The Elusive Lure

So, the 2010 Spring Fishing and Boat Show was big for me. Dave Mercer took the stage and sold me quite a few things. One of the items he sold me on was the Storm Kickin' Stick lure.

Here's the idea behind the SKS: reel it in briskly, it acts like a decent swimbait. Stop reeling suddenly and push your rod forward, creating slack line, and the lure 'kicks' around 180 degrees. Now that's exciting! You see, despite being an adept predator, fish are inately lazy. They don't want to chase some five inch minnow ten meters just to score a meal. Instead, they wait for something to float down the current, and snag it enroute--a technique important to fly fishing.

With the Kickin' Stick, we get to falsely appeal to their predatory instinct. We have a fleeting fish that suddenly stops, thus triggering a bite. I've seen Dave run crank bait through his demonstration fishing tank and the fish chase it, but don't bite. With the kicking action, the lazy fish might bite on.

And best of all: it works! I was up in Huntsville last year with my shiny new five inch Perch Kickin' Stick and running it as above (brisk reel... stop. brisk reel... stop. brisk reel... stop). And I was getting results. Of the three guys in the boat, I caught three fish, another caught one and the last got shut out. The Kickin' Stick works, and despite Dave's suggestion that we don't rely on a favorite lure, the Kickin' Stick is by far my favorite lure.

Now, that brings me to two things: 1) my current stock of this elusive lure, and 2) the availability of this elusive lure. You see, in advance of the Huntsville trip last year I decided to snag a couple SKS's. So I called around to my local shops and received bereft responses of unavailability, and generally a lack of knowledge of this effective lure. Undetered, I google'd around for a tackle shop enroute to Huntsville and called them. He said his Storm dealer was due in a couple days, and he'd see what he could do for me. Turned out, he could get a Perch color and a Blue Shad. I took two of each (one of each for me, one of each for my brother-in-law).

That led to the above fishing trip, and the successful first run. I even caught a six inch Largemouth Bass on it! Six inches! That's only one inch longer than the lure itself! Now that's an aggressive fish.

Today, the SKS is still hard-to-find. Ebay has maybe half-a-dozen vendors with it--and even then generally not in the perch colouring, which is my preference as the Blue Shad didn't yield the same results. Bass Pro Shops lists all the colors except Perch, as does Cabella's.

Some hope lies with a small tackle shop nestled in the back of a convenience store over by the local library, hopefully I can get a few there before the spring.

Made even more imperative, is the fact that during the Huntsville trip, I lost my Perch SKS, but that, my friend, is a story for another time, one that includes a great customer service tale.