Entry 233-3
Greg Hackney’s Lure Choices
Editor’s Note: Strike King pro, Greg Hackney of Gonzales, Louisiana, has fished his entire life and fished professionally for about 5 years. A regular on both the BASS and FLW circuits, Hackney is ranked No. 14 in the world for 2007 on www.bassfan.com.
Part 3: The Bite Getter – The Red Eye Shad
Question: What’s another bait in the Strike King line of lures that you like, and why?
Hackney: I really like the Red Eye Shad. The Red Eye Shad is what I call a bite getter. Like the King Shad, I’ll always have one tied onto one of my rods on my casting deck. I know that on any lake I go to anywhere in the nation, as long as I’m not going to be fishing 40-feet deep, the Red Eye Shad will be an appropriate bait for that water. If I’m target fishing, I’ll rarely leave that target without running a Red Eye Shad by it. If I’m fishing for schooling bass, you can bet I’ll throw a Red Eye Shad on them.
You can cast that Red Eye Shad a country mile and reach out and touch those bass before you reach them with your trolling motor. I can fish open-water flats with it, or I can run bank cover with it. If the bass are feeding on baitfish of any kind, the Red Eye Shad is a good lure with which to locate bass. Now, I may not throw the Red Eye Shad in a tournament, but it will definitely be the bait that I’ll use to locate schools of bass before the tournament. It will also be the lure I use if I get in a tournament and can’t find bass, or none of the spots I’ve been planning to fish have bass on them, and I have to go looking for bass. The Red Eye Shad is one lure that can help you get out of a hole during a tournament in a hurry.
The bass like this bait, they’ll bite this bait, and we’ve got plenty of different colors of Red Eye Shad to match water and weather conditions. 
The Red Eye Shad is one lipless crankbait that will produce bass either on a slow retrieve or a fast retrieve. I’ve found that I can reel it on a really-slow retrieve and get a lot of bites on it.
Question: What colors do you like best?
Hackney: I enjoy fishing any shad pattern, depending on the water color. The clearer the water is, the more-transparent color of Red Eye Shad I’ll fish. I guess I like the sexy shad color best because it’s a really-good shad pattern. The other color I like is gold. If I only can have two colors of Red Eye Shad, it will be the sexy shad color and the gold color. In the spring, I’ll use red crawfish or brown crawfish.
Question: What type of retrieve are you using on the Red Eye Shad?
Hackney: I’m using a medium to fast retrieve, except, as I explained earlier, when the fish may like it slow. But I do believe that you get a lot more reaction strikes if you burn the bait (reel it really fast). I’ve found that the faster you reel the bait, the more aggressively the bass will take the lure. I’ve noticed when I’m fishing the lure slowly, I’ll often have the bass barely hooked. So I like for them to really want to take that Red Eye Shad. Remember that there’s not a reel made that will allow you to crank a lure in faster than a bass can catch it and eat it. 
A lot of times, people tend to slow down their retrieves in cold weather, but if you do, you’ll miss an awful lot of bass.
When I’m fishing a crankbait in cold weather, especially a lipless crankbait like the Red Eye Shad, I’ll be burning it. You’ve got to remember that a bass isn’t going to make a long, fast run to eat a bait. But it will make a short burst of speed to find a bait and eat it. When your lure comes by a bass on a fast retrieve, remember that the bass should only have to move a foot or 2 to get that bait. The bass can make a short burst of speed in cold weather and not burn much energy. So don’t be afraid to run those crankbaits, and especially the Red Eye Shad, really fast at this time of year. I promise you, you’ll catch more fish, get more bites and have fewer fish pull off with a fast retrieve than you will with a slow retrieve.
