Poppers can really wake the Kingy's up and get them interested Jwest, you will get a lot of follows on a popper with fish shadowing it to the boat. Where stick baits shine is Kings are much more willing to commit and bite, and as Mark mentioned sometimes this isn't until the right factors come together. 

A stick bait cast behind a popper can be a really good combo and something to keep in mind. 

Always put action and the size of the lure before colour, what you need are solid lures that cast well (more distance = more time in the fishing zone), swim well and something you can be confident in... Keeping those eyebrows up, can really change things on cast 253 for the day.

Mark made some solid recommendations, and I see the "Ulua" popped up too. What's your price bracket? We may be able to weed out a few selections from a now saturated market.

Theres plenty of different actions between a lot of the stick baits, some of them stay up on the surface and encourage more of a splash, this is soetimes required to entice a strike. Lures like the Carpenter Gamma will sit up on a pause and then on a retreive it will dart into the water and swim (if you get  the timing right).

Other lures like the Orion nambas is designed more as a swim bait, once you get it under the water and swimming it will work well by just winding it in and twitching the rod.

There is a wide array of lures available with plenty of different actions, sometimes when you get a new lure it takes a bit of time to get it swimming correctly but discovering these things is all part of the fun.

For me its often about trying to find what the fish are going to react to, a splashy surface lure? or a swimming lure. Lucky for me i often have 2 or 3 people throwing lures aorund so we can diversifly and try out different styles, once we discover whats happening then we can all change to the coorect style.

Be prepared to change out different colours during the day as the fish can become accustomed to the same lure beign swum past them a 100 times durign the day.

If i had to pick a few for this summer it would be the Carpenter Bluefish, Orion sinking Nambas in the blue colour (been deadly this year) and the other lure smashign it of late for us is the ASWB in the squid design.

 

swims well with double treb's ,I'm still playing around with the tuning of skirt+single.

Trying to get to grips with a dozen different sticks at the same time, as well as still catch fish....just not enough hours in the day 

 

zac