If it's good enough for KVD, it's good enough for me

For a marketer of fishing lures, it does not get any better than having the Babe Ruth/Tiger Woods of bass fishing (Kevin Van Dam) win the sport's World Series/Super Bowl (the Bassmasters Classic) two years in a row with one of your lures in front of television cameras for all the angling world to see.

Exhibit A: Your correspondent, who owns at least a dozen large plastic boxes brimming with crankbaits, immediately upon learning the outcome of last weekend's Classic went online to order 15 of the KVD Series square bill crankbaits used by Van Dam to outdistance his nearest competitor by nearly 11 pounds.

I figure that if Van Dam, who is competing for a $500,000 top prize and probably twice that in promotional fees, chooses a crankbait with his initials on the box, that's good enough for me.

I am far from alone, according to Chris Brown, marketing manager for the lure's manufacturer, Strike King Lure Company in Collierville, Tenn.

“We got bombarded with orders last year when Kevin won the Classic with one of our Red-Eye Shad lures. We're seeing the same thing this year with the KVD Series square bill crankbait,” Brown said.

Van Dam, 43, of Kalamazoo, Mich., won his second straight classic Sunday in the Louisiana delta with a record three-day catch of 69 pounds 11 ounces. Standing third in the 50-angler field after day one, Van Dam discerned a declining enthusiasm for the spinner bait he had been throwing and switched to the crankbait that has since been flying off store shelves.

“With cameras on the boat, you can't lie about what you caught your fish on, and anglers know that,” Brown said.

“We would love to be able to say that we plan it that way - that we intentionally design a lure to win each year's Classic. But all we can really do is make great lures and hire great anglers to promote them,” Brown said.

Brown said Strike King does not even try to dictate the lures used by its angling pro staff.

“We want you to throw our products, but we understand that we don't make everything and that anglers must do what they have to do to win” he said, noting that Van Dam won the 2005 Classic with a competitor's crankbait, the Smithwick Rattlin' Rogue.

Brown said a preponderance of the new orders specify the color Van Dam used to win the classic - chartreuse with a black back.

While the actual teeth-marked Classic winner will go in Van Dam's expansive trophy case, I and many other anglers will soon be catching bass with copies.