Entry 202-1

Shaw Grigsby on What Makes Strike King Lures Great

Day 1: Pure Poison – There’s Nothing Like It

There’s no other swimming jig on the market like the Pure Poison. To begin with, this bait has a special hinged eye that gives the jig more action than jigs with a solid eye. It also has a split ring that the line ties to, creating more shakes and vibrations from the jig, and the Perfect Skirt, which gives the skirt more flair and has a trailer on it.

Strike King has used the Perfect Skirt on its Premier Plus spinner baits for 1 year, and we’ve decided to put it on the Pure Poison to create a trailer that doesn’t get torn-up every time you catch a fish and that you don’t have to replace each time to catch a fish. The skirt colors match the jighead colors, so if you have a jig that’s black on the bottom and blue on the top, it will be matched with a skirt of the same color, carrying the color lines through the length of the bait. The Pure Poison swimming jig gives off a lot of shakes and vibrations to attract bass.

I’ve fished the Pure Poison on heavy line like a spinner bait instead of fishing it like I’ll fish a jig. I fish it on 50-pound-test Performance braided line because the line is small and thin, but also extremely strong. I’ll fish Pure Poison around trees, logs, stumps and rocks, which are rough environments for line to come through without hanging-up. I want to bounce Pure Poison off the cover. Then when the bait hits the cover and deflects off it, the bait acts very erratically, making it impossible for bass to resist eating it.

The great thing about Pure Poison is that it has more action in the line than a spinner bait, giving it a long, thin profile just like a baitfish. If you place a Pure Poison beside a shad, you’ll notice that it resembles a shad, but is more compact and in-line, meaning you can work it through much-thicker cover than a spinner bait. It still won’t get hung-up. Also, you get a lot of bites on this bait.

Pure Poison is one of my favorite new baits to fish, and I’ve caught more fish on this jig than I will have caught, if I haven’t fished with this bait. I catch so many bass because I’m able to put a different-looking bait with a unique action in the cover and present it to bass that never have seen a bait like it.

In competition, if I’m fishing behind someone like Kevin VanDam, and he goes down a bank with a spinner bait, I can follow him down the same bank with the Pure Poison and drastically increase my odds of catching the bass he’s missed with the spinner bait. So, if you’re fishing in lakes that receive a lot of fishing pressure, especially tournament pressure, then the Pure Poison is a lure the bass likely haven’t seen before and will be highly-productive for you.

Next: Catch the Red Eye

Contents:

• Part 1: Pure Poison – There’s Nothing Like It
• Part 2: Catch the Red Eye
• Part 3: King of Shads – King Shad
• Part 4: Computers and Bass Fishing
• Part 5: Become a Jack-of-All Trades