This picture (circa 1952?) is from a Louisiana trip where Bill saw the effectiveness of the Smithwick Devil's Horse, also referred to by some as the "War Horse," as mentioned in this excerpt from a recent e-Book by Dr. Todd E.A. Larson (Fishing Lures I have known - VOLUME TWO - Riding the Devil’s Horse: Smithwick’s Legendary Lure).
Perhaps the most pointed testimonial came from Bill Binkelman, noted editor of The Fishing News (later called Fishing Facts) and a member of the Freshwater Fishing Hall-of-Fame, who wrote in an article entitled “I Rode the Devil’s War Horse” in January 1965 about his first experience with the lure in 1952, when he fished Black Lake in Louisiana on a cold February day. It’s worth quoting at length:
The water was icy, so I was going deep with a bottom bumping bait. This fool guide had some crazy looking surface bait, solid white too. He was so dumb that he didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to catch big bass on the surface in cold water and in cold weather. At least that’s what I thought then.
I was getting mad. When he lifted that heavy stringer of lively, flopping cold water largemouths to slip one more on. I was turning greener than those beautiful bass. That’s when I broke down and asked him, “What is that you’re using?”
“Oh, this you mean?” he countered, playing for time, as he made his next cast. “It’s just a local bait,” he said, and twitched his rod slightly. I looked at his plug. It sat at a 45 degree angle, half submerged in the water some 50 feet away. It was more like a quill-bobber than anything else. I said, “What’s the white cigar you’re fishing with?”
Don grinned again, and mumbled something that sounded like “Devil’s War Horse.”
Binkelman became so enamored with the Devil’s Horse that he put this up with the Buck Perry Spoonplug (which he was largely responsible for making famous) as the best bass catcher of its kind, and promoted it heavily over the next twenty years.
In the February 1970 issue of Fishing Facts, a near identical copy of this picture carries the following story with it:
Some cold water L.M. bass from 6 foot of water in Lake Bisteneau, Louisiana. This was in January, and Louisiana or not, the air and the water were both cold. So cold that I really didn't except [sic] to get anything but a straggler or two. I thought it was cold enough to put schools into hybernation [sic]. II was somewhat mistaken, see picture.
Jack Smithwick, (the Water-Gater man), that morning, had said, "Oh, we will get some...not as many as usual...not our limit of 30, but more than a few."
"Thirty?" I thought, the guy is crazy. Well we didn't get thirty, because of my stupidty [sic], but when Jack finally located them, in 6 foot of water, it was one fish after the other. That is until I hooked a dead tree branch and like a darn fool jerked. The branch broke off. Hit the water with a splash. That ended that.
That school must have been a big one, hundreds probably, and concentrated in an area about 10' x 30', with a few scattered on the fringes, because every time that we threw to the "spot", it was fish.
Oh well, it was dusk, we went in, took this picture and went back to Shreveport. Jack Sr., when told about it, immediately asked, "What happened? Why did they stop?" (That man knows his fishing.)
Jack Jr. reluctantly told of the broken branch. Jack Sr. just said, "Oh". No criticism. No lectures. Just Southern tact and hospitality.
P.S. I don't always use nightcrawlers!
One of the many boxes Bill kept on shelves in his basement to organize all the tackle he kept (Bill's hand writing on box).