Polo man reels in thousands of fishing lures over past decade

POLO – Lyle Reap was busy at it Thursday morning. He’d checked some traps he’d set, had been working on some machinery and was preparing to give a tour of his fishing lure collection.

He’s amassed more than 15,000 fishing lures since he began collecting them 10 years ago after his wife, Melody, signed him up to become a member of a fishing lure collectors’ club. Some lures he bought online, others from friends who made them. He also has been going to fishing lure collector events over the years to buy them.

He will be going to one in Milwaukee in January. But this time, he won’t be returning there to buy. Instead, he will be attending to sell them off, piece by piece, display case by display case, as the result of a terminal cancer diagnosis.

As to how difficult it is to break up his collection: “It’s going to be hard someday,” he said. “It hasn’t hit me yet. It will.”

Reap, the owner of Reap’s Paint Spot who did interior painting, dry-walling and ceiling work for 52 years and is semi-retired, fished as a child. He grew up in Erie, later lived in Savanna and graduated from Polo High School. He then served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam from 1967-69. He met his wife, Melody, shortly after returning home.

“I didn’t fish for a long time after we were married, and then in 1988 I started bass fishing. I’d bought my first boat, a used boat, and went to the Mississippi,” he said.

He joined a bass club, to which he belonged for 30 years, fished in tournaments and spent time out on the Mississippi River and local ponds. He taught his daughter, Trish, and two granddaughters, Carly and Mallorie, to fish. In fact, he took both of those granddaughters out to fish on their first birthdays. Each girl’s catch of that day, with grandpa’s help, has been mounted on the wall alongside a fishing pole and their gear to mark the occasions.

Knowing of his love of fishing, his wife in 2014 signed him up to be a member of the National Fishing Lure Collectors Club. He’d collected lures over the years, but the membership cranked up his interest.

It’s safe to say he got hooked.

Along with buying lures off the internet and getting them from friends, he started attending fishing shows. One of his first was in Milwaukee in 2015.

Now a walking encyclopedia of fishing lure knowledge, Reap knows what he paid for each lure, and what it’s worth today. Among the lures are large ones for muskies down to small ones for crappies.

“I’d start out with one and then I’d buy on the internet to get different colors,” he said.

He also the knows the age of each lure, what it is made from, the material used for the eyes and information about the box it came in. The boxes themselves also carry value depending on their age, rarity and condition.

“Every box is worth something,” he said.

“They pay a lot for boxes,” Melody added.

He now has an out-building with two large rooms full of fishing lures, fishing gear and antiques. Some are displayed in old jewelry cases, on a former eyeglass display from an optometrist’s office, on antique pieces, such as a wagon wheel, and in hutches.

Some are in flat cases, while hundreds hang from the ceiling above. In one room, a cactus spine hangs from the ceiling and lures hang from the spine. The holes in the spine make it perfect for displaying the lures, Melody said.

“You can hang a lure on anything,” Melody said.

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Lyle Reap of Polo points out one of thousands of fishing lures he has on display at his home in Polo Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023. (Alex T. Paschal)

The lures are displayed in groups, such as the peanut butter lures named for their color; a bright pink collection of lures hangs from the ceiling and there are brightly colored contemporary wiggle fish lures in a glass-top table.

The lures are displayed as mini collections based on the companies that made them – Puppette, Berkley, Bagley, Pfleuger and Heddon among them.

But bare spots are beginning to appear among the collections.

The 76-year-old Reap is a Vietnam War veteran who served as an Army combat medic for 14 months. He has survived five types of cancers in 15 years, but now has an aggressive lung cancer attributed to Agent Orange exposure. He has been told he has six months to a year left to live.

Because of his diagnosis, Reap is making plans to dismantle his collection. He has been bringing lures from the fishing building into the house to set them in display cases. The selling price he is seeking for each lure, or in some cases lure collections, is written on the glass door right above the lure. There will be 800 8-foot tables full of lures at the Milwaukee show, where he will sell pieces of his collection in January.

“They come from all over the country,” he said of the buyers.

But there is at least one lure that will not make the trip to Milwaukee.

“I’m thinking about keeping this one,” he said. “Mel can keep it.”