The Dardevle story has been expertly documented by Terry McBurney in his June, 2007 article, “Lou J. Eppinger,” for the National Fishing Lure Collectors Club Magazine. McBurney covers just about every base of the Eppinger story, from Lou’s growing into and taking over a taxidermy studio at the age of 18, to him taking $25 to purchase some fishing supplies to sell when the taxidermy business was seasonally slow. As it specifically concerns the development of the famous Dardevle lure, McBurney offers four potential origin stories.
The first, writes McBurney, comes from Harvey W. Thompson’s 1979 book, The Spooners, wherein Thompson recounts that in 1906, a 29-year old Lou Eppinger took a vacation in the wilds of Ontario, where he caught a number of fish on a lure of his own design. Upon his return home, Eppinger continued to work on the lure and once he had it where he wanted it he named it “after the best fisherman I ever saw, soaring high above those northern lakes – the Osprey.” The Osprey would eventually change its name to Dardevle, allegedly in honor of the fierce fighting ability of the Marines against the Germans in the Battle of Belleau Woods in 1918.The second origin story came from Eppinger himself in 1956. Writing in The History of the Dardevle, Eppinger stated that he spent many years in developing the spoon before finally introducing it in his taxidermy/sporting goods shop in 1917 or 1918. At that time he priced the Osprey at 75¢.
The third story comes from the text of the first print ads that Eppinger ran in Field & Stream in 1919 and 1920. In short, Eppinger discovered that one of his longtime customers had developed a spoon and was, along with his customer’s friends, secretly catching a lot of fish with it. Eppinger bought the rights to the spoon and immediately put it on the market.
The fourth and final version of the story came from Leslie Eppinger, one of Lou’s children. In 1995 a 90-year old Leslie wrote a letter to Karen Eppinger, Lou’s grandniece and the current President of Eppinger Manufacturing Company. When Leslie was 12, in 1917, he said that he went to visit a friend one day. In the backyard of his friend’s house were three or four men standing around a blacksmith’s anvil, hammering a piece of oval-shaped brass. The men told Leslie that they were working on a spoon. Leslie thought it odd that they were making an eating utensil and went about his business.
Jump ahead a couple years when Leslie had a job working in his father Lou’s shop. Lou showed his son the Dardevle spoon which Leslie immediately recognized as the spoon the men were hammering on the anvil in his friend’s backyard. Lou told his son that he had purchased the rights to the spoon from a Mr. Simonsen.
