There’s probably not a crappie fisherman alive who doesn’t have a Slater’s jig within easy reach in his oversupplied tackle box.
With millions of the hand-made fishing treasures out and about in the world that have put a smile on thousands of fisherman’s faces, the story began right here in Indianola – in the backyard of the late Luther Edward “Eddie” Slater Jr. Slater grew up fishing the banks of the Sunflower River as a commercial fisherman of catfish and buffalo, and he trapped live minnows to keep local area bait shops supplied. He later worked for MP&L Electric (now Entergy) but could always be found with a crappie pole and bucket of minnows chasing his favorite fish. But after seeing a co-worker’s crude design of a crappie jig, Slater knew he could create something better. In 1968, he took a little bit of money and invested it in his idea. His son, Jimmy – who has been running the business for decades – helped tell his father’s story.
“It started at 405 Hampton Street in my mamma and daddy’s backyard and now it’s moved into my backyard on Beaverdam Road. I was 10 years old when he started it and it’s been going on for fifty-something years,” Jimmy Slater said. “Daddy took $25 dollars and invested in a jig mold with only one head, bought 100 hooks and a couple of kip tails (baby calf), and started messing around and created some jigs, and he liked the looks of them.”
Then during Christmas vacation, the elder Slater decided it was time to test his new fishing lure and he drove out to Mossy Lake. Some Indianola friends were docking their boat as he arrived and announced to him that the fish weren’t biting. Slater acknowledged them and explained he just wanted to give his new creation a try. He motored out to what looked like a good spot and started setting up his poles. Another couple of Indianola friends were still on the water and gave him the same fishing report and let him know it was a waste of time to try.
“And back then you're just paddling off in front of the boat, and he would fish with two poles. He'd put one pole out, put it under one leg, and throw another pole out, put it under the other leg, and, you know, just kind of paddle around. Well, he'd take the first pole and throws it out, sticks it under his leg and reaches down right at the second pole and that first pole kind of bends over real hard. And those guys, they're sitting right there, and they look at Daddy and they said, ‘you hung up on something.’ But Daddy reached and grabbed the pole, and it was a crappie on it and he reeled it in right there in front of them.”
The fishing crew of friends passed it off as beginners luck but Slater just kept fishing – and catching.
“Just paddling around in that area, he caught 24 crappie on those jigs. Before they left, both of them ordered two dozen jigs. Daddy said, ‘Man, I ain't never tried to sell them or nothing. They said, ‘Well, we’ve got to have those jigs.’”
The fishing industry was forever changed as the Slater’s Jigs fever started hitting harder and harder just like the crappie they attract. Slater went home, ordered more hooks, more material and started his industry at the kitchen table with his wife, Dot, and children Jimmy and Valina, all part of the assembly line. And then the salesman in him came out while at his day job with MP&L.
“He had an old cigar box, and he'd carry that cigar box with him to work. And they'd always take lunch break at Weber's Restaurant right next to the Weathersby Chevrolet. He would go in there and he'd have that darn cigar box. And all the men from around town at that time used to go up there for lunch and he started selling them right out of that cigar box. He was just selling them and just having fun with it just kind of hopefully selling enough at that time to pay for his hobby.”
But the word of the newfangled fishing gadgets got out and the demand came in.
“A couple of bait shops around here and all found out about it. Daddy went and bought poster board and cut it a certain size and he had him a little stamp made that said ‘Slater's Jigs’ on it with an address. He'd take his pocketknife and cut 12 little slots in that card and he'd stick those hooks in those slots. Then he'd sell a card or two to this bait shop and a card or two to a hardware store.”
The demand continued to grow and the process continued to get revised where Slater would put the jigs in a poly bag and his wife would staple them to the card.
“We were getting uptown. Then he decided he was going to have some cards printed. A print company where Sadie Spencer worked by the Enterprise-Tocsin, they printed a little white card. It had the black lettering on the top. Then we didn't have to stamp anymore. My mother, Dot Slater, my sister, Valina, and myself and Daddy, we'd sit around at the kitchen table at night inside the house and do all that.”
The four-person crew filled all the orders each and every week but the demand continued to grow.
“There was a Kroger over in Greenville. At that time, Kroger was kind of like a Kmart or Walmart, it had sporting goods in it. A guy named Randy Kebert was the manager of the sporting goods department and his assistant that was helping him was Clyde McGee that used to own The Sportsman. They called Eddie and wanted him to come over to talk to them about his jigs. Eddie goes over and they had a big show coming up where it was going to be a Thursday, Friday and Saturday promotion and they had different people coming in. They were stocking up with the product. They had this guy whose name was Charles Spence. He used to own Strike King Lures out of Collierville, Tennessee. He was going to come in there and do a couple of seminars on bass fishing. They were stocking up with product and they wanted to have some of daddy’s jigs and they ordered fifty cards. Well, we thought, ‘oh, my goodness, we’re gonna be up night and day trying to fill that order.’ We got it filled and delivered them the week of the show and we go to the show and saw some of our jigs being sold and I met Charles Spence.”
Then on Monday, Slater got a call from Kroger and said the show was so successful, they put in an order for 100 more cards. The family filled that order and the orders kept coming in. And Eddie made a career decision.
“He had 26 years at Mississippi Power and Light and told my mother, ‘I really feel like we can make a living out of this thing,’” Jimmy said.
After a little more convincing with Dot, Slater retired from MP&L and went to work full time for Slater’s Jigs. The company continued to grow and Eddie hit the road promoting and selling and finding distributors. Howard Brothers were on board first, then Kmart and Walmart. At one time, Slater was making over 100 different styles of jigs and even took “special orders” from customers. From an Enterprise-Tocsin article in July of 1976, Eddie was quoted, “If a man asks me to make him a dozen or so pink jigs, I can do it. If he catches a lot of fish with it, it makes him feel extra good that he designed it. In fact, we just list our colors for heads, string, chenille and the various hairs (calves tail hairs in colors and squirrel hairs in colors) and let people order the combinations they want in the designs we offer.”
And he understood how crappie and the jig should work under water.
“A jig should do two things. It should imitate a minnow or water bug and it should offer the least resistance to the fish. Fish don’t bite, they suck,” Eddie said in the article. “The light end of the jig will move toward their mouth first. If it offers much resistance, the jig won’t go into their mouth and you’ll have gotten a bite, not a fish.”
Slater then expanded into other fishing tackle and gear including poles, reels and paddles. He also added some soft plastic lures, one named after a fish that Slater had caught in his youth in 1943 in a minnow trap. No one knew what it was. The fish was taken to the Delta Democrat-Times where Jimmy said he was told they ran a photo of it and the fish was dubbed the “Whatzit.”
“Nobody could identify it. It was some kind of all-colored fish and Daddy always had that name in his mind and when we came up with the first plastic bait he said, ‘I want to name this the Whatzit,’ so that’s what we did.”
Slater would open a brick-and-mortar store in Indianola – Slater’s Outdoors – and Jimmy ran it until a decade ago when, due to health issues, he had to shut it down and scale back. But he’s kept the jig business afloat and continues to create and sell them wherever needed, with now his own backyard serving as the “world headquarters.” His mom still helps out and over the years his two sons, Drew and Allen, both worked the business along with his wife – an avid outdoorsman herself – Kay. And he’s had a little help from a special employee – Miss Clemette Williams.
“She’s like family to us. She’s been with us for 42 years,” Jimmy said. “She’s the right arm and the left arm of helping us keep this thing going.”
Jimmy notes that each family member had their “specialty” – especially his mom.
“There’s no telling how many thousands of cards that my mama has stapled. Twelve bags to a card, she was our stapler and she’d sit there and she was so fast.”
Eddie Slater created jigs but he was also a master fisherman and a seven-time Crappie Fishing Champion of Mississippi and was one of the first inductees into the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum in Leland. It was his fishing acumen that led him to constantly create and basically become a “crappie whisperer” with his jigs.
“They've come out over the years, with all this equipment like color selectors, depth finders, fish locators, everything you can want. But I've never seen anything like it as far as going to any lake. He could look at that lake. He'd get out there and I went with him so many, many, many times. I was his fishing partner for a long time. He'd look at that water. He'd look at the trees. He'd look at what this was doing. He said, ‘I'll tell you what. I think we need to put that orange-black, chartreuse on the tail. We need to put purple on it,’ or whatever the color might be. I guarantee you, eight to nine times out of ten, he was right. He didn't need a color selector. He didn't need a fish locator. Daddy was sharp on that kind of stuff.”
These days Jimmy still does his “research” by getting out and fishing – always with a Slater’s jig on his pole. He’ll sometimes add a live minnow to the setup but always on his daddy’s jigs.
Eddie Slater’s Slater’s Jigs – a simple idea from an Indianola fisherman that grew into a generational career for his family.
