- Original Dice Device Fishing Lure
Dice Device Snake Spoon For Georgian Bay
This lure is long with six inch skirt & has the side to side kick without rolling over like a Rapala or Daredevil & the tail swims like a snake would on top of the water & always lands on bottom hook up & goes right over tree limbs or snags without a weed guard & is virtually impossible to hang up unless you allow it to sink under submerged rocks or trees. If you paint them green to look like a frog they look like one swimming in the water & big bass really go after them. All black also works well for largemouth & even big pike. The ones I made for muskie are very large & heavy & over 12 inches long & the action is amazing. Pike go after them in a minute & the good thing is they only have one single hook to make it easier to net & release pike & muskie & they are very durable except for the skirts or tails which have to be replaced or re-tied after pike or muskie get done with them.
They are made of heavy .080 solid brass with s.s. steel rivets & they can be plated with gold or silver or nickle plate. The hooks are heavy Mustad. They are very good for anything that swims in Georgian Bay including smallmouth bass & largemouth bass. I have gone up there & used only them quite a few times & caught more or just as many fish on them as others using Rapalas or Daredevils. They are heavy & cast well with 20 lb. line on casting rods & designed to use with wire leaders with snaps. It took me a long time to get the design right & I made hundreds of prototypes & used to test them in my swimming pool. I have many other lure designs but don’t care to disclose them at this time. I love to play around with new lure designs or improvements to existing lures. I used to custom make spinnerbaits for professional fishermen & they won a lot of tournaments with them over the years. I would make custom heads out of wood & set them into Dow Corning RTV Red in a plastic mold & then pour lead & then file or sand off the flashing & have heads no one else had. I made a lure for Lake Erie called the snake jig that you would attach a Mr. Twister Grub to & just let it drift behind the boat with the wind that outfished all the famous Lake Erie spinners every time we went up & it had no spinner blade on it. It was a do nothing lure that really got the walleye including the big ones way down deep. My first jig spoons were deadly in the deep mountain lakes of Kentucky & Tennessee & they were disappointed when I know longer made them because they fish 35 feet & below down there for big smallmouth & largemouth in the summer & most jig spoons do not have good enough action. A rubber skirt mfg. wanted $15,000.00 cash to alter their equipment to make 6 inch long rubber skirts & a minimum order of 500,000 at $.10 each or $50,000.00 so I decided that was to big a risk to mfg & market a snake spoon just for Georgian Bay Fishing & had no desire to hand tie each one so I just shelved them. Many large tackle companies throughout America have received copies of my designs over the years including people like Al Linder who really liked the quality. I used to send them to him to test & play around with. Being an auctioneer & very busy I never had the time necessary to mfg. or market any of my designs myself & after spending over $28,000.00 on patents & protypes & equipment & all that I decided to just let it be a hobby & leave the lure business up to the big boys even though I know they would sell if marketed properly which means you give away ten thousand of them & let fishermen try them to see if they like them. If they do they will ask for more. If not they won’t. Distributors will not buy or stock any lure until fishermen are asking for them & they also do not like new unadvertised or unproven lures that may cut in to their big sellers they have carried for years & that is what they make their money on. They are very reluctant to take on any new lure product for this reason. People still call me to this day trying to get a hold of them but I know longer have any & sold all my equipment & stock years ago. If I decide to mfg. & market them in the future I will sell them on eBay which was not possible back then simply because it did not exist. I have all the drawings & a company in Wisconsin that will make all of them I want. Assemble them with hooks & plate them with gold, silver or nickle plate. I would send you one free if I could but do not have any except for few I kept for personal use but you could make your own if you wanted to & that would give you something fun to do in the winter. You may even come up with improvements in the design on your own but I caution you I have tried about everything you could imagine including different sizes & shapes from very very small to huge. I have used every type of tail material you could imagine including some you have probably never seen or heard of. My lures are every bit as good as a Flatfish in Georgian Bay & there are not to many lures that can boast something like that other than the Rapala & Daredevil but people who know how to fish Flatfish properly can even outfish both of these lures & I have seen that time & time again up there. Flatfish are mostly for trolling except for the smaller sizes & then you have to put a split shot 18 inches ahead to get them down. My lure casts well & trolls well just as it is. When I was a kid I caught a lot of really nice smallmouth on the f-7 Flatfish in yellow with red & black dots with two treble hooks on a copper wire that swiveled in the bottom center attached with a screw in eye. Charles Hellen invented it & when he passed on it kind of lost favor with many fishermen mostly because the new owners or managers monkeyed with his double treble hook holders that swiveled by getting rid of them to make more money & sadly they were what made the action of this lure so good. Some Flatfish had two treble hooks, some four & some even six. Now all of them have only one or two & no swivel hooks. The action is nothing like the original ones that sold by the millions & made Charles Helen very rich & famous. Then the Rapala came along to further speed up it’s demise. However, they will still outfish Rapalas trolling in Georgian Bay & other places if you know how to rig & use them. Especially the big ones for muskie & pike & silver can not be beat.
Orginal Dice Device Jig Spoon Prototypes
If you men out there think it is difficult to figure out women which is basically something that can not be done try inventing or designing a new or better fishing lure.
I actually did that & it took a long long time & a lot of work.
Consider there are 80,000 patents on fishing lures & mouse traps which for some reason come under the same category & one would think it would be impossible to come up with another mechanical patent. The hook holding device on the very first lure at the top of this page was worthy of that & that is how the name Dice Device came about. That lure had to be made entirely by hand & was very labor intensive which is a no no in mfg. today. They have a vibration in them like no other lure & fishermen in Alaska loved them for pike. I made over 1,000 of them so a few may still be out there somewhere. I only have one left. The hook holder device will work on many different new lure ideas but who really needs anymore new lures anyway?
Deep Jigging Spoon For Georgian Bay & Lake Erie Fish
Pike Caught In Alaska On Dice Device Fishing Lure
Pike Caught In Alaska On The Original Dice Device Fishing Lure
I invented the world’s first totally snagless automatic enclosed opening jig that would stay closed & keep the point of the hook totally covered until a fish grabbed it & then it would spring open to hook him after he had it in his mouth. You could also put a propeller spinner on it’s shaft & a Mr. Twister Grub on it’s hook. The problem was no one could figure out how to make it on a machine which they call a fourslide. I still have several of them somewhere plus the drawings when I advertised them in magazines to tackle companies none of which showed any interest at the time & I will post pictures of them when I find them.
All of my lures & the name Dice Device are well protected legally with poor man patents but you can make all you want for your personal use & you have my permission.
Tackle companies today are not generally interested in new ideas & set in their ways & so big headed they will hardly ever pay anyone royalties on anything anymore anyway & if they do they like to pay only 1 to 2% of gross sales which is basically chicken feed in these days.
But some may copy them or alter your designs if you disclose them to them & tell you to sue them which is impossible to do unless you are rich as the lawyers used to want at least $40,000.00 up front to even begin one patent infringement suit. If 40 different comapnies copy your ideas multiply that by 40 so not many fishing lure inventors will ever get rich on their ideas unless they mfg & market them themselves & be first on the market with their idea & the name they choose to use will be more valuable than their patents. The patent attorneys always make money the inventors hardly ever. Design patents on fishing lures are virtually worthless & to expensive to protect so forget that idea unless you want to fork out thousands of dollars for nothing just so your patent attorney can buy a new car every year on you.
If you come up with anything you can protect it cheap by putting drawings, pictures & a prototype of it in an envelope & mailing it to yourself at the post office by registered mail sealed & stamped by the Post Office which proves you are the orginal inventor on that date & time. You can then show your idea to anyone with or without a disclosure agreement & you have a year from that date to file for a patent if it ever proves to be worthy of one after exhaustive searches are performed by qualified patent attorneys & the patent office & even then they can be challenged after you are awarded a patent. If someone copies it & manufactures it & they cut you out let them do that & then after they make a bunch of sales & money go see a patent attorney & he will get you money in a settlement usually out of court because most companies want to avoid long drawn out suits & the big legal fees involved & especially so if they know they are going to lose in court anyway. If they copy it & it flops you won’t get much either if you sue them & you will probably have trouble finding an attorney that would be willing to take it on a percentage basis.
But before you do anything talk to a real lawyer because that I am not & never will be. To much hassle & paperwork for my blood.
The very best thing to do if you can afford it is go tell all the big tackle companies & distributors to go flip up a tree & go ahead & make ten thousand of them & take them to lakes & rivers & streams of the area you designed them for & give them to fishermen & ask them to try them out & leave them your address or phone number. If your lure is as good as you think it is you will be in business as they will contact you for more & tell everybody & their brother about it. If not just forget it & accept it that your idea really sucked unless you like losing money on fishing lures no one will buy in quantities large enough to make any money on. It can be done but very difficult & your emotions & emotional attachments to your very own ideas can wipe you out financially real quick & then all your joy will turn into reality in the form of sadness & then maybe even instant divorce may come down upon you if they take your house & everything you own for non-payment of delinquent business loans.
In other words if you are really smart best to forget it & leave the fishing lure business up to the ones that already own & control it. Spend a little to see how good your idea really is but not a lot. If you hit a home run go for it. If not go back to the drawing board or better yet go fishing in The Georgian Bay & use your lures yourself.
That’s what I did.
After I lost a bunch of money.
