Those Eyes……….

Creek Chub produced many different eyes on their Shur-Strike line. An interesting note is that they oferred tack eyes as an option on the Shur-Strike line well before they oferred it on the main line of Creek Chubs. Tack eyes were an option on the Shur-Strike line in the late 30′s, and tack eyes were not an option on the Creek Chub lures. Creek Chub did not transition to tack eyes until 1960.

Shur-Strike lures were produced in 4 different eye styles. Glass, tack, pressed, and painted. In fact, the most rare style of eye is the pressed eye. Some lures like the darter were always done with just painted eyes. However, the River Runt, was pruduced in glass, tack, and pressed. The Baby Pike was produced in glass, tack, and painted eyes.

It is interesting how some lures may be extemely rare, but never seem to obtain a very high value. The pressed eye River Runt is a very good example. It goes unoticed in the collecting world, but is by far the most rare version of the runt style lures.

Glass Eye Shur-Strike

Tack Eye Shur-Strike

Pressed Eye River Runts

Painted Eye Baby Pikie Lures

 

Dude…………….

The Small Dude……Overlooked?

Painted Eye lures just don’t seem to get the recognition that their glass eye brethren get. I can understand that from a aesthetic point of view, but when you look at the colors that some of these came in, they are wowsers!

The Small Dude was a new lure for the Shur Strike line in 1941. New colors for the Shur Strike brand were also introduced on this lure.

#20 White Scale

#41  Blue Back

#42  Goldfish

#43 Spotted

With these wild colors, these lures are fantastic display items. I am not sure how these colors fished, but probably were meant to catch the fisherman’s eye rather than the fish!

I got to believe this lure was great fish catcher. Plastics were on the market back in the early 40′s, but not in abundance. The size, shape, and basic colors like perch, pikie, and red/white had to do well on bass.

A lot of the big retailers that Creek Chub sold through during this time, like Gateway, Bingham, and Western Auto, did not carry the Small Dude according to their catalogs. I did however, find the “Dude” in the Tryon Kingfisher catalog of 1941.

I guess you can say this little lure found a hard time getting some respect.

DUDE Video

Andy Anderson’s Sporting Goods

Creek Chub sold many of their lures under private retailer brands. This was not uncommon among fishing manufacturers, and was a common practice on reels, lures, and other tackle.

Creek Chub used it Shur-Strike brand to market to these retailers so they could have an affordable product they could sell under the store name.

Andy Anderson’s was a sporting goods retailer in Oklahoma City.  They sold several different Shur-Strike style and colors under their brand called “Andy’s Lures”, with a stencil of the “andy’s Lures” on the lures.

They also took it a step further by putitng a personalized card in the Shur-Strike box with information about the lures.

I have found several styles with the Andy’s stencil, including the Floating HR, Short Jointed River Runt, Long Jointed River Runt, and the Plunker.

Below is the actual Stencil used, that was obtained by Andy Howe from Derek Heinzerling.

If you have any of these lures, I would love to hear about them, and of course if you have any for sale, I am always buying!

Shur Strike Fly Rod Lures

The Shur Strike fly rod lures are a misunderstood group of lures. The most common fly rod lures made under the Shur Strike brand, are the Trout and Fly Orenos. These were direct copies of the successful South Bend lures.

A lot of collectors have a hard time telling these apart from South Bend. There is a simple way……take a look at the eyes!  Shur Strike used a gold eye around the pupil. Colors will also help you confirm the Shur Strike brand, but sometimes, a lure like the red/white will have to be determined by the eyes.

Shur Strike used cup rigging on the earlier Trout Oreno or TO lures, and wire rigging on the later models. The FO or Fly Oreno always had wire rigging.

Another Shur Strike Fly lure is the Fly Rod Rivermaster. This is very tough to find, and can sell for hundreds depending on condition.

The boxes the TO and FO lures came in are extremely hard to find. First, they were sold in the CCBCO intro fly rod boxes in the early 30′s. These can fetch $250 or more. Later CCBCO sold the TO and FO in generic boxes with just the number code on the end. These were made out out of cardboard and did not hold up that well. Still, they can fetch $50-$100 to the right buyer.

One reason there are not that many boxes, is that a lot of these lures were sold on dealer displays and no boxes accompanied the lures. Another is the fact that they were small and not very durable.

Color collecting the TO and FO can be fun, since they are relatively cheap, but be aware some of the tougher colors like yellow/black can go for $100 plus.

Whats in a name?

 

Creek Chub was not big on names when starting the Shur Strike line.  If fact, the names they gave to the first series of lures were as generic as your ABC’s!

The lures were named style A, B, C, etc.  They really did not care since they were not marketing the lures to the public. The Shur Strike line was sold through tackle stores, and catalog companies, and it was up to the retailer to brand and market the lures.

Style A has been nicknamed Slant Nose

Some retailers like Gateway Sporting goods took it to a high level by creating a special box, and labeling each lure with a name.

Gateway Stenciled Mouse and special box

Some retailers would order special boxes, but would not name the lures. Vee Bee lures by Voedisch Brothers was a good example of this type of marketing.

Vee Bee Bass Oreno lure

Most would just order the Shur Strike lures in the boxes that CCBCO provided for Shur Strike Minnows. Either way, the retailer had a high quality lure that they could sell a very affordable price. Lures were mostly priced at around 39 cents, which was significanlty under the regular CCBCO lures.

In the late 30′s CCBCO started labeling the lures with names like BO series or MO Series. The BO was a copy of the highly successful Bass Oreno by South Bend. The MO was a copy of the CCBCO main line Mouse lure.

A lot of the names that have been given to Shur Strike lures were in fact made up by collectors. The early lures like the Style H was dubbed the Shovel Nose, and the Style G the Slope Nose. These names made the lures more interesting to collect and stuck.

Shovel Nose lure

If you look back at the sales of Shur Strike lures you can see that they had no trouble selling lures back in the late 30′s and early 40′s since they were putting out as many as 3000 Shur Strikes a day! I guess the name was not important, and price was!

Shur Strike Darters

Shur Strike darters seem to be a very under-rated lures. Creek Chub had tremendous success with their main line darters, and they probably sold more darters than any other manufacturer by a long shot.

Creek Chub version at top, Shur Strike on bottom

However the Shur Strike darter was not nearly as common, and often mis-identified. One of the easiest ways to identify the Shur Strike darter is by the color and the style. The Shur Strike color patterns are dead give aways like this pikie scale model below.

Pikie Scale Shur Strike Darter

The style was similar to the main line darter but also different. The head was thicker, and had a deeper angle. They style is similar to Paw Paw, but as you can see the mouth was wider than the Paw Paw mouth. Also, the Shur Strike will always have a washer under the line tie, and the Paw Paw will not. They are both about 4 inches long so that makes it difficult as well to differentiate.

Paw Paw on left, Shur Strike on right

Shur Strike daters always have gold around the black pupil of the eye, but that alone will not confirm. You need to make sure of the head, mouth, color, and line tie to confirm.

Collecting all the colors can make a great display, so start looking, you never know where you will find them.

Shur Strike Darter Collection

Starting a collection

Where do you start when starting a Shur Strike collection?

Don’t do what I did…..randomly collecting any Shur Strike lure that I found. When I first started collecting, I had no idea how many styles and colors there were. I got lost.

It is much easier to gain a focus by concentrating a specific style or color. For instance, I have collected more than 25 different colors of the river runt lure. You can also branch out into the older style runt with the inserted lip, floating river runt, the sinking river runt, and even the ventral lip that is a slight variation.

Sinking River Runt and Older Inserted lip Style

Floating River Runt

River Runt with Ventral Lip

There are also Jointed River Runts that you can collect as well, and they can come in a short or long body.

Short Body Jointed River Runt

Larger Body Jointed River Runt

So as you can see, we have just explored a small segment of Shur Strike lures, and found several different styles, variations, and colors. You may want to explore the older model lures which I reference in my book as the alphabet series of lures. These were the first lures Creek Chub came out with under the Shur Strike line.  They had styles of A-L and a few numbered series. They expanded later into more letter style lures, but the A-L were the first in the early 30′s. Here are some early examples:

Style A

Style 4 Round Nose Pikie

Whether you start with a style or a color, or another category, you may want to get a copy of my book to help break things down. Books can be ordered through Whitefish press at www.whitefishpress.com