Byline: John Harrington
Dec. 10--Looking at Luscious Lures, it's easy to see how, with pin-up-style paintings of mermaids, they'd catch the eyes of prospective buyers. What's harder to know is whether they'll catch anything else.
'They catch fish -- they'll catch any kind of fish,' insists Aaron Cundall, the Helena man who invented the lures shortly after retiring from a 24-year career with the Army and Montana National Guard. 'Any kind of a fish that goes after a crank bait or lure will go after this.' 'It's taken me three years to get everything up and running,' said Cundall, perhaps better known to some Helenans as 'Elmo' of the band Little Elmo and the Mambo Kings. 'I'm having such fun with it. People love it.'
Cundall said he first had the idea for the lures while casing aisle after aisle of fishing products at a Bass Pro Shops store in Texas. 'It hit me, looking at all those lures: 'There's no fine art on any of these,'' he said. 'So I decided, 'I'm going to put mermaids on fishing lures.''
Working with a partner in Australia he met through an earlier motorcycle sale, Cundall developed the designs, and with his partner's help, found a manufacturer in China to produce the first rounds of product. The images on the spoons are reminiscent of the starlets from the middle of the last century, which Cundall said is the idea. 'I always loved the pin-ups of the 1940s and '50s,' he said. 'They have a degree of innocence to them, but also a degree of naughtiness. They're fun.'
The lures may be imported, but many other Luscious Lures products are more local, including hats and T-shirts as well as wooden gift boxes that contain several products, made at Helena Industries. Cundall hopes to get the lures carried by places like Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops and other major outdoor retailers. The product wasn't done in time for the 2007 fishing season, but he's got samples out across the country with an eye toward 2008.
In the meantime, he's marketing one store at a time throughout central Montana. The rundown of stores where the lures are for sale doesn't help answer the question of whether they're for serious fishing or not. They're found at Capital Sports and Yacht Basin, but also in the gift shops at the airport and St. Peter's Hospital. 'We figure with the lead time at some of these retailers, it will be 30 months to get to the point where it's rolling real well,' Cundall said.
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