The Bass Whipper

So what is a Bass Whipper? Well, the story starts with a small company called Wayne Hardware Co.

 

Wayne Hardware had two locations, one in Fort Wayne Indiana, and the other in South Bend Indiana. Wayne Hardware started in Ft. Wayne in the early 20’s and lasted into the 70’s.

This “Bass Whipper” box confirms Creek chub branded an exclusive lure box for Wayne Hardware! The box has color codes only used by Creek Chub. There has been a mystery on which lure would have been used for this box for many years. Since the box claims this bait was made exclusively for Wayne Hardware, it is assumed that Creek Chub was testing the waters on a new design, or Wayne Hardware wanted to brand this lure as other companies have done using the Creek Chub Shur-Strike line. 

 

 Since the Shur-Strike line was predominately used when Creek Chub branded lure boxes, it would make sense this would have been a Shur-Strike lure like the Bass Oreno. Checking all the color codes for Shur-Strike, all codes match except the  #11 black and white luminous. The next test was to check all the codes and see if there was a match for the main Creek Chub line. Bingo! We have an exact match for just one lure! 

This picture from  Harold Smith’s second edition confirms the colors that the Skipper came in and the years of production.  Whipper….. Skipper….. Even the name rhymes!

The graphics of the box seem to fit in with the time period when the Skipper was released, so it appears that Creek Chub worked with Wayne Hardware to test this bait before it was released under the main line in 1936.

I also wanted to point out that finding one of these boxes is extremely hard to do! Only a few exist in collections, which also confirms the short life span of the Bass Whipper.

Pikie color Bass Whipper/Skipper with Bass Whipper store code box.