Entry 289-2
Why I Worked On These Strike King Lures for Bass with Mark Menendez
Editor’s Note: Strike King believes that the best way to develop new and better lures is to have a team of professional fishermen, who earn their livings catching fish, identify how to design and improve lures that will catch more fish for more fishermen. Most of the lures developed by Strike King have been field-tested by some of the top fishermen in the nation. This week, Mark Menendez of Paducah, Kentucky, will tell us about the five Strike King lures in which he’s had the most input in developing, testing, fishing and promoting.
Part 2: The Football Jig – Tried, Tested and Tested Again
Question: Mark, what’s another lure you’ve had influence in building and developing?
Menendez: I’ve had quite a few conversations with Charles Herndon, one of our lure designers, about the Football-Head jig. All the Strike King pros try to help fine-tune new products before we introduce them to the fishing market. We want to be sure we can catch fish with the prototype lure and then make the last-minute adjustments to the prototype before we introduce it to the public.
The lures are called prototypes because the lure designer and the pro fishermen test and change the lures until we’re satisfied that we’ve made the most-productive lures. After testing the Football-Head jig, we decided it needed a bigger hook and a heavier gauge of metal in the hook than the prototypes. 
I recorded how many fish I hooked and missed on the Football-Head jig when it was in the prototype phase. Too, I noted where the Football-Head jig hooked the bass in the mouth and how well the bass was hooked.
During the prototype phase of the Football-Head jig, I learned that we needed a longer shank and a heavier gauge hook to make the lure more efficient at catching bass. A 3/4- to 1-ounce jig gives the bass a lot of leverage to throw the hook. Also, the prototype Football-Head jigs’ hook-up rate was not as high as we wanted it. So, by adding a bigger and a stronger hook, we increased the hook-up rate and the effectiveness of the Football-Head jig. These are the little subtle aspects of tweaking a bait that our pro-staff learns and passes on to the lure designer to improve Strike King’s lures. 
Without testing the Football-Head jig and then recording the information I learned while fishing the jig, we wouldn’t have known that by putting a bigger hook in the jig, we could increase the catchability of the Football-Head jig.
Once the new hook was put in the Football-Head jig, and the new jig was tested, I knew Strike King had the best Football-Head jig on the market. If I’m in a tournament fishing rocky bottoms or places that require a football-head jig, there’s not a more-productive bait on the market than Strike King’s Football-Head Jig. To catch more and bigger bass, you must fish with confidence. When a bass takes the Strike King Football-Head jig off the bottom, my chances of hooking and landing that bass are excellent.
