The Swedish watchmaker A. B. Urfabriken started selling fishing lures in the early 1940s. At first they sold lures made by other companies, these lures had names such as  Ideal X, Pike and Snäck-draget. If you have information, images etc  to offer on these lures please contact me to have your information recorded and recognized. In later decades,  the process of outsourcing was to be continued and very occasionally where ABU did not have the patents, expertise etc they sought to buy/licence and re-brand with the ABU name. Norway, Finland, USA, Scotland, Italy were source countries which come to mind.

It was not long before the little factory in Svängsta was manufacturing baits itself, initially utilising existing lure designs like the Pendulum spoon (Pendel-draget), Högbom spinner, etc., and then its own designed lures starting with the Abu spinnaren and Abu spoon which were first sold in 1945. Incidentally in naming this later bait Abu, it was the first time that the name was used, the company did not adopt this word for its own identity until 1956.

It is intended to discuss ,over time and in detail, with text and images, all the baits made by Abu here, starting in  the 1940's , entries being determined by the actual decade when it was introduced (regardless of any subsequent revisions to the lure).

I have decided that in my pages here the year of first issue of the lure type  will determine the layout  ie by decades , consequently you will see the lures explained from when they first appeared,  whereas the other prominant and acknowledged  ABU lure historians aka Steen Tommy Pedersen have organized their lures  in alphabetical order while  the other earlier book written by Göran Magnusson and Urban Westblom considers lure usage classification. Organizing by production dates for each and  every lure is just too un-wieldly.

The amount of information here is too extensive to have on one page, so each individual lure image will link to its more detailed information and images.

It is worthy of note that whilst early lures were in paper boxes, discussed elsewhere on site, the very first were offered loose in counter boxes of tackle shops where on or sebveral dozen could be purchased.

Contributions for other interested parties are invited. For example Toomba writes about scaling in ABU lures.

THE SCALES : Comment/Observation by my friend Toomba
 
This may need an explanation.. in those very early ABU lures the scales seemed to be different.

Look on your page on the Tylö lure and the Salar.. the first models has a bit more triangular type of scales, they are more pointy and "raw" than the common ones. They are also lined differently.
 
The common scales are more rounded, soft and follows a straight line.. interesting, did they change tools or something??
 
To sum it all up, there are so many variations on both the lures and the boxes that making a complete (or close to) timeline of the lures and boxes actual age should be possible and will be shown on these bait pages. They follow a pattern, and if we ( anyone who wishes to contribute) gather some more material and give it some time we should be able to get very close a complete map of all the baits and the boxes from the earliest years. Up to mid sixties or perhaps later.. 

Will need more of your help friends :)
 
Tomba