Family cuts ties with iconic Tassie lures

THE Wigston family has been hooking fishermen from all over the world for decades with its renowned Tasmanian Devil lures, but now it’s cutting the line.

Garth Wigston has decided the time is right to sell his million-dollar business Wigston Lures despite manufacturing the Tasmanian Devil — the only lure it makes — for 39 years.

Starting out at New Norfolk before later moving to Derwent Park, the company produces close to a million lures annually in 78 colours and exports to 23 countries.

This week, Mr Wigston officially handed over the business to Victorian company JM Gillies, with all six permanent Tasmanian employees keeping their jobs.

The Wigston family began working in retail at New Norfolk in 1934, when Garth’s father, started a shop selling fishing, shooting, and radio equipment.

Mr Wigston worked in the family business but, in 1977, discussed with his father and brother, Ian, the possibility of starting to specialise.

“We thought, ‘let’s think about the possibility of manufacturing them on a mass production basis’, but Dad said, ‘don’t be so silly, you won’t make any money out of that’,” Mr Wigston told the Mercury.

Ignoring their father’s advice, Mr Wigston and his brother started making lures in 1979, but hit an unexpected speed bump.

“We went along for about five years and, all of a sudden, a nice little envelope turned up from a company called Warner Brothers, telling us that we [couldn’t] use the name as they owned the trademark for the Tasmanian Devil,” Mr Wigston said.

“We finally reached an agreement where if we used the brand name Tasmanian Devil in fishing equipment only, they wouldn’t object to our use of the name, because they were mainly interested in their soft toys and things like that.

“These days to get a brand name such as Tasmanian Devil, you would never get it in a pink fit.”

Today, Mr Wigston says the company is probably the largest manufacturer of fishing lures in Australia.

While he is sad to stand aside, he won’t be stepping away completely.

“I’m to the stage now where I’d like to spend a little bit more time sailing my yacht and doing other things, so now is the time to be selling the business,” he said. “I’ll retire into the background, I’m just going to be a reference point and give a bit of a hand for a couple of years.” roamed the mainland. Newly discovered carnivores, including a lion which became extinct in outback Queensland 19 million years ago, are still being identified from fossils.

The tigers’ decline led to the rise of the Tasmanian devil and its relatives, a study led by the Australian National University and published in BMC Evolutionary Biology says.

A comprehensive “tree-oflife” biological study by ANU PhD scholar Shimona Kealy and Dr Robin Beck, of the University of Salford in the United Kingdom, analysed 95 modern and fossil species, including six species of tigers.

“We think the structure of tigers’ feet and ankles might have made them better suited to closed forests … and less well suited to open woodlands,” Ms Kealy said.