South Bend Bait Company — the Bass-Oreno

1901 – the High Street making ended in the 1960s

Bucktails from a kitchen table trade: Frank G. Worden made bucktail fly lures at home in South Bend in the 1890s, on several accounts, and appears in the city directory for the first time as proprietor of the Worden Bait Company in 1901. The National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame credits Worden with putting propellers fore and aft on wooden lures, an innovation other makers adopted in 1907. Financed by J. Willard Shidler of Shidler Brothers Hardware, his Worden Bucktail Manufacturing Company was working by 1905 on the second floor of the hardware store at 131 South Michigan Street. Jacob Kuntz bought the company, and in January 1909 renamed it the South Bend Bait Company. The History Museum’s compiled history instead names Hennings, who bought out the owners in 1915; the two accounts stand unreconciled, as the Founders record prints them.

The Oreno years: The plant settled at 1108 South High Street, in a building first raised for a wagon company (see the wagon-era entry below). In 1916 the company acquired the rights to James Olds of Benton Harbor’s patent for the lure that became the Bass-Oreno, the most popular lure the company ever made; the Pike-Oreno and the rest of the Oreno family followed. The company then employed about 50 people, most of them women, and kept some 25,000 deer tails on hand for the bucktail line. Its first catalog, The Days of Reel Sport, appeared in 1917. Through the interwar decades the South Bend name on a lure box was one of the five or so great names of the American tackle trade.

The name leaves the building: Bait production stopped in the Second World War, apart from red, white, and blue lures made for bond drives. By late 1958 the company was headquartered in Chicago, owned by Seymour and Benjamin Fohrman, and renamed the South Bend Tackle Company to cover its rods, reels, and accessories; tackle making at the High Street plant ended in the 1960s. The 1108 High Street building stands in the record today as a technology company's works — wagons, then lures, then electronics in one shell.

Sources:

1. The History Museum, South Bend, "South Bend Bait Company" (as compiled in the South Bend fishing-reel schematics volume, archive.org) — Worden's directory trail (tea-company agent in 1896; proprietor of the Worden Bait Company in 1901); the Hall of Fame's fore-and-aft propeller credit; the 1905 Worden Bucktail Manufacturing Company over Shidler Brothers Hardware; Kuntz's purchase and the January 1909 renaming; the 1916 Olds patent and the Bass-Oreno; about 50 employees, mostly women, and the 25,000 deer tails; the 1917 catalog; the wartime stop; the 1958 Chicago headquarters, the Fohrman ownership, and the South Bend Tackle Company renaming.
2. Discover Indiana, "Bowman Creek Industrial Site" — the company founded in 1901 as the Worden Bait Company; Frank G. Worden's spinner designs.
3. Round the Bend 574, the 1108 High Street building tour (2026) — the building raised for the Miller-Knoblock Wagon Company, the Bait Company's home from about 1920, and fishing-tackle manufacturing ending there in the 1960s.