Entry 39-5

Mark Davis

Mark Davis' Quad Shad

Strike King LureEditor's Note: Thirty-eight-year-old Mark Davis, of Mount Ida, Arkansas, won the BASS Masters Classic in 1995, the Angler-of-the-Year title in 1995, 1998 and 2001, and is ranked third by www.bassfan.com for bass-fishing expertise.

Question: Tell me your fifth-favorite lure.

Davis: My fifth-favorite Strike King lure is the George Cochran ¼-ounce Quad Shad. Of course, there’s a whole family of Quad Shads. The main blade of this Quad Shad is a No. 4 willow, and it also has three Colorado blades in front of it. This is all put together on a stainless-steel, rather than titanium, spinner-bait shaft.

I actually like the chartreuse and white because, if you notice on this particular one, the blades alternate color. In other words, it’s gold-nickel-gold-nickel, and I prefer that color alternating over all of the blades being gold or all of the blades being nickel. When you break the colors up, you get that different contrast, and it looks like a school of baitfish. However, if you put all of the same color blades on, they all kind of just run together and look like one big bait, which can be good. But I prefer the alternating blade colors.

Mark DavisQuestion: Where do you fish this lure, and in what conditions do you fish it?

Davis: I use typical spinner bait techniques with this ¼-ounce Quad Shad. For me, this lure works the best during two different times of the year. One is during postspawn, when the shad are spawning. In the South that means late April, May and even June. Of course, this lure will work any time of the year but that is really the best time of the year to use it. Also, it works well in the fall when the fish move towards the back of the creek and they are fishing these smaller shad.

But I fish it typical spinner bait style – in shallow cover. One of my favorite things to do is get on a lake that has boat docks and swim it right in the shade of those boat docks. I guess to a bass this lure looks like a school of shad swimming along with the foam and/or flotsam. At those docks, I catch a lot of bass on this particular bait. That has been a key pattern for me in a lot of tournaments.

 

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