Entry 227-1

Winning with New Lures and Mark Rose

Part 1: Rage Craw Trailer and Football Head Jig

Question: Mark, what’s one of your favorite lures from Strike King this year?

Rose: Without question, it has to be the Football Jig, because I’ve already won money with it. I like the 3/4-ounce Football Head Jig. Although Football Head Jigs have been out for quite a while, the Strike King Football Jig definitely has some improvements over other jigs of this type on the market. For instance, the line tie is right up against the head of the jig, causing the jig to come through cover very efficiently without getting hung up. The new jig has a wider bite for the hook. So, much of the shank of the hook isn’t taken up by the lead of the head.

The weed guard has just the right amount of stiffness to prevent it from becoming hung, yet it has the softness to give you a good hook set. The jig has great colors of skirts and the skirt action is really lifelike. Also, on the shank of the hook there’s a really-good bar to hold the Rage Tail Rage Craw or the Rage Chunk, so that if you use these baits as a trailer, it won’t slide off very easily. This is the most-efficient Football Head Jig I’ve ever seen.

Question: What color Football Head Jig did you use to win the $125,000 in the FLW tournament?

Rose: I used the green-pumpkin colored jig with a green-pumpkin Rage Craw as a trailer. I bit about 2 inches of plastic off the end of the Rage Craw. I wouldn’t have had to shorten the bait, if I’d used Rage Chunks, which resemble crawfish, but I didn’t use the Rage Chunk, so I had to modify the Rage Craw to make it a trailer. I also dipped the pincers of the Rage Craw in Spike-It’s fluorescent chartreuse dye with the garlic scent.

I found my fish at Pickwick Lake out on the bars, the mussel flats and the sides and the edges of the bars. I fished in 15 to 20 feet of water, which is fairly-deep water for largemouth, and especially for late October fishing. The Tennessee River was producing a lot of fish then and is right now. The weather had been warm and the bass hadn’t moved up to shallow water during the tournament. I tried to locate the most-shallow bars I could find where the fish were really loaded-up.

Question: Why did you decide to use Strike King’s new Football Jig instead of a round-headed jig or a more-pointed nose jig?

Rose: With a round-head jig or a pointed-nose jig, I’d usually fish boat docks or brush piles, expecting the strike to come on the fall of the bait. But when I fished the mussel beds, I dragged the bait along the bottom because the bass were holding and feeding on the bottom, which was when this jig was most-effective.

The Football Head Jig is designed to be crawled along the bottom like a crawfish, fished like a Carolina rig in deep water and on deep ledges, dragged along the bottom and not hopped up off the bottom, and pulled through the cover on the bottom much-more effectively than a pointed-head jig or a round-head jig. So, it was the right tool to use in that deep-water situation to present a natural-looking crawfish bait to the bass. You’ll see many-more tournaments won and many-more bass caught with the new Strike King Football Jig.

Next: Fish Like Coffee, Too

Contents:

• Part 1: Rage Craw Trailer and Football Head Jig
• Part 2: Fish Like Coffee, Too
• Part 3: The King Shad is King of Strike King
• Part 4: The Raging Craw – Don’t Leave Home Without It
• Part 5: Take the Red Eye