Entry 21-4
When Strike King Saved the Day for Mike Wurm
The Rocket Shad Saves the Day
Editor's Note: Mike Wurm of Hot Springs Arkansas, ranked sixth in the world by bassfan.com and one of the nation's leading pro fishermen, has been a part of Strike King's Pro Fishing Team for six years. This week, Wurm will tell us about a couple of times that he's been ready to throw in his rod and instead pulled out a Strike King product that saved the day.
Question:Tell me about the time the Rocket Shad saved your day of bass fishing.
Answer: I was fishing on Lake Champlain, catching quite a few smallmouth. Champlain, on the border of New York and Vermont, is one of those lakes where you have to work really hard not to catch quite a few smallmouth. The Strike King Spinner Bait was the hot bait of the day. Bass are much like we are. They often will change their minds. Sometimes a hot bait can turn cold for some unknown reason, and the bass will ignore it, which is what happened to me.
I thought I was going to blow everybody away in the tournament with my Strike King spinner bait, but the bass soon let me know no one lure always would work all the time every day. So I started changing spinner baits and finally went to the crankbait. Although I was catching a few fish, I still wasn't catching the size and number of bass I thought I should be catching. I started studying the water and looking at the baitfish. I noticed the baitfish were much smaller than what I thought they should be at this time of the year.
I was casting a 3/4-ounce spinner bait, primarily because I could cast it a long ways. Champlain is so clear you have to make really long casts to get the bait away from the boat. Because of this lake's clearness, the bass will come up from deep water and annihilate a spinner bait. On this day as the sun grew brighter in the sky, the bass became more reluctant to take a big spinner bait. I studied the small baitfish and realized I didn't have a really small spinner bait that I could cast a long ways away from the boat to get the bass to bite.
Now you have to remember my entire boat is a tackle box. Not only do I have lures in my conventional tackle boxes, but also I have lures and baits stuffed in rod lockers, dry storage, under the console and anywhere you can hide a lure. So I began to turn the boat upside down looking for baits I could fish.
Finally I lifted up the lid of a dry-storage box, dug down into the bottom of it and found a Strike King Rocket Shad. I thought to myself, "Well, this is a good time to try this bait." You can cast the 1/2-ounce Rocket Shad a country mile. It's a very small-profile spinner bait that you can speed burn as you retrieve it, and the bait will come through the water perfectly, regardless of how fast you reel it.
As I began to tie the lure on, I saw how it exactly matched the size of the bait I was seeing around the boat. The color I chose was chartreuse with a gold blade. When I started casting that Strike King Rocket Shad, the smallmouth turned on unbelievably. They started eating the Strike King Rocket Shad like it was the only bait in the water.
Since then, I never go fishing without three or four Rocket Shads in my tackle box. I've learned to keep a Strike King Rocket Shad tied on the rod on the deck of my boat. When I see bass breaking on the surface or schooling on the surface, I'll pick up the little Rocket Shad, cast it to them, allow the lure to free-fall to the bottom and catch those bass that may not have hit any other lure.
The two features that make the Rocket Shad the lure "you should never be caught without" is its small profile that makes it easy for the bass to eat and its heavy weight, which enables you to throw it a country mile. When you're fishing clear water and need to get bait well away from the boat, this lure fits perfectly.
Contents:
- Part 1: The Bitsy Bug and Big Bass
- Part 2: A Frog Saved the Day
- Part 3: When the Tube Tactic Paid Off...
- Part 4: The Rocket Shad Saves the Day
- Part 5: Learn Why Cranking May Seem Crazy...
