Bass Fishing May - Jun 2018 | Page 46

GEAR PRODUCT REVIEW PERFECTION LURES SURE HOOK-UP SHAKY HEAD F PHOTOs BY maTT Pace By Matt Williams Lw Tour pro david dudley had several goals in mind when he set out to design a shaky head he was willing to associate his name with. Ultimately, it had to main- tain a stand-up posture, navigate easily through all sorts of tricky cover, pro- vide solid hook-ups and, more importantly, keep the fish pinned. while few things are perfect in this world, what he came up with for Perfection Lures turned out to be pretty darned close. First Impression 44 dudley’s shaky head is clearly constructed to per- form a balancing act. The football-shaped head is molded with a flat spot on the bottom to give it some stability as the bait trav- erses a lake floor, but what makes it unique are two thin titanium wires that protrude at outward angles from the base of protect the knot and reduce fouling. a spike keeper is made from a rigid aBs plastic. In Action ACTUAL SIZE the head. Their purpose is to provide additional sup- port to keep the jighead standing erect so it is more visible and easier for the fish to inhale. The wires spring back to shape without bending and are outfitted with small rubber tips to help prevent fish from feeling the wires and spitting the bait prematurely. The jighead is built around a needlepoint 4/0 mustad hook with a vertical 90-degree line tie that is slightly recessed to help i played around with the shaky head for the better part of two months and was very impressed by the hook-up/landing percent- age as well as the head’s weedless nature. mostly i rigged it with Zoom Trick worms or Finesse worms and Yamamoto senkos and caught close to 100 bass up to 4 pounds on the same jighead (most fish hooked solidly in the roof of the mouth) before one of the titanium legs snapped off at the head. even then, the jighead went right back to catching fish. There isn’t much rock in the east Texas lake where i did most of the field-test- ing, but there is plenty of brush, stumps, docks and vegetation – mainly hydrilla and lotus pads. i threw the shaky head into some pret- ty gnarly stuff at times, hung up rarely and broke off once using 12-pound- test braid with an 8-pound- test fluorocarbon leader. Final Thoughts i’m hesitant to say the hook-up and landing per- centages were significant- ly better than with any other shaky head i’ve thrown, but they were way better than some. equally impressive were the bait’s ability to slide up and over wood and through scattered vegeta- tion with minimal hangs- ups and the performance of the spike keeper at holding plastics in place. The jighead is versatile in that it can be hopped, dragged or shaken in place to give your favorite finesse worm, soft jerk- bait, craw, lizard or tube a reliable stand-up action that a lot of other shaky heads can’t. FLWFISHING.COM I MAY-JUNE 2018