Swimming Mouse Jr, #6580
William Shakespeare Co
Kalamazoo, MI
1930
April 2011
Last year at the 2010 Northwest Sportshow in Minneapolis, MN, the most common lure question that came up was "Hey, do you have a wooden mouse lure? It is a round lure with and flat bottom and a string tail. The head is notched and this causes the lure to dive shallow and wiggle back and forth."
When I shown them the Shakespeare Swimming Mouse or a picture of one in a book, they exclaimed "Yea, that is it! What a great fishing lure!"
The William Shakespeare Co began with a reel patent in 1897, and grew to a major lure manufacturer by the early 1900s. The Swimming Mouse was one of Shakespeare's most popular and best selling baits and the first style was patented in 1924.
The Swimming Mouse Jr. was a little rounder and shorter than the first mouse of 1924, but featured the same overall design, wood body, glass eyes, and string tail.
By 1940, the glass eyes were replaced by tack or pressed eyes and there were many sizes available of the Swimming Mouse (I added a Baby Swimming Mouse in the bottom picture for a comparison of two styles). Many are still found today and are still widely used, although it seems many of the ones I see now are missing the tail. They are great fish catchers and the heavy wood body means you can cast them great distances. I still find myself using one all the time.
So, the Swimming Mouse Jr. is this months "Lure of the Month". Now when people come up to me at this years Sportshow, I can tell them that I finally gave this lure the respect it deserves.
