Now that you opened this can of worms, I’m going to drop the floodgate:
When I was a youngster, there were only 3 major classes of bass lures: Plugs, Spoons & Spinners.
Oh yeah, there were also Streamers & Flies, but they were fly-rod lures used mainly
for coldwater fish such as trout & salmon. Back then, the word “bait” referred to “live bait”
such as minnows, worms, crickets, hellgrammites, etc. I had no way of knowing that the term “bait”
would suffix every artificial lure I ever fished, namely: crankBAIT, jerkBAIT, spinnerBAIT,
swimBAIT, twitchBAIT, stickBAIT, bladeBAIT, ~ ~ ~. In reality, the suffix “bait” adds nothing
to the lure’s description. Back in the 1950s, the term "plug" referred to any solid lure made of wood,
which was eventually replaced by hard plastic. “Plugs” ran the gamut from the topwater
Arbogast Jitterbug to a deep-diving Bomber and everything in between.
The word ‘plug’ however did not include artificial lures made of metal such as ‘spoons’ & ‘spinners’,
which were separate categories of artificial lures. Then one day, I believe it was in the late 60s,
I heard Rick Clunn refer to his cedar Poe plug as a "crankbait" (Say What!),
and we all know where it went from there.
When the term ‘swimbait’ was coined, it alluded to any lure (hard or soft)
that incorporated two separate actions. For instance, the 'Big EZ' incorporates
the body waggle of a soft-plastic lure with the throbbing of a paddle-tail.
In contrast, a "plug" (billed or lipless) like a Bomber A or Rat-L-Trap offers only one body motion.
Well, the day they coined the word ‘crankbait’, they painted themselves into a corner!
Plugs, spoons, swimbaits and crankbaits are ALL 'cranked baits', but only 'plugs'
are allowed to be referred to as such. It's the age old problem: When you don't think it through,
you end up defending a weak position. Fish On
Roger
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