Cotton Cordell

Cotton Cordell (1928—2015) When Cotton Cordell was just a kid, his father owned a boat landing on Lake Catherine, in Hot Springs, where he cut his teeth on fishing, guiding, and lure designing.

After World War II, he discovered that, by purchasing survival kits that had been stowed on military aircraft, he would get a knife, a razor, twine, bandages, and a bucktail jig, made with white-tail deer hair. It was the jig that caught his attention.

When war survival kits became scarce, he learned to improvise by using hair from his English Setter. “Dog hair will catch just as many fish as deer hair. But before it was over, I had the baldest English Setter in the world”. Quite an inauspicious beginning for sure and one that led Cordell to form his own lure company when the demand for his jigs outgrew his ability to make them in the bathroom of his small bait and tackle shop.

By the time he sold Cordell lures in 1980, he had designed or obtained marketing rights to lures that are still produced by the millions and have become household names. He bought the rights to make and sell a plastic version of Fred Young’s wooden “Big O” crankbait and helped launch the “alphabet crankbait craze.”

Once a fishing lure designer, always a fishing lure designer. His office was literally carpeted with dozens of wood carvings of prototype lures and hand-shaved plastic molds that he knew one day would help everyone catch more fish.

Cordell was elected into the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in 1987, and into the Arkansas Outdoor Hall of Fame a few years later. He was a past Board of Directors Member of the Ouachita Baptist University and an Honorary Member of the National Fishing Lure Collectors Club.