Everyone is using suspending jerkbaits these days. I haven't heard of anyone mention using old floating rapalas or floating stick baits. I have a box of these, from rouges to rapalas. Anybody use these still?

I just bought 5 new rapala J7s in the last month. I will fish one saturday for sure. I have a devil horse on deck when they start moving up.

I just bought 5 new rapala J7s in the last month. I will fish one saturday for sure. I have a devil horse on deck when they start moving up.

Do you just chuck and wind the j7's? Or have a cadence of some sort?

I fish em like you would a jerk bait, erratic, it is after all a jerk bait it just has a broken back. I also feather all of mine on the rear trebble.

I've done a lot of late spring and summer fishing with the Rapala floating minnows. Always in the gold shiner/minnow color. Anytime I have flats or shorelines that have a moderate amount of grass/weeds and when the water is slightly stained I will use it. In these conditions it often produces. I always work it really erratically, jerking and reeling it all the way in, never just straight winding.

A floating Rapala minnow also makes a good topwater bait. I've used them for years in ponds and smaller lakes.

I caught one of my most memorable fish on a floating rapala after reading an article in bassmaster when I was probably 8-9 years old. It said to cast under some overhanging cover and let the bait sit, and sit and sit some more. Well I did just that for what seemed like an hour and lo and behold caught a 5lber.

Still fish those baits to this day.

Although all I seemed to catch last year on the floating Rapala minnows were rock bass, I have had a lot of luck with them in years past. I still throw them and when I built my shore fishing bag last month I made sure there was one of them in there.

A floating Rapala minnow also makes a good topwater bait. I've used them for years in ponds and smaller lakes.

X2 - Caught my first top water bass on that bad boy many, many years ago! Just cast it out and let it sit until the ripples die away. Then give it the slightest twitch -BANG!

Doesn't anyone find the factory trebles to be slightly too small? A lot of mine came with #7 hooks. I switched them to #6 hooks which also added weight and now they float lower in the water. Also, when tugged, they dive under and are slower to return to the surface. I don't especially like that about them, but the hooks being so small I thought was a bad thing.

I have several of them that I need to put new hooks on. 

Yep still use the floating rapalas in all the ways mentioned above. I like the blue/silver, the black/silver and perch.