Eppinger Lil' Devil 1/8 oz. Spoon Lure

The Eppinger® tradition began in 1906. Lou Eppinger spent a month in the Ontario wilderness all alone - camping, fishing, and thinking. He used a lure of his own design - a spoon weighing 2 oz. The metal was hammered out so that it was thinner in the middle and thicker toward the edges. When he cast it into the shallows, it would swing from side to side, nearly turning over, but always righting itself. Kind of like a dare devil.

By 1912, Lou turned his prototype into a finished lure, the Osprey®. It caught fish; lots and lots of them. Especially pike, a favorite sport fish in the Midwest. In 1918, Lou's nephew Ed came to work in his uncle's shop. They changed the name of the Osprey to the Daredevle® after the Teufelhunden, or Devil Dog, the name given by the Germans to the 4th Marine Brigade which successfully penetrated and captured the Germans in the Battle of Belleau Woods. The Allies called the U.S. Marines Dare Devils, the name now used for Eppinger's most successful line of lures.

The company that sold around 500 lures a year is now an international success, and millions of Eppinger lures are sold each year. The original Dardevle has since spawned an entire family of lures in all shapes, sizes, and colors.