorothy was the shipping clerk there.

“I remember that I didn’t really enjoy working in the Bait House. They had many 55-gallon drums stacked in there of old spoiled cheese and drums of animal blood that they used to manufacture Cheese Dough Bait and Blood Dough Bait for Catfish. The smell inside the building was terrible (that’s why the building was placed in the far corner of the property).”

Hartman said that when the plant was downtown, “they tested their new lures in the pool at the old YMCA on First Avenue North.”

Lennon’s father, Gene, owned a bar and restaurant, Gene’s Place, that was popular with workers at the Hormel plant.

“He took a big shipping box of Lazy Ike lures in their original boxes and gave them away to all his best customers,” Lennon said. “Eventually he gave them all away. I learned from Dad how to fish – I was 7 when I caught my first fish.”

Health issues ended Lennon’s fishing a couple years ago, and he plans to hand down his collection of Lazy Ikes to his son, Ryan, and two daughters, Lora and Traci.

Bell said most Lazy Ikes “only sell for a few dollars. A true gem new with an old two-piece cardboard box in a rare color could go for as high as $50 or so.” For many, the Lazy Ike carries a sentimental value that far exceeds the monetary worth of the lure.

“For me, it’s not about value with these lures,” Bell said. “I have fond memories of fishing the Lazy Ikes and in particular the Flex Ikes for northern and bass as a kid. This is the lure that got me started in lure collecting and I still collect and fish with these lures today. The Lazy Ike Corporation actually played a fairly significant role in the history of fishing tackle. For one, the Lazy Ike is probably one of the most widely fished lures in the world. Lazy Ike is now owned by PRADCO. They have chosen not to even make them anymore. All the more reason to fish with the vintage ones!”

Jeff Samsel, content specialist with PRADCO Fishing of Birmingham, Alabama., said the Lazy Ike brand was discontinued by the company several years ago due to sales that had declined over the years.

“No doubt it was a wonderful brand in its day,” Samsel said. “My grandpa (Wayne Seih, from Minnesota) always had several in his tackle box, so despite growing up in Central Florida, I knew about Lazy Ikes long before I knew anything about most lure brands.”

Bell has thoughts on why dwindling sales caused the demise of the Lazy Ike.

“As the movement towards more advanced designs of plastics became popular with anglers, the simplistic design of the Lazy Ike is somewhat deceiving,” he said. “Lure design is somewhat first about catching the eye of the fisherman in the store. I think a lure like the Lazy Ike doesn’t have the ‘flash’ in the store that maybe a newer plastic model with 3D scales and true-to-life eyes or other features of newer lures might have. Ounce for ounce though, one would be hard pressed to find a better lure at producing fish than a Lazy Ike.

“There is a reason they were made by the millions for decades. They catch fish.”