“Just an ol’ country boy that loved fishing and worked hard at it all of his life.”
That’s how Bassmaster Elite Series angler Mark Davis described Cotton Cordell, the Arkansas native and man behind so many fishing lure innovations who passed away Tuesday.
Davis was raised a couple of blocks away from where Carl Richey "Cotton" Cordell Jr.
laid the foundation for his fishing tackle empire in Hot Springs, Ark.
Upon hearing of Cordell’s passing, Davis tweeted the following on Tuesday:
heaven gained another fishing legend today rip Cotton Cordell
— Mark Davis (@MarkDavisAngler) January 6, 2015“It’s a sad day for fishing,” Davis told BassFan Wednesday while taking a break from a hunting trip in south Texas. “I knew him pretty well. I’d been around him all my life being from Hot Springs. We weren’t close by any means, but we went to the same church.
“He was very humble and a devout Christian and was very bold to profess his faith,” Davis added. “I always liked that about Cotton. He was real quick to tell a story or reminisce or talk about fishing. He was just a guy that loved fishing first.”
Davis remembers one of Cordell’s first spinnerbait designs – the Spider, a single-blade wire bait that had thick rubber legs on it.
“He got into manufacturing after that was real popular and he did a lot with hard baits, but he got his start with jigs and spinnerbaits,” Davis said.
Measuring the impact Cordell had on the fishing industry and anglers worldwide is darn near impossible, Davis says.
“It’s very difficult to measure,” Davis said. “He impacted so many with his lures. A lot of the younger guys may not realize it, but back in the '70s and all through the '80s and even in the '90s after Pradco bought him out, his business was booming. He had a huge impact on the industry. It’s probably not been felt as much in the past decade or since the turn of the century and it’s a shame a lot of those lures seem to go by the wayside now. For years, they were in every store that sold fishing tackle.”
