The first knives I found mentioned as specifically “fillet knife” is the Imperial 839, found in the 1974 Belknap Hardware catalog.
Imperial Diamond edge stainless professional fish fillet knife measures 11 inches overall with 6-inch flexible blade.
Hardwood handle is oversize and secured with stainless rivets. Non-organic wrap-around sheath won’t crack or split, even in salt water use.
Each knife is on an individual hang-up display card.
C7-839...........Each 3.95.....12 in box; wt box 4 lbs.
The same catalog has ads for fillet knives from Rapala, Carvel Hall, and Western, so it appears that the early 1970's is when the long thin bladed stainless fish fillet knives became fashionable.
It is no wonder that Imperial Schrade added an entry to this genre of knives. Previously, their domination of the fish knife market was focused on the familiar “toothpick” fish knife, popular and copied then and to this day by many companies. I am not sure how old the Dexter design is, but it also was a “fillet” knife of sorts, and was sold under the Sears Ted Williams signature for several years.
One must also remember the hunting-fishing knives known as the “bird and trout” knives, originating with the George Schrade Stagbrand and Schradebrand knives of the ‘late ‘30s‘40s-‘50s, and then the Schrade Walden 140/141/142 etc knives, and the shell handled Imperial fixed blades with dual bolsters, all of which were used by generations of fishermen before the fillet use specific knives became in vogue.
Aside from the aforementioned knives, the first fillet knife appearing in the mainline Schrade catalogs was the Staglon handled 167UH Steelhead in 1982, 12" overall with a 6 3/4" Schrade+ stainless blade, and listing for $24.95. Introduced the same year, though shortened versions of what we now recognize as classic fillet knife style, were the 7 1/4" (2 5/16" blade) 162UH Wolverine, and the 7 ½" (3 3/16" blade) 164UH Badger. While the 162UH (1982-85) and 164UH (1982-88) were short-lived, the 167UH became the mainstay of Schrade fillet knives through 2004, finally listing for $42.95 in it’s last appearance.
In 1983, the Steelhead 167UH was augmented by a smaller classic fillet shape, the 10 ½" (5 1/4" blade) 168UH Walleye (1983-1989).
Also listed in 1983 was a new idea altogether, the “checkered” textured graphite handle 11 1/2 GF65 Grafillet Bigmouth and 9 ½ GF45 Grafillet Littlemouth, with 6 ½ and 4 ½ blades respectively. These both were discontinued from the catalogs after 1985 and from production after 1986, being only produced for four years, making them relatively uncommon today.
Schrade flyers from 1983 illustrated two types of packaging offered. First was a plastic covered tan package referred to as a “gift package” (GF65PP & GF45PP) with sheaths concealed in the rear, and in shrink-wrapped “Blister packs” (GF65B &GF45B) with the sheaths mounted in front with the knives. Another Schrade flyer (second page of the previous flyer) shows the knives in closeup advertising photo with large descriptive text. “Schrade Super Graphite - The perfect companion for your graphite fishing rod”.
A Schrade dealer flyer from 1983 shows the two knives mounted as a part of the oak framed OC-15 vacuum formed red felted dealer counter display with the 164UH, 167UH, and 168UH knives. A Schrade flyer from 1984 showing both knives declares “Schrade Professional Bass Fillet Knives”, with a line drawing of a bass and “Professional Bass Fillet Knife” etched on the blade.
You can view these flyers full size on the collectors-of-schrades-r.us website.
So far, all of the Grafillet knives I’ve seen were without the etch and most were in the white fold down box.
I’ve not yet had occasion to use the one “lightly used” example already in my collection, always picking up one of the Safe-T-Grip knives which serve as kitchen knives when fish present themselves for cleaning. But with this NIB one for the collection, I’ll give the other one a try and see how well it stands up to their claims.
In production for so few years, there must be some reason why it never found much favor with the fishing crowd. Perhaps there was no deficiency at all in performance or price consideration. Perhaps there was just too much competition in the specialized fillet knife market both from other companies and within the offerings of Imperial Schrade.
In 1985, their last year in the catalog, MSRP was $25.95 for the GF65 and $23.95 for the GF45. This is only an increase of $1 each over their 1983 introductory price. Altogether, production for the Grafillet GF45 totaled 21,000 pieces, an average of approximately 5,250 per year during the four year production. Total production of the Grafilet GF65 totaled 28,700 pieces, an average of approximately 7,000 per year during the four year production.
Michael
