Thursday, July 28 Antigo Wi Mepps

We left Oshkosh keeping our wheels mostly free of mud and went to Antigo Wi. The home of Mepps fishing lures. It wasn't far, but we wanted to be there for a scheduled (yes we do have to schedule a few things) tour. We never know what we're going to get with these factory tours. Sometimes they are very organized, offered only on certain days at certain times. This one was listed in my website guide as 3:30 PM M-Th. So we wanted to be there promptly. We are sensitive to the fact the companies that give tours are at least incurring some cost,and at most (preferably) taking a person off the manufacturing floor and asking them to be our tour guide. It usually happens this way with small companies. When we approached we saw this sign!
So a word about MEPPS to explain their need for squirrel tails.
MEPPS spinning lures started out in France. art Sheldon ran a sport shop in Atigo WI, and sold a lot of them. When he started having a hard time clearing cusotms etc, he went to France, and after a period of time bought the company. MEPPS is an acronym for Method of Precsion manufacturing roughly translated.
My connection with them goes back to my Boy Scout days, when we went on a cross Michigan canoe trip with my troop. We were told by the canoe rental place we had to come with certain sizes of MEPPS spinners. I did, and don't really remember how many fish two guys in an Aluminum canoe managed to catch, but I had a few in my tackle box when we went to Canada a few years later, and boy did they work! They are a spinning lure with the metal "blade or spinner portion stamped into an unusual shape. This causes a unique movement that is very attractive to fish. After Art bought the company, he was out using his lures one day and met a boy who had a long stringer full of nice size fish. He had modified his MEPPS spinners with a little piece of Squirrel fur around the hooks. Art tried it, and the resulting success has provided MEPPS with the requirement for 300,000 tails per year.
The company is still very small, with 50 assembly employees in the US, using plastic and metal components provided by their French sister company. We got a tour from one of the assemblers, who left her seat at the table and walked us throughthe plant. They are all women, and Liz likened it to making jewlery, lots of little shiny little pieces of metal and plastic, all being put together in a attractive string. Then comes the tail part. They have tried synthetic hair and the fur of every animal, and one that gives MEPPS lures their characteristic spin is squirrel tails. Wisconsin youth used to hunt squirrel, as the stew made from the meat is quite tasty. However video games are cutting into teenage boys hunting time even in the wilds of upper Wisconsin, so MEPPS is actively looking for all of the squirrel tails they can get. They pay up to $.16 ea. per washed and properly packed tails.
It was a great tour, we had a pretty good campsite, and we started planning where to go in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned.