There was a time when the Helin Flatfish was indeed one of the world’s best selling fishing lures. It seems that every old bait-filled tacklebox you come across holds at least one, and probably several, vintage Flatfish. My Dad and Grandpa each had several of the Michigan lure company offerings in theirs, and I’ve found them at practically every fishing-centric rummage sale, flea market and online sale I’ve visited. If you were an angler in the 1950s, chances are you fished a Flatfish, or at least owned one. Today we’ll take a look at a fishing how-to booklet and catalog released by the Helin Tackle Company in 1956, titled The Flatfish, World’s Largest Selling Plug.
The first thing I think that needs to be said about the Helin company is that at least a few of us have apparently been mispronouncing the Helin name. In his opening introduction to the booklet, Charles Helin makes it clear that the way to pronounce his last name is “HEE-LIN,” not HEL-IN. Now that that’s out of the way let’s dig into the booklet (truth be told, I’ll probably still pronounce it as HEL-IN…old habits).
This catalog is part instruction manual, part catalog, part unabashed marketing ad, and part vanity project. There’s no doubt that, during its heyday, the Helin Flatfish was a hugely successful lure, in both sales and in record fish caught. I’m not sure of the veracity of Helin’s claim that the Flatfish was the angling world’s biggest seller, but they did sell millions of the slow-swimming baits.
After the inside cover schematic of the various Flatfish sizes in the series, the booklet opens with a letter from Charles Helin, to his “Fellow Fishermen.” Helin, of course, expounds glowingly on his original Flatfish, but adds to that his excitement and pride in introducing anglers to his new Fishcake topwater lure. “Now, almost twenty-three years after the perfection of the FLATFISH back in 1933,” declares Helin, “I have a new bait in production and being distributed. This new bait I have named ‘THE FISHCAKE.’”
“This is really quite a lure and no doubt whatsoever exists in my mind that it is destined to be a top seller. And why not? The FISHCAKE produces such a lively and delightful variety of sound effects when properly worked that we found ourselves laughing out loud just from listening to this wonderful new lure work its way back to the boat. We laughed when Bass and Pike struck this bait…We laughed because we knew the poor fish just couldn’t help itself.”
So effective is the Fishcake, says Helin, that if you “Return the gamey fish to the water and it will take a FISHCAKE again.” Helin has a few more things to say about the Fishcake, and in the middle of the booklet he devotes two color pages to its introduction. The rest of the introduction and booklet is pretty much devoted to the Flatfish and its amazing fish catching prowess. As proof of the cover’s claim that the Flatfish is the “World’s Largest Selling Plug,” Helin boasts that in early 1956 sales of the Flatfish surpassed the 17,000,000 mark, with the previous year alone selling more than 2-million lures.
Interestingly, Helin also says that, “A couple of times the FLATFISH took seven out of ten places in the rainbow trout division” of the annual Field and Stream fishing contest, yet he felt “some disgust and regret” that the lure wasn’t responsible for “the catching of all the record breakers.” You might be tempted to take Helin’s dismay as a humorous bit of sarcastic bravado, but no, he is serious. Later on he chides the average angler, supposedly his customer base, for not being smart enough to see a good thing when it was first presented to him.
“Actually, the average man is not on his toes when it comes to searching for or accepting something new. I ran my first ad in a national magazine with over a half million circulation. I got 8 inquiries and sold one bait. It was the same FLATFISH in design I am selling today–often over 10,000 and as high as 100,000 in one day. The FLATFISH was as good in those days as it is today and there definitely was a greater number of game fish in our lakes. Why couldn’t people see then what this FLATFISH really was? Why should it take so many painful years for it to reach its present sale? What wonderful fishing sport these people missed by not replying to that little ad–and many since who should know better!”
In the next paragraph Helin bemoans anglers being too cheap to buy his Flatfish. Well, gosh, I can think of at least a couple possible reasons why anglers didn’t respond to Helin’s first ad or why they might skimp on buying an unknown lure. With apologies to Charles Helin, maybe the ad wasn’t attractive or enticing enough to get anglers to bite, and perhaps a bigger issue was that, if I’ve got the timeline correct, the Flatfish was introduced in the middle of the Great Depression (1933). Anyway, regardless of Helin’s possible lack of self-awareness, the Flatfish did eventually become a hugely popular lure. He defiantly and proudly signs off on his introduction with,
Cordially yours,
CHARLES HELIN
(Pronounced HEE-LIN)
Inventor, Patentee, Manufacturer and Sole Owner of the FLATFISH and FISHCAKE
The rest of the catalog has pieces written by, I’m assuming, Charles Helin, and other named writers, alternating with photos and testimonials from anglers who experienced success with the Flatfish. The first section, “A Game Fish Lure with a New Hooking Principle,” covers the basic how-to’s of fishing the lure: how to select a size (there are 18 or 20 sizes in the line, depending on which page you’re on), a description of which fish and equipment each size is good for, how to retrieve the lure, how to fish it underwater or on the surface, the advantages of the offset hook system, and color selection.
As far as Helin’s offset hooking system goes, I think he was really onto something with his preference for lighter wire hooks. He felt that the heavy treble hooks that were popular in his day impeded a lure’s action and weren’t as effective in hooking and securing a fish. Helin’s philosophy on hooking fish foreshadowed what we see today, where lighter, sharper, stronger hook technology has replaced those old, thick hooks of the mid-20th century.
Dozens of personal testimonials in the succeeding pages make for some fun reading, albeit perhaps a bit melodramatic. For example, a Jack Perry from Bridgeport, Connecticut says, “So if you ever have any doubtful customers who want to know about the Flatfish send them around to me. I’ll bend their ears plenty, for it’s the only bait I use, except worms once in a while for trout in early spring–and brother, I get fish.” And LeRoy Nydegger of Sioux City, Iowa writes, “A fish is not safe in the same lake with it.”
These satisfied customer reports are interrupted by a few short essays from Helin wherein he talks of developing his Offset Hooking system, fishing for tarpon, and an odd method for two ice anglers to fish the same lure, from two holes 100 feet apart, under the ice, on connected fishing lines. Helin calls it “Trolling Under the Ice, a New Winter Sport,” but because of the effort involved I don’t think it ever really caught on.
Most impressive in the Helin catalog is a five-and-a-half page essay written by Jason Lucas, author of Lucas on Bass Fishing (1947) and one-time Angling Editor for Sports Afield magazine. In his piece, Lucas writes both matter-of-factly, when on the subject of how to fish a Flatfish, and lyrically when talking about bass behavior and the anglers who pursue them. He’s a fantastic writer, and his book is well worth having in your fishing library. Admitting that Helin invented the Flatfish primarily as a bass lure, Lucas focuses most of the essay on bass fishing, with a brief nod at the end to other species. In considering bass in hard fished lakes overflowing with food, Lucas says that these bait-shy fish must be coaxed into biting:
“There, one’s quarry must be teased, tantalized, by keeping what seems a desirable morsel within his easy reach for a long time; when this is done, even a Socrates among fish will rarely have sufficient will power (or should we say won’t power) to avoid finding himself flopping in a landing net.”
And later:
“It is against the instincts of a bass, as of a cat, to allow something of edible size to escape from within easy reaching distance. Before he could think–if a fish can be said to think–a reflex would have sent him forward on that short spurt. His big head would blend with the plug, and–I would begin to breathe again, as I battled him. A curious physiological phenomenon, which so far as I know has never been investigated by science, is the amazing length of time an angler can go without breathing when he is wondering whether that big bass will take his offering or not.”
That is some wonderful writing, and makes an interesting contrast with the folksy, sometimes clumsily worded testimonials.
The brochure finishes with three short pieces, the first by Ed M. Hunter, the second a lively tale featuring our favorite lure by prolific author and expert on saltwater spin fishing, Joseph D. Bates Jr., and the finale’ a revealing portrait of Charles Helin by his childhood and lifelong friend Guy Fillmore. Fillmore’s expose is exactly what any fishing historian craves, an intimate look at the motivations and personality traits of the people who impacted our great sport.
Fillmore tells of two experiences he had bass fishing with Helin, where failure at catching their quarry sparked Helin’s desire to create a lure that would entice feeding bass, imitate a natural baitfish motion, and securely hook a striking fish. He also reveals Helin’s dynamic attitude towards excellence and achievement, his fearlessness at trying something new and taking risks, and his penchant for squeezing as much into life as he could. Helin was indeed a larger-than-life figure, with perhaps an ego that enabled him to quit a secure job and start a new tackle company in the midst of a depression. Not only did he start that company with practically no funding, he invented the machines necessary to produce his fishing lures. Anything he attempted he seemed to excel at, including bowling, juggling, flying airplanes, gardening, photography, making fishing lures and more. The first year in business, 1934, Helin Tackle sold 400 Flatfish. Sales increased every year and by 1947 until at least the mid-1970s (and likely beyond) the company sold well over a million units per year (43-million by 1973, the last year with easily available sales numbers).
We can add poet to Charles Helin’s resume, because the brochure ends with a poem allegedly written by Helin himself. It’s titled “An Angler’s Nightmare,” and describes a dishonest fisherman – imagine that! – who finds himself at the gates of hell, only to be told by Satan that before him lies a beautiful, pristine lake filled with lunkers, where the weather is always perfect and the fishing is always glorious. The devil points to a tackle shop where the angler can get tackle and boat and fish to his heart’s content. Upon arriving at the shop and seeing that the shelves are filled with every piece of gear, tackle, live bait and lure imaginable, he asks the proprietor for a Flatfish…
The Devil now saw that the time had arrived
To tell this poor angler the fate he’d contrived.
“There’s no Flatfish here, no matter how much you yell:
Now you can see why we call this place HELL.”
In 1989-’90 Helin Tackle was purchased by the Yakima Bait Company, which still produces the lure using, so far as I understand, some of the original lure molds that Helin used.
When I was a kid I always shied away from the Flatfish in my elders’ tackleboxes, because they had those strange hook harnesses that were always tangling with each other and with other lures. They seemed foreboding and odd, and required, so I thought, a level of fishing know-how that I didn’t possess. The one time I did tie one on I immediately removed it after one or two casts because it just rolled over as I reeled it in and the hooks got tangled with each other. Truth is, I simply didn’t know that it was designed to be fished very slowly. After reading this catalog, I think I’m going to tie one on again and give it a go.
Helin’s Flatfish in the smaller sizes were very difficult to cast doe to their light weight and air catching profile. As a result, I bought them but after failing to be able to cast them, never fished them. As for Jason Lucas, he was my mentor.
Thanks for sharing, Chris. Hope you still have those Flatfish; if you never fished them they must be in pristine condition.
I am interested in the creativity of inventors. I found my uncle’ s tackle box. I began a research project on the inventors of fishing lures. I want to learn about their background with a special emphasis on their childhood. Charles Helin is one of those creative people. I know that his father was from Finland, but that is about all. Does anyone out there in the fishing community have a reference? I see above that Jason Lucas has some interesting insights which relate to his creativity.