Oregon family firm has 
earned worldwide reputation

  By Fred Delkin 

 Les Davis, Abe ‘n Al, Herring Dodger, Ford Fender…this was a mantra for a kid growing up on the shore of Lake Washington and piloting his kicker boat into Puget Sound on weekends.  Trolling was the name of the fishing game back then for yours truly, whose teenage patience was too short for fly fishing…and environmental pressures hadn’t yet lessened the supply of large trout and feisty salmon in the waters surrounding Seattle.

Our mantra was based upon the lures and trolling equipment created by two small family firms:  Les Davis Co. in Tacoma and Luhr Jensen & Sons of Hood River, Oregon…whose businesses began in the early’30’s.  Today, Hood River is home for these classic product lines and many, many more that serve a worldwide sportsfishing market.

“Wherever there is sportsfishing, we have sales,” declares Phil Jensen, second generation head of Luhr Jensen, which has become a mini-conglomerate, acquiring 40 small fishing tackle manufacturers, including Les Davis, during its history.  Phil says sales last year totaled $15 million, and his company payroll covers 250 employees laboring in a 60,000 sq. ft. factory on the bank of the Columbia and a contract operation in Ensenada, Mexico.

Depression inspired vision

 Luhr Jensen’s corporate legend  began during the days of the Great Depression.

Luhr Jensen Sr., born in Michigan, the son of German immigrants, had harkened to the cry of “Westward Ho” when he was 21.  He came to the newly settled Hood River valley and labored in the woods and mills until his parents joined him to purchase property and begin an orchard business.  Then came the nation’s economic downspin and Luhr Sr. became a salesman, with time on his hands and a credo that became a business:  “The fishing tackle business is a natural for success…when times are bad, people have the time to go fishing, so they buy fishing tackle.  When times are good, people buy fishing tackle because they want to go fishing.”

His hobby became Luhr Sr.’s livelihood in 1932 when he turned a chicken coop on the family property into a manufacturing site for handmade spinning lures that he sold direct to fellow anglers and local retailers, on the strength of his recognized prowess at catching salmon in the Columbia river system.  A Portland tackle wholesaler admired Jensen’s products and advanced the money in 1934 to expand the output.

The Ford Fender was an early Jensen product success, inspired by the Model A headlight reflector that was its first raw material source.  It still graces a product line that now numbers in the hundreds.  While the company produces lures for a wide variety of fresh and saltwater fisheries, Phil Jensen says a majority of current sales revenue is generated by “cold water fisheries,” and states “Alaska is the poster child for our sales.”

The advent of the spinning reel spawned another product sector, beyond trolling,  for Luhr Jensen…small wobblers and spinners cast with light gear are a product focus begun in the late ‘40’s.

Amazon adventurer

That doesn’t dictate Phil’s favorite personal fishing sites.  He admits to spending some 10% of his time seeking piscatorial prey, and following his stated preference for “distant travels that get me fully away from the business,” he cites the Amazon river as a current favored destination.  Here he joins a growing host of fishermen seeking the Peacock Bass, an aggressive feeder that ranges from 12 to 25 pounds each and loves to attack the Luhr Jensen Woodchopper lure that creates a roostertail as it’s trolled.  “There’s no catch limit on these,” Phil relates, “and we snare from 20-100 fish per day…releasing all but one, which is prepared to eat at camp.”

Back in colder waters, Luhr Jensen dominates in lures designed for salmon and steelhead.

Close to home, the company reacts to the conservation call of the waters that front the home factory.  “Our staff are all fisherpersons,” Phil says, “and we’re all deeply concerned about our fishing environment.  The Columbia river was once the largest ‘fish factory’ in the world, and it’s our home base, so we participate heavily in conservation politics, such as the effort for Snake river dam removal…we want to keep home waters
a viable fishing resource for our children.”

Phil favors both

Jensen supports both hatchery and natural salmon resources.  “We need both…to satisfy the needs of native Americans, other commercial fishing and our sportsfishing.”  He criticizes “extremist groups such as Oregon Trout that want nothing but native runs…that’s just not realistic.  I agree that we need to protect native stock for genetic integrity, but with fin clipping programs and other new management techniques, we can retain both stocks.  We should also be aware that pushing too hard to serve native runs at the expense of other sources could destroy the political support needed to sustain a resource for all.”

A vast new playground for Luhr Jensen customers was created in the Midwest in the late ‘60’s.  The Michigan State Fish & Game Department targeted the Great Lakes as a site for salmon propagation, with brood stock from Pacific Northwest hatcheries.  Les Davis, who was to sell his company to Luhr Jensen in 1983, was named to an advisory group to assist the Michigan effort, which introduced Coho (Silver) salmon to the Great Lakes in 1967.  By 1975, the Les Davis Company had become the largest manufacturer of salmon tackle in the world.  That market was increased exponentially by the rapid growth of Coho in the Great Lakes, where clean waters and a virtually total lack of dams on spawning streams provides an ideal salmonoid growth environment.

Forecasting the future

 Phil Jensen, 65 on July 1, sees a solid future for the family enterprise.  His brothers Luhr Jr. and David are both retired after spending their careers with the company.  Phil has a son on the current management team.  Dad went to work for Luhr Jensen following his graduation from the University of Oregon in 1960.  He foresees the company being maintained by its employees and gives himself “at least another 10 years.”  He says the company future is “very positive..we have a broad rangeof products and our acquisitions have given us dominance in a number of small niche markets.  We’ve built a solid reputation that should sustain us.”  Jensen decries the “Chinaization” of American market sources “for every product category you can think of,” (and a fishing tackle manufacturing source for such mega-retailers as WalMart).  Jensen cites “quality as more important than price” for his mainstay target markets.

Luhr Jensen’s primary competition resides in two conglomerates, Pradco, an outdoor products division of Alabama-based Ebsco Industries and Normark, based in Minnesota.  The latter’s outdoor sportsmen products line includes Rapala, a classic lure founded in Finland.  Both these major competitors rely upon non-salmonoid fisheries for their sales.

Lures are not all

 Luhr Jensen’s best-known acquisitions include Les Davis,  the Tony Acetta line of bluewater fishery lures originally produced in Florida and the Sam Griffin Classic Woods line of wooden plugs for various fisheries.  All Luhr Jensen wood products are crafted in Mexico.

What comes after the catch inspired an important product line created by Phil Jensen after he saw a small, very portable smokehouse produced by a small California company.  Luhr Jensen bought the manufacturer and began selling the Little Chief electric smokehouse, a lightweight metal cabinet ideal for packing to fishing sites.  Now outdoor cooking devotees have the Mini Chief, Little Chief and Big Chief to utilize for smoked fish, poultry and meats.  These units are backed by a Luhr Jensen-labeled line of hardwood smoking chips, seasonings and now a “Sausage Kit” that includes casings, seasonings and a recipe booklet for creating a variety of sausages.

Phil says the Little Chief line generates a significant portion of his company’s sales, primarily via  direct telephone orders.  The full Luhr Jensen product line is covered in an 84-page catalog.  The company also maintains a large and sophisticated web site (www.luhr-jensen.com), which is in its third year of existence and created and maintained by a company webmaster “who’s into that sort of stuff” and also serves as the corporate environmental standards supervisor.

Things have come a long way since Luhr Jensen Sr. moved some crude metal-stamping gear into an abandoned hen house!