Entry 182-3

Why We Do What We Do

Part 3: The King Shad

Editor’s Note: Have you ever wondered why Strike King has some of the nation’s best professional fishermen on their pro staff? Does the company have pros only to make public appearances and represent their lures? Does Strike King use the nation’s top pros because they win the most tournaments? Does the company have top pros to use their pictures and images in advertising? We asked Mark Davis what’s the most-important role Strike King pros play for Strike King. “Our main jobs include helping develop new products, finding niches in the fishing lures on the market that no company’s selling, and looking for those subtle, overlooked aspects of fishing that we can incorporate in our baits to give our customers the best, the newest and the most-unique lures in the fishing tackle market today,” Davis says. This week, Davis will take a look at some of the new lures Strike King will introduce in 2007 and tell us what makes these lures special.

This jointed swimbait will catch plenty of bass. I’ll primarily use this lure in post-spawn conditions. It will also be a productive summer and fall lure. It can be effective any time bass are feeding on 4-inch-long shad and holding in 4 feet of water or less. I’ll be using this lure in places where you normally fish a shallow crankbait. The King Shad is a unique bait you can fish in areas where other fishermen have fished and present a lure that those bass haven’t seen before.

I’ll keep this lure tied on every time I’m fishing for top-water bass. Most fishermen, when a bass blows up on a top-water lure and misses the bait, will cast right back to that same bass with a soft-plastic lure. If a bass attacks a top-water lure and after it misses the bait, sees a soft-plastic lure fall in front of it like a worm or a tube, pretty soon, the bass will think, “You tricked me once, but you won’t trick me a second time. I’ve seen soft-plastic baits fall in front of me after I’ve missed a top-water bait.” So, instead of throwing that soft-plastic bait like many magazines, books and TV tells you to do, I’ll throw the King Shad, a slow, wobbling swimbait that gives the bass a different bait to look at with a different kind of action than it’s expecting.

This bait will also call bass up from deep water when you’re fishing in highland reservoirs and clear-water lakes. This lure swims in about 3 feet of water. When bass move out to deep water and suspend, especially in clear-water lakes, you can use the King Shad to call them to this bait. I’ll also use this bait when I’m fishing lakes with smallmouth in it. Smallmouth like this size lure, and often will be holding in relatively shallow water. They like to come up to the lure and take it rather than having the lure swim by them. Because this swimbait has a natural swimming motion, it will be really deadly on smallmouth.

The King Shad is a smaller version of the bigger King Kong type baits that Strike King produced in 2006. However, instead of having three joints, this bait has two joints. This bait shows a step back into the future. Forty or 50 years ago, jointed baits were really hot, and anglers caught a lot of bass on them. As new technology has been developed, lure manufacturers have moved away from the jointed-bait concept. But jointed baits never stopped catching bass for the people who use them. So, when swimbaits became popular on the West Coast, everyone thought they were new lures. However, they weren’t new. They were just a bigger jointed swimbait than we’d seen in the past. Strike King’s going back to the smaller jointed swimbaits like the King Shad, and there will be plenty of big bass caught on this lure.

Next: The Sand Blaster

Contents:

• Part 1: Why the Flat Shad
• Part 2: The King Shad
• Part 3: The Sand Blaster
• Part 4: The Red Eye Shad