Entry 293-4
Five of My Favorite Strike King Baits with Mark Davis
Editor’s Note: Strike King was really proud to have Kevin VanDam, Greg Hackney, Shaw Grigsby and Mark Davis in the 2009 Bassmaster Classic in Shreveport, Louisiana, last week. Every day that week, we posted reports on how these fishermen did in this year’s tournament. Mark Davis has been a part of Strike King’s professional fishing team for many years, and he’s had input on many of the lures Strike King has produced. This week we’ve asked Mark to tell us about some of the lures that he’s helped Strike King design and build.
Part 4: Strike King’s French Quarter Spinner Bait with Mark Davis
Question: Mark, I know you like to fish spinner baits. What spinner bait do you feel like you’ve been actively involved in designing?
Davis: I’ve really had a good time with the French Quarter. I’ll have to give George Cochran credit for coming-up with a Quad Shad spinner bait, which is Strike King’s four-bladed spinner bait. I wanted a spinner bait that had a lot of resistance to it and featured tear-drop-shaped blades and are different from Indiana blades and are thicker and heavier than the blades originally designed for the Quad Shad spinner bait. These heavier blades give you much-more resistance in the water. The original Quad Shad, which had a lot of flash, had willow-leaf blades but didn’t have much resistance in the water. The French blades gave us a different look to the Quad Shad.
Question: Mark, why did you want a spinner bait to pull harder?
Davis: You want a spinner bait to pull hard, especially if you’re fishing it near the surface, which is where the French Quarter spinner bait really shines. You can pull the French Quarter slower and keep it higher in the water than the Quad Shad. Because this spinner bait has more water resistance, you don’t have to reel it as fast as you do most spinner baits to keep it high in the water. Therefore, the more resistance the spinner bait has, the slower you can reel it, and the longer the lure will be in the bass’s strike zone. I really like to swim this bait over grass, treetops or any type of shallow cover.
The bait has a lot of lift to it. Since many times the bass are looking up, the French Quarter gives me a lure that I can fish slowly, get the bass’s attention with and get the bass to come-up and eat it. Spinner baits, like crankbaits, have different component parts to make them play different roles in the fishing environment. 
Strike King has come out with the Burner spinner bait this year, which is just the opposite of the French Quarter.
The Burner spinner bait is lightweight and features a razor-blade design, so you can swim it really fast and burn it through clear water. In a clear-water presentation, during the hot summer months when the bass are willing to chase bait and often strike instinctively, the Burner spinner bait can be more productive than the French Quarter. But in the fall of the year, when the body metabolism of the bass has slowed-down, and the bass are holding in stained water, I believe the French Quarter spinner bait is hard to beat.
