Budubya: Congratulations! You have a truly collectors item with your Bomber Spin Stick. They made both the Spin Stick in a multitude of colors and also a simple stick, without the blades.

I am the son in law of the late Ike Walker, who was one of the original partners of Bomber. He was the person who made the prototype of lures, the machinery, and the design of the machinery to mass produce all the lures. Clarence Turberville was the business head. The third partner was Charles Parker, the dean of Cooke County Junior College and was not active in the management of Bomber.

They started out in Ike Walker's garage with a wood lathe, cutting out the original Bomber bodies and much like Henry Ford, the first ones were one size and one color, Black. It was later called the 600 Bomber. This was in the early days of WW II, and the bait looked like a bomb. It was about 5 inches long with 3 treble hooks, and ran backwards like a crawfish. It really caught the bass in Southern states and created their reputation.

Ike said it was extremely difficult to find any hardware, such as hooks, because of the war. He would drive around for days, in Texas and Oklahoma visiting hardware stores trying to find any kind of the screws and hooks needed to complete the manufacture of lures.

Ike Walker was one of the first graduates from Texas Tech, in Lubbock, Texas. He was born in the small community of Bulcher, my home, and his family moved to West Texas, Olton, where they farmed a dry land farm until irrigation became the boon to cotton farming. He was living in Gainesville before the war, and with his fishing buddy, Clarence Turberville, were avid fishermen. They began tinkering in Ike's garage making crude, prototype lures from scratch, thus the start of The Bomber Bait Company, that eventually became a giant in bass lures particularly in the Southern states. Just Sayin...RJS