Possibly swiped.
All kinds of idea borrowing did and still does go on in the plug wars, and nothing is wrong with that in my mind, but....
FP: So how long did you work with Danny?
DM: I first started making lures with Dan in 1966. Our first lure together was the Jinx. During that time I turned about 100-150 plugs and did the painting on the emerald green mackerel, powder blue marble and some white lures. We stopped making plugs together in November 1973 when I found out that he took my 6” metal lip swimmer and gave it to Lupo.
FP: You don’t need to get into it if you don’t want.
DM: If you’re interested I’ll tell you.
FP: Tell me
DM: I was tuna fishing …and the shape of the tuna got me to thinking about coming up with a design different than anything else. If you think about it, the tuna is tapered at both ends and what happens is the middle stays still so being shaped like a football it does not take much to push water in the front or the back…so that means you can get a lot more wiggle out of a lure design like that, plus I could use a much smaller lip. In May of 1972 Dan came over to my home with his family. He said, “Let’s go down to your workshop.” He spotted my new 6” metal lip swimmer and said, “When did you come up with this new style plug?” I said about a year ago. He then put it in the palm of his hand and said, “Is it about 6” long and is the lip about ?” wide?” I said “Yes.” We talked about the plug and I told him that I caught a lot of fish on it last fall… …and then we went back to the family. About a year later… that Dan gave Lupo the 6” metal lip swimmer that I designed. I knew Dan was negotiating with Lupo about the trolling plugs which I had nothing to do with as far as the design went. But that 6” metal lip swimmer was mine! …I called Dan and spent three hours on the phone. That’s when he told me that he did give Lupo the lure. He said to me, “You’re going to screw things up with the deal, don’t say anything and I will give you half of what I’m getting.” So I asked him, “How come you’re not putting the Conrad on the
market instead of my lure?” He said, “Yours is completely different from anything else on the market.” I only saw him two times after that… I never received a dime from Dan on the lure he put out with Lupo, but the worst part about it was that by him putting his name “DANNY” on the package it made everyone think it was really Danny who designed it and that is completely wrong. That’s the part that still haunts me…hearing people call my lure the DANNY and giving him the credit for the design. After all of that, I decided to go out on my own.
FP: That’s a shame that went down like that!
DM: I agree.
I hope the folks at Salt Water Lure Collectors Club don't mind my borrowing this.
http://swlcc.com/uploads/article26.pdf