Entry 126-5

Kevin VanDam on Strike King’s New Products

Diamond Shad: My Confidence Bait

Editor's Note: This fall Strike King has introduced a boat load of new products. However, the Strike King Pros have had the opportunity to fish these new products during this past summer before their introductions. This week Kevin VanDam will tell us what exciting new Strike King products he's fished and what he likes about them.

VanDam: Over the years, I've developed a tremendous amount of confidence fishing the Diamond Shad. One of the main reasons is because this lure has won a lot of money for me, and when you can find a lure that can put money in your bank account, you will believe in it. This is the reason the new Diamond Shad is on my top-five list for hot new baits from Strike King this year. I fish this bait primarily from fall until late spring. Once again, the reason that I think the Diamond Shad performs so well for me and other anglers is because Strike King has so many colors in this lure that anglers can match the color of Diamond Shad we want to fish to the time of the year, the color of the water and the baitfish that the bass are feeding on to come up with the best bait to catch a bass with any time we're fishing this lure.

My favorite new color is what Strike King calls watermelon seed. This bait has an Army green back and chartreuse sides and is a really good color to fish in clear to stained water for bass, especially when you fish it around vegetation. This bait is one I like to fish on flats, and I like to make sure I'm contacting the bottom when I'm fishing it over flats. When I fish it over grass, I like to let it hit the grass or clip the grass. I also like to fish the Diamond Shad around stumps. I believe the real key to getting strikes on the Diamond Shad is to hit the cover and then rip the bait up so it looks like a fish that's been dazed. I don't just cast the bait out and reel it in as fast as I can to get it back to the boat. I yo-yo the bait, give it a jigging action, stop and start the lure and try to make it hit cover and bounce off that cover. Because this bait has flat sides, it really deflects well off cover.

I really believe that one of the reasons more fishermen don't catch more bass on the Diamond Shad is because they don't give the bait an erratic action. They simply cast it out and reel it in to their boats. When you change the direction or the speed or allow the lure to fall, you're giving the bass snapshots of a wounded bait fish that will be easy for the bass to catch and eat. Every type retrieve I use, even when I'm burning a spinner bait, will have some type of erratic action built into the retrieve. Really, all you need to know to make a bait work better for you is to remember that erratic actions trigger bass to bite better.

Contents:

• Part 1: Six New Colors in the Bleeding Wild Shiner
• Part 2: Fired-Up About the Bleeding Premiere Elite Spinner Bait
• Part 3: Why I'm Hot on Chunks
• Part 4: How Does a Tube Bleed?
• Part 5: Diamond Shad: My Confidence Bait