Just try to resist these alluring names

Paul Melchior and I were into our last forkfuls of lunch when we started discussing fishing lures and how important it was years ago to have the right names assigned to them.

So I jumped in to the wayback machine and started the dialog by calling out names that had a somewhat mesmerizing effect on anglers.

So hang on and please keep in mind I may have skipped some names in my quest to bring those babies back to life.

Of course, I immediately flashed to my cousin Lenny and the glue that keeps him bound to a Little Joe spinner.

Year after year, he uses that tiny rig with a minnow or nightcrawler to catch his limits of walleyes in Northholm, Minn.

Both Melchior and I started with the easy ones, the lures that flew off the shelves decades ago while also giving the fisherman the chance to catch big fish.

Mind you, these are lures and baits (probably the same thing) that became not only standards in the tackle box but also were tagged as the go-to choices when one would hit the lake.

Let's see, I'll start with the Bass-O-Reno and then the Crazy Crawler.

The all-time favorite, the Zara Spook, is one of the classics, with a name some anglers believe frightened bass and pike out of their scales when it hit the water, so they attacked it as an interloper.

How about the Jaw Breaker, and Snagless Sally?

The Lucky 13 was for fishermen who like to challenge superstition, while the Tadpolly was a big hit with believers in voodoo, perhaps.

The Muskie-Killer was big with the macho crowd, while the South Bend Super-Duper tried to instill confidence at least it did for my late father.

Florida, Michigan, Long Island, New York, Georgia, as well as Chicago were homes to some of the most innovative lure inventors in the country.

And these inventors believed their creations were the ultimate fish-catchers, bar none.

But it was fishing giant James Heddon and Sons in Dowagiac, Mich., who had a staff of lure designers and testers that produced some of the more notable lures, many of which still are used today by anglers who know a good thing when they use it.

Heddon was completely dedicated to fishing products, which included rods, reels, and lures, until the Daisy Company came into the picture. I believe that was when Daisy incorporated its famous BB guns into the Heddon family.

Anyway, lures were mostly manufactured as side ventures by tool and die makers with a smattering of marketing genius.

These people were fishermen, and they knew if they gave their creations names that inspired an angler their lures would sell.

The Mepps Company discovered decades ago that the right lure name plus a flashy spinner was the ticket to success.

Of course it didn't hurt that Mepps' users kept up a steady stream of positive letters to the company that helped serve as testimonials in future marketing efforts.

In recent years the Terminator spinner bait rose close to the top of the lure chain because the name alone was enough to give a 9-year-old nightmares while daring fish to tangle with it.

Besides Mepps, another giant that has persevered is a longtime favorite known as Rapala. This balsa bait came on the scene in 1936 and has managed to weather the storm by producing variations on the original minnow theme.

Long considered a bait to use when everything else failed to produce a strike, parent company Normark cashed in on its past successes by manufacturing both fresh and saltwater models used throughout the world.

I know I've overlooked a lot of lure names that may still be popular today. There's only a certain amount of room. But I will tell you that to this day I still catch bass and pike on a HellBender despite its ominous name.

Contact Mike Jackson at angler88@att.net, and catch his radio show 6-7 a.m. Sundays on WSBC 1240-AM.