Entry 208-5

Mark Menendez on Strike King’s Latest Lures

Part 5: How to Poison Bass

Question: Mark, why do you believe that Pure Poison is an extreme bait?

Menendez: I like to fish this lure when it’s extremely hot or extremely cold. In the past, the spinner bait has always been my go-to lure in tough situations because it has blades, it flashes and has vibration. But the Pure Poison has a different silhouette to it with more of a compact shape, twice the vibrations of the spinner bait and smaller blades, giving a completely-different look than a spinner bait.

In cold water, I’ll put a Denny Brauer chunk on the back of it, or I’ll put a piece of pork behind it and wind it really-slowly around riprap, rocky points and any other pre-spawn type area I locate. I won a lot of money with the Pure Poison when it was still in the prototype stage.

I’ve found that it’s truly poison for bass when the water’s really hot. It works best for me when I can find 90- to 95-degree water. If you’re fishing a spinner bait in that kind of water, the bass will flash at it and maybe nick it, but most of the time, the fish won’t inhale it. However, in hot water, this lure has so much vibration that for me, it can take the place of a spinner bait.

The Pure Poison doesn’t have a weed guard on it, but it’s an extremely-weedless bait, even without the weed guard. When you’re fishing this bait around heavy cover, you really have to be conscious of the angle of your rod tip, because you want to guide the lure around the cover with your rod tip. It has good side-to-side action. However, if you run it too close to a boat dock, a bush or a stump, you can get it hung up, if you’re not cautious with the bait and use your rod tip to give it direction.

I always fish this bait with a trailer hook. This bait makes bass mad, and I think the fish get mad at the bait from a greater distance than they do with a spinner bait. So, many times, the bass will come rushing in and nip at the Pure Poison, trying to kill it, even if they don’t want to eat it. When you’re moving that bait fast, and those bass are attacking it quickly, often you don’t have the perfect collision you need to get a really good hook-up.

That’s when that trailer hook really pays off for you. That’s the reason I always fish this bait with a trailer hook on 20- to 25-pound-test line and a medium-action 7-foot graphite casting rod. I want a lighter-action rod than I normally use with a spinner bait. I sometimes will use a twin-tail trailer on this lure, but not very often. One again, the Pure Poison is a highly-productive, extreme-weather lure.

Contents:

• Part 1: Lucky Shad – Red Eye Shad
• Part 2: Spinning the Strike Shad
• Part 3: The Flat Shad – the Spinner Bait with Treble Hooks
• Part 4: The King Shad – The Next Version of a Swim Bait
• Part 5: How to Poison Bass