The screen door on Basore?s Bait Shop rings when a “customer” enters the cabin-like structure. The homey atmosphere–mounted fish all over the walls with new boxes of supplies gleaming on shelves and counters–instantly transports an angler to the 1940s or so.
This is Dan Basore’s fantasy come to life. The exhibit within an exhibit is a manufactured vintage bait shop of its time containing a multitude of fishing rods, lures, trophies and decorations from the personal collection of perhaps the world’s most avid gatherer of fishing stuff.
It is just a small segment of the History and Ingenuity of Sport Fishing display at the Lake County Discovery Museum running through Sept. 23. And the goods represent a smaller portion of the vast fishing-related collection in the possession of Basore, 63, of Warrenville.
Basore is a familiar figure to Chicago-area anglers because he has been an active fisherman all his life and because traveling versions of his collections appear regularly at outdoors shows. This is his fifth museum-type exhibit, but by far the most ambitious.
“It means a lot more to me to share these things,” Basore said.
Basore was 15 when a grandfather left him a tackle box. He immediately became enamored with its contents and older fishing tackle. For years, even decades, no one else was much interested in saving and collecting old lures and gear. People thought Basore was nuts when he spent even $10 on an old tackle box.
“They laughed at me,” he said.
But one man’s treasure has become another’s museum exhibit.
The Lake County Discovery Museum in Wauconda has mounted popular exhibits on late Bears superstar Walter Payton and on Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs. The fishing exhibit, which opened in March, has been luring spectators at a good rate, according to exhibitions manager Steve Furnett.
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Furnett saw the potential in such an exhibit several years ago when he first met Basore and he has worked closely with him to bring some of his prize items out of the closet.
“It always just stuck in my head what a great collection he had,” Furnett said. “I proposed it to our team. It’s a great tie-in with the Lake County Forest Preserves. It has been great. We have the promotion machine of Dan Basore working for us.”
Basore is indeed an enthusiast about fishing gear of the past and knows the manufacturing provenance as well, but in many ways his remarkable collection speaks for itself.
You haven’t lived until you have see Bud Stewart Ratman Lures that were made from muskrats and mice roughly from the 1930s to 1960s. They came with a fish-catching guarantee on the box that included Stewart’s home phone number in Flint, Mich., and the pledge he would row the boat himself if the angler couldn’t catch fish with the lure.
Among other fascinating objects on display: 2,000-year-old Alaska fishing lures, lures from Samoa and the Philippines, Chippewa Indian fishing jigs from 1800, and an 1847 spring lure that was the first patented fishing gear item, according to Basore.
Lures go in and out of style over time, but any fisherman who sees it will wish he still could buy a souvenir dynamite lure. The lure with two treble hooks, is shaped like a stick of the explosive and plays upon the enduring joke that anglers make about being unable to raise fish from the depths without dynamite.
Another must-not-miss lure is promoted this way: “As the last resort — try the kitchen sink.” Yep, it’s a lure in the shape of a kitchen sink. It’s not clear if either the dynamite lure or the kitchen sink lure actually caught fish, but they are both worth a laugh.
Another intriguing item on display is what Basore says is the oldest known Orvis fly rod, dating to the 1860s.
In a separate room attached to the main exhibition floor, there is a playroom for kids.
There is only one thing missing from this exhibition. Basore and Furnett whimsically wonder if a passing-through child will invent a cicada lure.
“It can be used only once every 17 years,” Furnett said.
The Lake County Discovery Museum’s History and Ingenuity of Fishing exhibit is open Monday-Saturday from 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. and Sunday from 1-4:30 p.m. Admission is $6 for adults, $2.50 for children 4-17, free for children 3 and under and $2.50 for seniors after 2 p.m.
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