Garcia posed “a chance to get away from
standard lengths and actions and to tweak
them to be very technique specific.”
The soft plastic bait concepts he has developed
for Pure Fishing’s Havoc brand have given
him even more creative latitude, and he has
relished the opportunity.
“Overall, we’ve taken existing concepts and
made them better, but a lot of my ideas have
been new shapes and, more importantly, new
actions,” he explained. “For example, the Devil’s
Spear is a punch bait with unique tail action.
And, more recently, the Havoc Back Slide, which
is a French fry style dual density bait that will
glide backwards on a light, semi-slack line. It
creates a movement that fish just don’t see.”
Same ol’ Ike
colors and pearlescent sheen are attributes
that a younger Mike Iaconelli painstakingly
produced by allowing UV rays of sunlight to
abuse his favorite hardbaits as they sat on
the dashboard of his Toyota truck and adding
craft shop glitter with nail polish to imitate
the flash of sunlight off baitfish scales. Now
he gets those same results, along with “the
pearlescent sheen found on every species
of baitfish from alewife to bluegill to shad,”
straight off the Rapala manufacturing lines.
“Now I have access not only to tweak tackle at
home but to actually create new products from
my concepts,” he said. “Now I can take an idea
or sketch and work on it for a year and come
out with something that’s never existed before!
To do that, to create something brand new is
awesome -- and not just because you are doing
it, but because you have a chance to show fish
something they have never seen before. And I
don