Hawk’s West Coast style

Arizona angler Roy Hawk is bringing what I like to call West Coast style to his lure lineup. It’s no secret that West Coast bass anglers are known to be very creative and open minded with customizing stock lures. Hand poured worms and using meticulous terminal tackle lure components come to mind. All of it originated with guys like Don Iovino who get credit for modern day finesse fishing.

Already the Elite Series rookie has proven that he will carry on the tradition of West Coast lure style.

While getting bait details for the Top Lures of Grand Lake photo/story gallery I wondered out loud if Hawk had customized any of his lures. 

“Sure, I do that with just about all of them.”

This week it meant adding two densities of silicone skirt material to his spinnerbait. That choice is a 3/4-ounce Pepper Custom Baits Double Willow Spinnerbait. Hawk combined standard and fine thickness silicone to create what he called a unique skirt action. It doesn’t matter whether or not any of us could see the difference in the action. What matters is Hawk’s confidence in the lure and the likely fact that it does create a different action. The proof on the score board. 

Coincidentally, Hawk used finger nail polish to create a custom colored Duo Realis Crankbait M62 5A, to finish in second place at Lake Martin. 

Based on Hawk’s good fortune thus far this season it’s going to be pretty neat to see what other customized, out-of-the-box lures he will come up with. Don Iovino will be proud.