3X Zulu

The 3X line of lures from Strike King Lure Company is simply unbelievable! They are made with Cyber Flexxx™, a proprietary crystal gel compound that is covered by four United States patents and have been in development for over three years. Strike King is proud to introduce the new and revolutionary 3X product line.

Why do we call it revolutionary, and why are we so excited about it? First and foremost is its strength and durability. Traditional soft plastic baits are not very durable, and if they are made to be durable they are normally too hard. These new 3X lures are incredibly strong, durable, and soft. For instance, you can stretch one out many times the length of its body and it won't break! It immediately returns to its original shape. Such durability enables you to catch more fish on one lure before it needs to be replaced.

In one field test we preformed, a Strike King staff person used the same lizard for a day and a half and caught over forty bass on it between two and seven pounds. With a traditional soft plastic lure, a fisherman may only expect to catch two or three fish on it or get hung up a few times before the lure is too torn up to continue to use. The durability of the 3X product causes there to be fewer broken tails and legs due to short-striking fish, small fish nibbling on the lure, getting hung up, etc. An additional advantage is being able to spend more time fishing rather than digging around in your tackle box for a replacement and having to rig a new lure.

Secondly, the material is extremely soft. The durability previously mentioned would be useless if the bait did not feel real to the fish. 3X products are softer and more supple than soft plastic baits which give them the realistic feel and this creates additional action from the slightest twitch or motion of the rod tip.

A third reason is that the material has floatation qualities that are greater than traditional soft plastics. This gives 3X an enhanced action that attracts more fish. This is especially true when Carolina rigging. The 3X lures will actually float up off of the bottom and look much more alive than plastic lures. This buoyant property is even an advantage when Texas rigging because when paused the tail will be more alive and tend to "drift up" like a natural bait does as it feeds on the bottom or on a submerged bush or stump.

So what does all this mean? Extra fish! Strike King's new 3X line of lures will help you catch more fish. Try them out for yourself and see how the strength, softness, and buoyancy will revolutionize your soft bait fishing.

In Strike King Journal entry #15, Shaw Grigsby talked about using Strike King's 3X Zulu...

Question: Tell me a secret tactic for using one of your Strike King baits.

Grigsby: The bait that I have just totally fallen in love with this year is the Zulu, which is Strike King's new 3X soft-plastic bait. It is very unique. This bait resembles a soft-plastic jerkbait with a fishy-type body. The way it floats and its durability are real impressive. I fish it like a top-water bait.

The bait is made of this new material called Cyber Flexxx, which is flexible and rubbery. You can just barely move the bait, and it has a ton of action, because it so flexible it looks like it's alive. So I've started throwing it as top-water bait. I just throw it out, let it sit, and then twitch it a few times like I do a Spitting King or a standard top-water bait. But when the bass miss this soft bait, they come back around and hit it again. If they eat it, they mistake it for a live bait and swallow it. I can catch basically every bass that hits this bait.

I rig the bait with a 3/0 High-Performance hook or I'll use a 4/0 hook when I fish with heavy line. But the 3/0 hook is the perfect size for using 12- to 14-pound-test line and letting it float on the surface and twitching it every now and then. I twitch it a few times and let it sit. Fish just think it is a live shad.

Question: Do the fish hit the bait when it stops, or do they hit it when you twitch it?

Grigsby: They hit it both ways. I love the Zulu when the bass hit the Zulu sitting still. But I've had them also hit it when I twitch it. I'll work the bait a few times, allow it to sit on the surface, twitch it a couple of times, let it sit again, twitch it a couple times, and then I'll twitch it on in just like a regular bait. I'll snap the bait. I work the bait like a top-water bait at first and then change off to the jerkbait retrieve. I'll end up catching a ton of bass on this bait.

Question: Do you use the Zulu for saltwater fishing?

Grigsby: I do a lot of saltwater fishing, and again, these 3X soft plastics have stunned me with their saltwater success. In fact, just recently, my friend Billie Henderson and I fished the Zulu in salt water. Billie throws the bait out there, hits the top of the water, and starts telling me about this spot.

He says, "Now this point is really good. The redfish usually hold on this point." And about that time, there's this big explosion on his bait. The explosion happened before he moved the bait. He caught about a 7-pound jack crevalle. Now anybody who knows anything about salt water knows that you virtually will never catch a jack crevalle on bait that is not moving. You usually have to move a bait super fast while twitching and jerking it to get a jack crevalle to hit. And this jack hit that dead bait sitting on the surface, which tells me that the jack thought it was a live shiner.

I've also had Spanish mackerel crush this bait. I've caught trout, redfish, tarpon and literally everything that swims in the ocean on this bait, and the bait doesn't tear up. Even a mackerel can't tear up the bait. I have a feeling that the 3X soft-plastic line is literally going to take over every bit of saltwater fishing in the sense of the soft-plastic type line.

Question: How did you rig the Zulu to fish it in saltwater, to catch all of these saltwater species?

Grigsby: I like to use a small, octopus-style hook called a 7226 Eagle Claw. It has a real sharp needle point and a very resistant coating called a Black Diamond Finish. You can use this hook in salt water. It is tremendous. If I rig it with a Zulu, and I'm not around anything that I can get hung-up on, I'll just throw it out in the open water to catch tarpon, trout and redfish.

If I throw it out in basically open water, I'll thread it on and run the hook out the top of the bait with the eyes up. If I plan to work it around grass, I thread the hook just past the eyeballs, turn it back, punch it back in to the bait and work the bait upside down with the hook held in the hook pocket underneath the bait. So either way it makes it very, very weedless, and you can throw it around in the grass and the vegetation and anything like that to work it. But that little 7226 Eagle Claw does a killer job with it.

Question: What color Zulu do you like for saltwater fishing?

Grigsby: I love the pearl color. I also like the watermelon or watermelon-red color. Both of those are kind of shrimpy looking colors that also work very well. I usually put a short leader of 25-pound fluorocarbon on the pearl-colored fluorocarbon when fishing for redfish, trout or snook. Now if when fishing for tarpon, I'll up that to about 60-pound fluorocarbon because the fish are big and bulky, and they tend to cut through the fluorocarbon.

In Strike King Journal entry #23, Shaw Grigsby talked about using Strike King's 3X Zulu...

Question: What did you learn at the 2002 ESPN Outdoor Games at Lake Placid?

Grigsby: I was practicing on a Friday, the week before the Outdoor Games in Lake Placid, New York. The water was clear and most anglers were flipping and pitching. So I set up some tubes and some jigs on my rods and started fishing like everyone else. While I was fishing, I said to myself, You ought to try that Zulu, a soft-plastic jerkbait made from the new 3X material that Strike King has just developed. I'd tried this bait when fishing in New Hampshire, and the small bass just attacked this bait unmercifully.

When we pulled up to the very first place I was going to fish that day in the Outdoor Games, I began to fish the Zulu. When the Zulu hit the water, I jerked it twice. About 15 smallmouth tried to attack it at the same time. I caught one of the smallmouth, unhooked it, and while I was trying to put the fish in the livewell, my son picked up my rod with the Zulu tied on and caught two more smallmouth before I could get him to give me my rod back. I tied the Zulu to his rod, and we continued to catch fish there. Then when we went to my next spot, the first cast we made, we both had on smallmouth.

The smallmouth were eating those Zulus just as though they were live shad minnows. When you twitch that Zulu, the entire body ripples just like a live baitfish. And the smallmouth will just crush that bait. But we didn't just catch smallmouth. We caught quite a few largemouth using this lure. This was one of the most phenomenal fishing days that I'd ever had in my life. I knew that if I fished the Zulu in these two spots, I could blow the competition away. But for some reason, those surefire spots have a way of escaping me.

Just before the Outdoor Games tournament began, the tournament director declared the two spots where I'd caught all my fish off-limits. So my fall-back plan was to use the Denny Brauer tube jig, and I won the tournament on the tube jig. However, the knowledge that I gained from fishing the Zulu taught me the kinds of areas to look for and how to fish for these bass on this lake. The Zulu really saved the day for me.

Although the Zulu may look like many other soft-plastic jerkbaits, it's really quite different because:

* it floats and doesn't sink like other soft-plastic jerkbaits,
* you can make the Zulu sink by fishing it on a jig head or putting some lead on the hook,
* the flexibility of the bait is phenomenal. When you twitch most soft-plastic baits, they usually dart either to the right or to the left, but the Zulu ripples throughout its entire body when you twitch it, causing the whole bait to look alive.

In Strike King Journal entry #30, Shaw Grisby talked about using Strike King's 3X Zulu...

Question: What is your number one bait?

Grigsby: I like the Strike King 3X Zulu. The Strike King 3X Zulu is the hottest bait I've ever used in my life. I don't think I've ever seen another bait I like more than a 3X Zulu. This bait has some really neat properties.

First, it is made out of the Cyberflex. The whole body of this bait wiggles when you move it. It has more than just a little action in the tail. The whole bait from the tip of the nose to the tail actually will wiggle. It has an undulation to it. The bait is so flexible it vibrates down its whole side. The belly of the bait and the top of the bait moves. And it is made out of this material that is just so very lifelike.

This buoyant bait also floats. You can put a 4/0 or 5/0 hook in the 3X Zulu, and it will float. If you put a heavy hook in it and a suspend strip on the hook, the 3X Zulu will suspend, so you can twitch it. You can twitch the soft-plastic jerkbait on top, like a top-water bait. If you put weight on the 3X Zulu, you can work it and have it suspend like a darting minnow under the water. Then when you stop it, instead of it sinking down to the bottom like all other soft-plastic jerkbaits, it floats back to the top. This bait suspends like a lifelike shad that has stopped in motion.

Fish go completely crazy over this bait. They'll hit it with a lot of aggression. So you always get a good connection and a good hook set on these bass. The 3X Zulu is just an amazing bait.

Question: Where and when do you fish the 3X Zulu?

Grigsby: I fish the 3X Zulu mainly in clear-water situations because it is a very visual bait. Again, the fish think it's a live bait. So I want 2-foot to 8-foot visibility. Even with 1-foot visibility, bass see a lot better than we do. The 3X Zulu draws them from 10- to 20-feet away. The bait will draw them from deep water and shallow water.

Like I've mentioned, you can throw the 3X Zulu on top, and it works like a top-water bait. So you can twitch it and let it sit. You even can twitch it hard, and it actually will kind of spit and throw water. Even though other baits look like it, no other baits perform like it.

In Strike King Journal entry #36, Mike Wurm talked about using Strike King's 3X Zulu...

Question: Can you give me another bait you’ve been using?

Wurm: Strike King's new soft bait line called 3X is a phenomenal product. The material is absolutely amazing. Its buoyancy and durability are unbelievable. You can take one of the 3X lures and actually catch numerous fish before it has any hint of getting worn. It doesn’t tear. Hooks go through it very easily, but when you pull on that hook it does not create a tear. The hole the hook goes in is all there is. It doesn't tear and make it larger. So the baits are going to last longer.

The one I really like well is the Strike King 3X Zulu jerkbait. It doesn't describe anything fishable you can think of, but a Zulu is soft jerkbait. It has a jerkbait shad body, narrow tail and a lot of action in the water. You can fish it weedless. You can also add a little weight to it. However, for the buoyancy of the Zulu you really may need to add some weight -- not for casting but to get it to go underneath the water. Unless you put a No. 50 or a No. 60 hook on it, it is going to float more or less on top of the surface.

The Zulu has tremendous action. It’s extremely soft, but the action is what really attracts the fish. The material is so light and flexible it actually quivers when you move it in the water. But the softness of it, the durability of it, and the buoyancy of it are what really sell the Zulu.

Question: On what occasions do you use the 3X Zulu?

Wurm: Anytime bass are chasing bait fish is a great time to use a Zulu. You can throw it around cover or you can throw it in open water. It will be a great smallmouth lure in open water, without any weight, with a big hook in it so you can cast it well. Then start working it like a baitfish out in open water, and the bass will come up and attack it. You can also work it across heavy vegetation, even a solid mat. Work it across the top of that mat. When you come to the edge or a hole, just kill it, and let it sit there. If you have enough weight on it, it will slowly sink into the hole. If you come to the edge of the mat and start working it on the surface, then once again you have dynamite soft jerkbait.

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