The Little Cleo

Acme Tackle Company
P.O. Box 72771, Providence, RI 02907
(401) 331-6437 • www.acmetackle.com

by John D. Silva

I’ll admit it: I’m a hopelessly passionate trout, salmon and steelhead angler. I’m hooked, and I accept it willingly. As such, one freshwater lure that I’m always sure to have stocked in my tackle box is the Little Cleo.

    A classic among freshwater casting spoons, the Little Cleo was first introduced in 1953 by Seneca Lure Company of New York City. Initially designed for salmon and steelhead anglers in the Great Lakes region, the Little Cleo has steadily become a popular staple lure for freshwater anglers throughout North America and beyond.
    Today the Little Cleo is manufactured by Acme Tackle Company of Providence, Rhode Island. Founded in 1952, Acme acquired the rights to manufacture and sell the Little Cleo (and other Seneca lures) in 1980, when it purchased Seneca Lure Company. Seneca was founded in 1951 by Charlie Clark, who has been described as a unique personality with a very acute sense of humor. Over the years, Charlie worked in a number of different business ventures, including songwriting and publishing. During his career, Charlie wrote and produced such memorable titles as “I’d Pay a Thousand Dollars to be a Millionaire,” “On a Pen & Pencil Farm in Pennsylvania,” and “From the Indies to the Andes in my Undies,” just to name a few.
    Growing up in Upstate New York, Charlie was an avid fisherman. So when he saw an opportunity to get into the lure manufacturing business, he jumped right in. Charlie started out by designing and marketing wooden striper plugs called Master Lures. But as Great Lakes salmon and steelhead fishing began to rise in popularity, Charlie decided to see if he could come up with some metal lure designs to take advantage of the growing demand. Using proven European designs as a starting point, Charlie’s first metal lure success was the Wob-L-Rite spoon, which Acme still manufactures and sells today. A couple years later, Charlie completed the design for another new spoon, which would ultimately become his most famous and popular lure creation. With its concave, humpbacked shape, Charlie’s new lure twisted and wiggled so enticingly when retrieved that he considered it irresistible to any predatory fish it came in contact with. Once field-testing was complete, the only thing left to do was to come up with a name.
    As the story goes, Charlie had become secretly enamored with an actress named Rhonda Fleming, who starred in the 1951 movie Little Egypt. The title of the movie was based on the stage name of an exotic-style dancer, who in 1893 began popularizing a form of dancing known as the “hoochee-coochee” or “shimmy and shake” – more widely known today as belly dancing. Charlie reasoned that the enticing, wiggling action of the lure would be as tantalizing to the fish as the dancer in the movie was to him. Thus Charlie wanted to bestow the honor of the dancer’s stage name upon the lure. Since there were likely copyright issues associated with the movie title Little Egypt, Charlie decided on a comparable substitute, Little Cleo (short for Little Cleopatra) the Wiggling Killer. Charlie even went so far as to imprint the image of a belly dancer on the packaging and on the inner concave of some of the Little Cleos themselves, his own personal joke. This practice continued for over 43 years, until the image finally became a casualty of politically correct sensibilities in the mid-1990’s.
    Today the Little Cleo is available in nine sizes, ranging from 1/16 ounce up to 1¼ ounces. The smallest sizes are designed for smaller freshwater fish such as trout, perch, and panfish. The medium sizes are aimed at freshwater game fish such as bass, pickerel, walleye and salmon, and the largest sizes are made for big freshwater bruisers such as lake trout, largemouth bass, pike and muskies, as well as smaller saltwater species like schoolie striped bass and snapper bluefish.
    “[The Little Cleo] is very durable,” said Art Lavallee, president of Acme Tackle. “Like all Acme lures, we use nothing but stainless steel split rings. We could cut corners and use nickel-plated steel, but we use stainless steel. And the hooks we use are all Mustad or VMC, high-quality treble hooks.” The Little Cleo is available in 36 colors and combinations, many in a two-tone design. The surface finishes vary and come in several combinations, including smooth metallic, painted, hammered, and fluorescent glow colors. “All of the painted finishes are baked on,” said Lavallee. “They are not air dried. They are baked on in an oven to give the paint durability.” Acme also offers the Little Cleo in multi-pack kits, with several lures packaged together in a variety of colors, assembled for specified types of freshwater fishing.
    The Little Cleo is a versatile lure that is equally effective when using a variety of techniques. The shape of the Little Cleo features a unique, humpbacked design that provides an enticing, wobbling and darting action when retrieved. The action of the lure is basically built-in, so the lure will attract and catch fish even while using the simplest of retrieves. “I’ve found that the most popular spoons have excellent built-in action, just by virtue of their shape,” Lavallee said. “Their aquadynamics, the way they perform in the water… generally they can make a neophyte fisherman successful, because a lot of times those spoons work well on a slow retrieve, a fast retrieve; they will generally attract the fish. But in the hands of a more expert angler, one who experiments – for example, letting the lure sink to the proper depth, or finding the right speed of retrieve – [the lure] becomes even more deadly.”
    Anglers who want to impart a little extra action can start by retrieving the Little Cleo just fast enough to keep a tight line, then lightly pumping the rod tip. This will give the lure a rolling, darting action. When fishing in cold water, use heavier models with a slow retrieve, allowing the lure to descend deep to trigger strikes from sluggish fish. When targeting more aggressive fish in warm and/or shallow water, use thinner, lighter spoons with a quick retrieve. The Little Cleo is also an excellent lure to use for vertical jigging, either while ice fishing or when jigging from a boat, dock or pier. It can also be used with great success while trolling.
    In the years following Charlie Clark’s introduction of the Little Cleo, anglers of all pursuits throughout North America have discovered what salmon and steelhead anglers in the Great Lakes region have known since its inception: the lure works. Considered a classic by today’s standards, the design has ultimately passed the test of time, and is as effective today as it was 50 years ago.     As for Little Cleopatra herself, traditionalists and/or collectors can find a limited number of the original, classic Little Cleos in certain segments of the market. In particular, Acme has made available a limited supply of original Little Cleos, packaged together in a special collector’s set. The lures in this set are unsold stock manufactured in the mid-1990’s that were pulled from the shelves when the decision was made to remove the dancer’s image from the surface of the lures. So for a limited time, anglers and collectors can purchase a limited number of the original lures in Charlie’s classic design, featuring Little Cleo herself on the reflective inner concave she called home for 43 years.

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