Full disclosure: I'm a writer and thus I care about the purpose of words.

In women's fashion, the marketers of women's clothing go to a mode called "Full Goofy" when describing the color of garments. A light blue blouse might be described as "Breeze," as if that conveys any meaning colorwise. It doesn't.

Well, the men who name the colors of fishing lures are just as goofy. All form and zero function. Here are some examples of color names without meaning:

M.M.III

Aarons (sic) Magic

Ehrlers (sic) Edge

Folkestad Special

How about being less cutsey and becoming more informative?

While i can see where you’re coming from, with the advent of the internet you can see a picture of just what it is so descriptive colors like you might find in a mail order catalog aren’t needed anymore. I’m sure you also know that three of those are named by (or after) the anglers who developed them with Roboworm. And since they were successful with them they kept the core concept color and expanded on it (there must be a dozen Aaron’s variations).

But I definitely don’t get how they got to margarita mutiliator (which is the base for MM3).

22 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

How about being less cutsey and becoming more informative?

Expensive Piece of Plastic. 😆

Naming things isn’t easy. When I was in the business I had 22 varieties of buck tail jigs. The customers wanted names printed on the packages for easy recognition. They didn’t care what I called them.

I understand their reasoning as on place ordered 1000 at a time.

Let Roboworm have fun.

I use to throw a lot of Kalins Grubs in "Witches Brew" How did they come up with that name? It got bit a lot.

Megabass has hundreds of respect series colors just waiting to be examined.

It’s not just the colors either. What does Neko, wacky, Texas, or Tokyo have to do with a way to rig a bait?

How about all the hyper masculinity in fishing lures? For a sport that's largely catch and release, there are so many over the top names. "Bass Assassin, Bass Mafia, Bass Widow, Smash Tec, Dominator, Warpig... There's this whole under-narrative of power, violence and subjugation that I find incredibly cringy.

22 minutes ago, MontanaBasser said:

How about all the hyper masculinity in fishing lures? For a sport that's largely catch and release, there are so many over the top names. "Bass Assassin, Bass Mafia, Bass Widow, Smash Tec, Dominator, Warpig... There's this whole under-narrative of power, violence and subjugation that I find incredibly cringy.

Outdoor recreation = ManWordSalad to marketing teams. It’s such a childish thing and it exists in all of hunting and fishing.

I’m impressed we haven’t seen “ Patriots new rod line ‘Caliber’ with ‘Tactical Guides’, built with our ‘100% Red Blooded Blanks’ with standout models ‘The Rampage’ and ‘Better Dead than Red’. “

3 hours ago, casts_by_fly said:

While i can see where you’re coming from, with the advent of the internet you can see a picture of just what it is so descriptive colors like you might find in a mail order catalog aren’t needed anymore. I’m sure you also know that three of those are named by (or after) the anglers who developed them with Roboworm. And since they were successful with them they kept the core concept color and expanded on it (there must be a dozen Aaron’s variations).

But I definitely don’t get how they got to margarita mutiliator (which is the base for MM3).

Do you get a text alert when a new thread is made? You are always a first responder, and you look too young to be retired and live here.

I agree. They can get pretty creative to the point they're meaningless. There's a small local soft bait company in my area that lists the color names on their website, but no pics. So just what colors are "Swamp Juice" , "The G.O.A.T." , "Monkey Shine", and "Voodoo"? LOL

2 hours ago, TNBankFishing said:

It’s not just the colors either. What does Neko, wacky, Texas, or Tokyo have to do with a way to rig a bait?

"Neko" (pronounced Neck-O) is the Japanese word for "Cat", meaning the presentation is stealthy - like a cat.

"Wacky" came about because when it first came out, it looked like somebody rigged it wrong...or "wacky"

"Texas rig" came about because, supposedly, it was invented in Texas. There's no evidence of that, but the name stuck.

"Tokyo" - same reason as "Texas"

You think bass lure names are crazy, here are some of my favorite kwikfish colors I use for king salmon. Some of the names originally were descriptive, but fisherman started giving them names in order to shorten the names. Instead of silver with chartreuse head and tail, they started calling it double trouble, or silver with green lightning stripes, and a green and chartreuse tail, simply became Grinch. The Funky Chicken looks so awful it couldn't be called anything else. The company making the lure then started adopting the names given to them by the anglers. Anglers even shorten the names further with Fickle Pickle becoming simply pickle.

Funky chicken

slammer

Fickle Pickle

Bubba

slammer

Double Trouble

Grinch

Glad Clown

Trapper

I keep a fishing log and keep a record of what baits catch fish. It’s hard enough keeping up with a log, but when you have to research to find out what the stupid name of a color is to finish a log entry, it gets kind of aggravating. Product names can be just as bad.

Not to pick on Big Bite Baits (because most of their color names make sense), but here are a few of their wacky names:

1099

Crime-Scene

Confusion

Magician

Old Ugly

Politician

Some of my log entries might say, “Caught 5lb3oz on YoMama Old Ugly...”

8 hours ago, KP Duty said:

Do you get a text alert when a new thread is made? You are always a first responder, and you look too young to be retired and live here.

Ha! No. And definitely not retired. It’s Saturday, the dogs were awake, and the elites were on TV so I was warming up to the day with some BR.

My favorite is Buzzard Puke. Everyone knows it’s brown over chartreuse laminated tube. Then there is Columbia Craw. Brown over blue laminated tubes. Here’s a funny color, 176.

Well, most dudes act tougher than they really are, so a macho name is needed to keep them moving. I just look at the color and if it makes sense for my fishing, I get it. I don’t pay mind to color names much. Hype is something I avoid heavily.

I have a friend who made fantastic balsa squarebills as a winter time hobby. He had a color similar to Bill Norman's mountain dew he called pizz ice . It was inspired by his buddies who would hang around his shop and drink beer and relieve themselves outside.

I don't know how patents work when it comes to naming baits. A local guy , Tim Hughes , was the originator of the Table Rock shad color. He told me that color has won over a million bucks over the years and I don't doubt it.

Now everybody and their cousin sells a stickbait in that color.

@Swamp Girl Katie, I’m just the opposite of naming my hand tied jig colors.

I name them what they are intended to mimic.

Gold shiner, FL gill, Warmouth, Threadfin, Speckled perch and FL craw.

Others I’ve used what the skirt colors are.

Pretty boring yes but easy to figure out what colors they are🙂

Fun sells! Fun names sells baits!

Plus you gotta name them something - branding is everything in today’s world because everyone is selling the same thing to you and the only way to stand out is branding.

As for violence and such - we are forcefully moving a hook point into an animals skull against its will and removing it from it’s environment for pleasure and the animal is violently trying to kill your bait in order for this to take place. The violence branding makes sense.

I always thought Fat Free Shad was a funny name. Bill Dance told the story once of how it came to be. He said when he designed it, everybody was on a fat free craze, so he just named the crankbait the Fat Free Shad.

There’s a difference between a name conveying a color or a rigging style. As for colors, I always chuckled at the multitude of tube colors when we would go to my friends tackle store on our trips to St Clair. Names like Road Kill and Baby Poop. SPRO crankbait called Cell Mate??? As for rigging, I have one that I named and all of my buddies that use it know it by that name. It’s called the Wong Rig. Get your minds out of the gutter, I named it after the Lady Bass Angler pro Judy Wong after I saw her interviewed after she won a tournament. This was long before spot lock was invented and she was fishing the discharge from a dam and in order to get her Senko to the bottom in the fast current, she rigged it on a football head skirtless jig. We were drift fishing on St Clair one of our early years (before spot lock) and even with drift socks, I couldn’t slow down enough to get a tube to the bottom without overloading my rod/reel setup. Then I remembered that interview and rigged up that rig and it shot straight to the bottom and as we drifted, the football head “walked” like trying to launch a kite that turned upside down on the ground. I proceeded to slam the smallmouth and from that day forward I have used the “Wong Rig” even on calm days for that same walking action.

I am by no means uptight, frankly I am positive my kids wish I was more uptight lol. Reaction Innovations bait colors turn me off from their products altogether.

I’ve been waiting for a thread to say what I’ve had on my mind for a long time… I hate the name sexy shad.

@Swamp Girl Goofy? Yes. How about the names they come up with for race horses?