Entry 289-4
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 4: The Ocho – A Big Bait for Big Bass
Question: Mark, what’s another lure you’ve tested in the prototype stage and had input into its development and marketing?
Menendez: I was really excited when I first saw the Strike King Ocho. I knew it would be a great stick-bait, but I also saw it as a plastic worm. I started Texas-rigging the Ocho and pitching and flipping it around thick cover. I prefer to fish the Ocho in thick grass and brush piles, as well as using it as a ledge-fishing bait. I’ve found that the 7-inch Ocho seems to be the best for ledge fishing. From testing the Ocho, I’ve learned that sometimes less is more. When you’re fishing a big, bulky bait that doesn’t have any type of appendages or tails like the Ocho, it looks different when it hits the water, especially when it hits the bottom, than any other bait the fish have seen.
The Ocho stands up on the bottom and resembles a giant form of a shaky-head worm. I can catch big bass with the 7-inch Ocho because it’s a big meal. Many times under a variety of situations, big bass don’t want to chase baits, but they want to eat big baits. Then they don’t have to feed as often. 
So, when the bass spots a big Ocho just standing-up on the bottom and barely moving, the bass may be thinking, “There’s a big steak I don’t have to work to eat.”
In the last bass tournament I fished on Lake Oneida, every bass I weighed-in was caught on the Strike King Ocho. During that tournament, my number-1 lure was the Strike King Rage Craw. I’d pitch the Rage Craw into bass and the bass would eat up that bait. I was fishing about a 50-yard stretch of grass. When the bass finally quit taking the Rage Craw, I changed to the Ocho, and the bass started back biting. However, the bass I caught on the Ocho were different from the bass I caught on the Rage Craw. The Ocho allowed me to cull my previous bass, increasing my weight each day. I fished the Ocho on 20-pound-test fluorocarbon with a 3/8-ounce slip sinker. I was getting more bites using the Ocho as a back-up to the Rage Craw than I was when I fished the Rage Craw only. I’ve had a lot of fun with that Ocho and caught a number of big bass with it. 
Like the other pros on the Strike King Pro Staff, I’ve learned to fish the bait in several-different ways.
When the Strike King pros test a lure for Strike King, we try to find other ways and applications for a lure besides the niche for which it has been designed to be used. When you look at the Ocho, you may say, “There’s a stick bait.” But when I look at the Ocho, I say, “Okay, there’s a stick bait. It’s got eight sides, so it will move differently from a round-stick bait. But what else can it do?” Then I try to fish that lure as many-different ways as I can and solve as many fishing problems as I can. Hopefully I can show and teach other fishermen how to get the maximum efficiency not only from the Ocho, but from any other Strike King lure they purchase.
