i'm curious if anyone has given these crankbaits a try. i'm intrigued by the new lip design

I bought 2 of them to try out yesterday. The water has been wayyyy to muddy around here to fish with them, but I gave one of them 3 or 4 casts. From what I could see, the action looked like any other crank Iv seen.. But like I said, the water has been awful. I also noticed it was really light. It was sorta hard to get a good cast on a spinning reel. Maybe my opinion will change when I get the chance to really use it. Right now, theres nothing special Iv noticed about it.

I have been throwing the crank version in Bluegill color and doing really well with it in post spawn. As said pretty light so 6'6"-7' spining rod works best. Only goes about 4' down with 20# PP braid. Very snagless in brush.

 

I have caught LM bass, Bluegill, shellcracker, Redear, Perch, Catfish, Pickeral, and a 22# carp on it. 

From what I understand, they key to getting the best action out of the bait is by starting and stopping your retrieve. When you fish the bait erratically, it behaves more erratically.

You can get good evasive action on a straight retrieve, it's just a matter of finding the sweet spot on how fast you can reel. I did a bit of a review from the one trip I really got to fish mine before I lost it on the final page of this post. 

 

http://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-forums/topic/113704-rapala-scatter-rap-baits/page-4?hl=%2Bscatter+%2Brap#entry1273151

Awesome!!!  Is all I can say. 

 

One thing I have noticed is I seem to get a lot of short strikes or hooks outside the mouth which leads to more lost fish than I would like.

 

In my very unofficial testing over 2 outings when I got on a pretty good crankbait bite, I think the scatter crank was getting 2x as many strikes as a similar color DT6.  Of those strikes though, 100% of the DT6 made it to the boat while only 75% or so made it to the boat on the scatter crank.  The scatter crank also produced the 2 biggest bites (by far) and of course neither of them made it to the boat.

 

I really hope they expand this line.

I also vary the retrieve speed and pause it. Many strikes come on the pause.  I also do seem to lose more than normal but usually when they jump. I tried sharper hooks and to my surprise it did not help much.

 

I think the evasive action may be why the bass can miss it. That seems to happen to me with flukes too.

I've fished them and they do catch fish.  They hunt as advertised.  That said, they don't catch any more fish than say a KVD 1.5, shallow shad rap or other baits that dive to a similar depth and they cost more.  I'm sure someday I'll find a situation where they outfish other baits, but I might be waiting a long time.  When they start showing up in the $5 Rapala treasure chest at walmart I'll pick up a few more.  They are now in my "overrated hype box".

I like them, caught the one in my pic on a firetiger minnow model. They seem to draw in alot of big strikes, however, the fish do miss much more than with a traditional crank. To me this makes the scatter action a double edged sword. It draws them in like nothing I've seen however the same action that draws them in also causes them to miss.