Entry 164-3

Fishing Strike King’s Products with Mike Wurm

Part 3: The Perfect Skirt

Editor's Note: Mike Wurm of Hot Springs, Arkansas, has been a professional angler for 11 years. He fishes both the FLW and Bassmasters tournament and has won two Bassmasters tournaments.

Question: Do you use a spinner bait?

Wurm: Spinner baits have been a part of the bass-fishing scene since the first angler took a safety pin and put a blade on one end and a hook on the other. Everyone has always tried to improve the spinner bait because it’s such a deadly fish-catching lure. We’ve seen different types of blade combinations and various of blades. We’ve used everything from hair to shoe leather as trailers for spinner baits. Rubber skirts came out first, but they gummed-up because the rubber stuck together. Many times, the rubber skirt lasted for only one fishing trip. Then manufacturers came out with silicone skirts. Silicone worked really well. Since then there has been a lot of improvement on silicone skirts.

Now Strike King has developed the Perfect Skirt spinner bait. The first improvement is in the ability to put a skirt on the spinner bait and then easily remove it. You can change out skirts whenever water conditions or fishing conditions change. The new skirts have a built-in trailer. By lengthening the tail of the skirt, you not only have a trailer, but because the skirt is all one piece, you get the pull-saving action of the skirt all the way down to the trailer. The Perfect Skirt shimmies and shakes with any movement of the spinner bait.

Because of the new colors on the skirts, you can better match them to the spinner baits. Since the colors on the skirts can be layered so that you have one color on top, a different color in the middle and a third color on the base of the skirt, you have a lot more color combinations and more layered colors rather than homogenized colors. The Perfect Skirt spinner baits come with a trailer hook pre-installed. I think this is going to cause everyone who buys them to catch more bass.

Let’s face it, adding a trailer hook to your spinner bait is a hassle. You have to put the silicone ring on to hold the trailer hook straight, and then you have to add the trailer hook. With the new Perfect Skirt spinner bait, the trailer hook comes pre-installed from the factory. When you take the spinner bait out of the package, it’s ready to fish. I believe that a lot more people would fish trailer hooks if they didn’t have to install them, but could just open up the package, tie on a spinner bait, and not have to think about the trailer hook because it’s already there. You’re going to catch more bass by having the hook already pre-installed than if you have to look for the trailer hook holder and the proper size trailer hook for that spinner bait.

I just think the new Strike King Perfect Skirt spinner bait solves many problems for the angler. They allow him to do what he wants to do, which is take the spinner bait out of the package and fish without having to add or remove any elements or equipment from the spinner bait. More importantly, he doesn’t have to add a trailer hook or a trailer to the spinner bait.

Fishing Strike King’s Products with Mike Wurm

Part 3: The Perfect Skirt

Next: The Iguana

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