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The Slinker Story
 Slinker creator Shawn Clark
grew up fishing with his dad in Arkansas lakes and the Arkansas River. It
was on one such fishing trip after he graduated college that Shawn first
had the idea to create Slinker plastic lures.
Fishing a bank from his flat-bottomed boat, he was throwing plastic jerk bait
when he saw a small snake swimming towards his boat, inching under the
water and slinking above the water again. Shawn remembers, "After
a few minutes of watching this snake, a four or five pound bass came out
of the water at the front left of the boat, just about the same area I
was fishing a plastic jerk bait, and swallowed the snake whole. That bass
came within 10 inches of my boat. That instant stuck in my head."
After taking over a family owned live bait business in Northwest
Arkansas in 1999, Shawn got serious about manufacturing his product. He
spent the next year trying to style an S-shaped lure that would hold its
shape, look like a snake and wiggle like a worm.
He whittled a plaster of paris mold, filling it with rubber and trying
to achieve the action of a natural worm without twisting the fishing
line. Almost five years, four molds and several trips to the lake
later, Shawn was finally satisfied that he had perfected the mold. "I
took it out and started catching a lot of big fish. My plastic worm
design seemed to call on the fish's predator instinct to bite."
Feeling confident that he had created a lure that other anglers would
enjoy fishing as much as he did, Shawn patented his design and began working
to produce Slinker. "The biggest thrill for me is to watch someone
else catch fish on this," said Shawn. "I'm a normal guy who
likes to fish. I developed this product for guys like me."
In May of 2002, Clark began selling Slinker lures on his web site, slinkerlures.com, and added Slinker to his line of live bait products,
including Canadian, African and European night crawlers, red worms, crickets
and pre-packaged frozen bait. He currently services sports shops, marinas
and convenience stores in the Arkansas River area, and subcontracts service
to clients in Oklahoma, Missouri and other areas of Arkansas. "We
sell our clients our service, and a product we stand behind. I'm on call
24 hours a day and I'm happy to do it," said Shawn.
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