Entry 233-1
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 1: Hackney’s Favorite Lure – The King Shad
Question: Greg, if you could only pick one of Strike King’s new lures as your favorite, which one would it be?
Hackney: I like them all, but the King Shad is my favorite. There’s a lot of swim baits on the market right now, and many of them are good. However, what separates the King Shad from other lures on the market is that it’s the most-versatile swim bait I know. You can crank wood with it like you’ll fish a crankbait around stumps, logs and trees in the water. Or, you can fish it in open water for suspended bass or schooling bass. You can fish it like a jerkbait, or you can wake it on the surface.
The King Shad is one of the few swim baits on the market that will get you a reaction strike. With most swim baits, the only time a bass will take that bait is when they’re actively feeding. At other times, they’ll just come up behind the bait and bump it. I can run the King Shad into a stump or log, let it hit that wood, deflect off the cover, pause it and get a reaction strike.
Strike King got the King Shad just right on its profile. Many swim baits are too big, but the King Shad is just right. I know the latest craze has been giant swim baits, but the King Shad really works better for tournament fishermen than those super-big swim baits. The King Shad will catch a 10-pound bass, but it will also catch a 3-pound bass. So you can use this lure to target tournament bass, which in my opinion are bass from 3 to 10 pounds or bigger.
Another advantage we have with the King Shad is that it’s about the size of a threadfin shad anywhere in the country. 
Another thing I like about the King Shad is we’ve got colors that will work in real-clear water and colors that will catch bass in stained water. Strike King’s King Shad can look like a shad, a bream, a tilapia or any kind of baitfish the bass are eating in any section of the nation. The King Shad isn’t temperature sensitive either. I’ve caught bass in really-cold water with the King Shad and in 90-degree water. So as I said earlier, the King Shad is one of the most-versatile lures in Strike King’s array of new lures.
Question: On what pound test line are you fishing the King Shad?
Hackney: The depth of water that I’m going to fish with the King Shad dictates the size of line that I’ll be using. If I want to keep the lure near or on top of the water, I’ll use 65-pound-test braided line, hold my rod tip high and wake the lure on the surface. If I want to get the bait down in the water, or if I want to crank the bait in wood cover, I’ll use 20-pound-test fluorocarbon. I like the fluorocarbon because it’s more forgiving than the braided. If I crank the King Shad too hard into wood cover, the bait will hang-up. However, if I’m using the fluorocarbon, I can work the King Shad through the wood a little bit better. If I want to fish deep water, I use fluorocarbon. If I want to fish the King Shad shallow, I’ll fish with braided line.
Question: Most people fish a swim bait on the surface or just under the surface. How did you learn to start using the swim bait as a crankbait and fish it deeper in the water?
Hackney: Well, you can’t burn most crankbaits through the water (crank it really fast). 
But with the King Shad, I can use the Quantum PT Burner with a 7.0:1 gear ratio and reel the King Shad as fast as I will reel a lipless crankbait, like the Diamond Shad or the Red Eye Shad. Now this is a feature that you can’t really do with anyone else’s swim bait – other than Strike King’s King Shad.
I think being able to burn the King Shad through the water is one of the reasons you can get reaction strikes with the King Shad like you can’t get with other swim baits. With most swim baits, because you have to reel them at such a slow speed, the bass really gets a good look at the swim bait and has a long time to decide whether or not it wants to eat the lure. If that bass isn’t actively feeding, it won’t eat that swim bait.
However, with the King Shad, I can reel the lure fast enough that the bass doesn’t get a good look at it. I can surprise the fish by running that lure right in front of it. The King Shad looks enough like a baitfish that either the fish will eat or not eat the lure. The bass doesn’t have time to study the lure. It has to make an instant decision. Since a bass is a natural predator, the fish’s instincts tell it to attack when a bait’s in sight. That’s the reaction strike that will catch you a fish when the fish aren’t biting. Catching bass is much of a cat-and-mouse game. If the cat’s watching the mouse, and the mouse doesn’t move, the cat will just sit there. But if that mouse comes across the floor at 90 miles per hour, that cat will be on that mouse like a duck on a June bug.
Question: How are you getting that King Shad down under the water?
Hackney: I mentioned the fluorocarbon line earlier, but the other thing I do is make a really-long cast with the King Shad. This lure will only run about 4-feet deep on a really-long cast when you’re burning it, so it’s a mid-water lure. It’s not a lure that you can run down to 25-feet deep because it has a shallow bill on it. But long casts will get the King Shad down to that 4-feet depth. In the wintertime, I’ll fish it slower with a slower retrieve reel. But in the summertime, I’m going to burn the King Shad.
I believe so much in the King Shad that I’ve got it tied on one rod that stays on my casting deck all year long. The King Shad to me is like a Strike King jig. I’ve always got one tied onto a rod on the deck of my boat because regardless of where I fish or when I fish, there will be some time during the day that I’ll need to go to that lure to try to catch a bass.
