For some reason folks seem to want to make up weird words and names for things they do, especially in sports.  Nowhere do I see more of these stupid words than in bass fishing.  Some of them amaze me, others are just so disgusting I ignore them to the point I will not even “like” a post on Facebook containing one of them.

    I could understand using a more succinct name to save words, but when the new dumb name is as long or longer than simply saying “big bass” what is the sense?  I guess folks are just trying to be cute or trying to be different just like everybody else.

    Most of us do not catch big bass very often, so some think they need to show off by naming them something odd.  Growing up I might hear a big bass called a “hog,” which morphed into “Hawg” over the years, but there were few others.

One name used for years was catching “Ole Nellie” for a landing a big bass, but more often it was “I lost Ole Nellie” today, meaning anything from hooking a stump to feeling a tap on your bait, setting the hook and missing the bite, never seeing the fish.  But “Ole Nellie” was so common a Georgia tackle company used it for their name.

    Nicknames like “bucketmouth” have been around for a while, but somehow largemouth are often named “largeheads” now. Why? Seems stupid to me.  A largemouth head is no bigger than a spot or smallmouth, but it is used to delineate between the species.  Will those folks now call smallmouth “smallheads?”  What will they use for spotted bass? “Spothead” or “Medium Head” maybe since it seems to relate head to mouth size?

    The first time someone said they caught a “Slobber Knocker”” I thought they had taken a picture of a couple of ten-year-old boys fighting.  That image of a kid being hit in the nose and snot flying still comes to my mind rather than an image of a big bass.

    A similar silly name is “Swamp Donkey,” a term that seems to be favored by college fishermen.  My mind brings up someone putting out traps for a Sasquatch.  Folks using that term are almost always fishing on a lake, and donkey and bass just do not jive in my mind.

“Chunk” or “Toad” or “Tank” makes some sense to me since those words describe a big fat bass pretty good, as do “Sow” or “Lunker.”  I start getting lost when it goes to “Porker” or “Butterball” though.

I understand the term “green trout” for bass since bass were often called “trout” by some of my uncles.  But how did the made-up word “Slaunch” get associated with fishing.  I have heard “Slaunch Donkey,” 
(there’s that four-legged mammal again) or just a “Slaunce.”  If someone on the street said “Slaunce” in a conservation, would it make you want to call the mental hospital?

“Gorilla” makes a little sense but it makes me think of a zoo, not fishing.  But if you say “Hydrilla Gorilla” like one weigh-in guy on TV tournament shows, it rhymes a little, and makes some sense but is still silly. But how do you get “beefers” or “bulls” for a big bass?

Where in the world did “ditch pickle” come from?  I often hear it from Lake Lanier fishermen this time of year, and fishing ditches in the winter there is a good pattern, but a “pickle?”  I guess bass are green.

I try to have some respect for the game I kill and the fish I catch, and these names are just the opposite of respect.  It’s weird – some fanatical bass fishermen that go crazy if a bass they caught dies will say they want to “Rip Some Lips.”  That sounds like an effort to kill the bass. There is even on guide service called “Lipripper” and that name makes me ignore everything they say.

Fishing is supposed to be fun, even on those tough days when fish just do not bite. But I constantly hear fishermen say “It was a grind,’ or worse “I grinded it out to catch some.” Sounds like a miserable day at work to me. If it is that hard, why do it?  Go grind where you get a salary, not trying to win a bet on catching fish.

    The first time I saw a post that said “I got the dub on my home pond with this slaunch,” I ask the site to convert it to English, but it didn’t change.  I knew if had something to do with bass fishing since the picture was a four-pound bass.  I checked and it was posted by a college fisherman.

    I guess he was trying to be cute, or different like every other fisherman his age, by using “hip” words.  What he meant to say was “I got the win on Lake Logan
Martin with this nice bass.” 

I’ve already given my take on using “slaunch” for a bass. I don’t know if he was ashamed he was on Lake Logan Martin, trying to hid it or just being cute by calling it his “home pond.”  Without research no one knows where his “home” is and calling a 17,000-acre lake a “pond” is just odd.

It took me a minute to figure somehow new-speak turned “Win” into “W” then “Dub.’  Really strange, I wonder what he is going to do with the millisecond he saved by using “Dub” rather than “Win.”  Oh, wait, they are both three letters.

    I have lots of pet peeves. Growing up I thought beatnik slang was stupid, in college hippy talk was cool but now every new thing that comes along just seems dumb.  I guess my age is showing!