We're in a small Alberta town whose design is known all over North America. Now they're
reeling in big attention for their massive object — it's about a hundred times bigger than this.
Guinness book of World Records official. Completed in 2017,
the World's Largest Fishing Lure is also one of the youngest giants of the prairies.
And in case you were wondering, yes, it is a real lure, based on a design that you might recognize.
For nearly 100 years, this nationally famous design has been handmade in the prairies.
Even one of their machines purchased in the 50s has made almost every single lure up
until recently. I first saw this design amongst a boatload of equipment in my grandpa's garage but
no one told me the lure was from Alberta.
This design,
world famous now — it's in everybody's box, how many of them do you think know it's from Lacombe.
It's something that we get asked a lot, people are surprised, they just assume things are made
overseas. So we still get, you know, almost weekly people saying 'oh I didn't know you were here!'
but that was also one of the motivators of of choosing to do the World's Largest Lure:
we wanted to draw attention to our community, we wanted people to visit our community,
and we wanted to draw attention to the fact that we are here and we are local.
You talked about being shipped overseas and sort of this bulk-made,
why do you want to keep it here?
The number one thing that concerns me is quality. It's a quality brand. If you move things outside
of your roof, you will lose that quality just simply because you just don't have that control.
Also, we notice something with a flaw, we take it off the line,
we strip off the paint and we start over again.
The design is still the exact same as it was when Len Thompson himself designed it over half
a century ago. His first machine wasn't even retired until recently and it stamped over 55
million spoons. The spoon being the metal part of the lure that actually attracts the fish. But what
was shocking to me is all of this is still done by hand, including the painting of every single lure.
You can tell i've never done this before.
It's all tangled up.
Oh that's why.
So just hold it like this and
Then you want to make sure that you get the diamond cover.
Look out Shelby, I'm taking your job!
I don't want to brag, but i think mine's better than yours.
We try to aim for a whole stack of 20 in 45 minutes, of yellow ones.
All of these in 45?
So you're behind schedule.
I'm behind schedule boss, I'm going!
Without compromising on the quality.
Did I compromise?
Not yet. I mean, one of those wouldn't pass.
It was yours!
Man you guys run a tight ship here.
When your first design is just a little bit bigger than me and then you go to your engineering and
you say hey we've decided to make it way bigger, there are challenges to that. In the factory,the
machine stamps every single spoon, but what do you get to stamp that! We're meeting with Devon
Hallsman, who is the engineer, and he's telling us a little bit about the challenges he came across.
That is it.
It's pretty nice that they have this attached to an actual fishing pond!
The process to make a Len Thompson number two is not a one-person job but what about
one that is a hundred times bigger? Jessica and Brad approached quite a few
commercial welders — all told them it wasn't possible, all but one just down the street.
What have you got to lose? Got nothing to lose. So we gave it a shot! So we started with some smaller
ones and we eventually worked up to this size. And actually this size is bigger than the original
plant. So we originally, when Brad came to me and brought this piece of paper with a stick figure
on it and a copy a picture of his lure on it, and it wasn't drastically bigger than a person.
Oh really?
Yeah!
Once we got into it and we decided that
we're gonna give this a shot, it's like how big could you make it?
And that's what our limitation was — is how big we could get the plate, and what we could cut.
Is this the biggest you could go?
Yes. When we got the sheet of steel in for this it was 10 feet by 40 feet long and
our plasma table that we cut it on is 10 by 20. So what we had to do was cut half of it
and then flip it completely around and then cut the other half.
How did you bend it?
So we cut a slit down the middle of it and then we kind of rolled it and pulled it back.
Was that a challenge like did you have to sit on that?
We had to use a lot of torque, like we had to use a lot of different tools: chains,
slings, come alongs. We just did just about anything we could.
Now we've got something in the town that we can say 'hey yeah we've got the world's biggest fish
lure'. Something different. Nobody can say that. I think that just brings some pride to the place
and everybody's happy to see it and it was a good reception when we unveiled it last year.
I want to see these prototypes did you say you have one in the truck?
I have one, yes.
I want to see it.
It's cool.
So this is the prototype here that we started with.
Oh yeah.
And, as you can tell, it is significantly smaller.
What was the original design size you mentioned?
This was to be 15 feet long.
But in theory this could have been the world's largest fishing lure?
No this one would still would have been smaller than the world's biggest one in Texas.
Ah okay, so you had to go bigger?
I had to go bigger. This was just to see if it was practical.
What do you think makes that one structurally unique?
That it holds its shape.
So you would have heated it up right in the middle and then for this you
probably could have actually, you could just bend it right?
It still takes a lot of force.
Still takes a lot of force.
It does.
Not as easy looks.
No.
The curve doesn't look like it's that big of a curve,
but it's enough to keep that shape stable. So it's really neat structurally-wise that it does that.
Two provinces and nearly a century of legacy — this lure is a symbol now.
It's a symbol of family, community, tradition,
and small town art. Where should we go next follow us on Big Things Small Towns
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