Story by Ken Duke
Jimmy Carter died last week at the age of 100. He was the 39th president of the United States, and most historians seem to count his time in office as mostly unsuccessful, but he had drive and commitment and stayed relevant and productive for almost 40 years after leaving the White House. Few presidents have had that kind of time or that kind of social commitment.
Carter was something of an angler—mostly trout on a fly rod—but this is not about Jimmy Carter. It’s about “The Prez.”
When Carter was elected in 1976, he was quite the phenom, beating out better known Democrats like Ted Kennedy and incumbent Republican Gerald Ford. A former Georgia governor from the little town of Plains, Jimmy Carter was known less for his military service as a naval officer working in the nuclear submarine program than he was for being a peanut farmer and the brother of a beer-loving miscreant named Billy.
He was also known for his Southern accent and toothy grin … and that’s where this story begins.
“The Prez” was a novelty lure made by Cotton Cordell to cash-in on Carter’s election. Cotton Cordell, of course, was a legendary lure maker and fellow Southerner, from Arkansas. He knew a good lure idea when he saw one … at least usually. Cordell was just coming off the enormous success of the first plastic Big O crankbaits, and he was probably ready to gamble just a little. “The Prez” was a small gamble, kind of like the Heddon Big Bud—a square bill crankbait shaped like a beer can—that seemed to be everywhere at about that time.
If you’ve never seen “The Prez,” know that it takes advantage of Carter’s two most salient traits: the peanut and the toothy smile. The lure is 2 1/4 inches long, weighs 1/3-ounce, and casts about as well as a potato chip. In 2017, Outdoor Life published a story calling it one of the 10 worst fishing lures of all time.
I don’t believe it’s anywhere close to that bad, but it’s certainly no Big O or Rapala Shad Rap or Bagley DB3.
Cordell promoted it not only as a novelty, but also as a fish catcher. The paperwork that came with the bait read
After you have had your little joke and a laugh or two, try THE SUPER GOOBER in the water. Believe it or not, THE PREZ was designed to catch fish!
Fish THE PREZ as you would crank bait. Natural color is appealing to most game fish under most conditions.
If you like catching fish, you can vote for THE PREZ and win a majority of the time!
I’m honestly not sure which is worse—the lure or the syntax in the packaging literature.
I’ve seen The Prez in a few different colors, including a glossy gold and a crawdad, but by far the most common color is bone, and who can argue with that. Bone is a great bass color.
Ultimately, The Prez did not fare much better in the marketplace than Jimmy Carter did in the White House. In 1980, Ronald Reagan beat Carter in a landslide election—489 electoral votes to 49.
By then, The Prez was out of production, too.
Today, the lure is something of a collector’s item. You can usually pick one up on eBay—still in the box—for $20 to $40. It’s a fun little piece of fishing and presidential history.
