Well, I buy them in large part because they're inexpensive and I like the looks of them, but I have been having great luck lately on smallmouth with the Flicker Shad. My only complaint is that the hooks are so sharp practically every fish ends up somehow embedding every single hook in one part of their body or another.

The hooks are not very strong either. I don't use the regular Flicker Shad for bass, but I do use the Flicker Shad Shallow for bass quite a bit and have very good success. Basically a shallower running, rattling shad rap.

Huh, I've always thought of those baits as trolling baits.  I got a dozen of them on a Walmart close out and I only took one of them out of the package.  I didn't like how it ran and I didn't think that it casted very well.  I put them in their own plastic shoe box, I figure I'll trade them out sometime when one of my Minnesota pals comes to town.

I love the flicker shads and they have produced for me but I’m not much of a crankbait guy so I don’t feel qualified to give any specific advice for them. They have a tight action but even some of the deeper diving models are light and low density so you need a spinning rod to cast a lot of the models. I think they are marketed towards walleye fishermen and that’s why a lot of people associate them with trolling. I’ve caught bass, walleye and pike just long line trolling as well as casting over rock piles. 

I use them all the time. I throw them along with shad raps. Pretty much a rattling shad rap. I really like the smaller #4 and #5 for early spring crappies. It can slay them when crappie move up into shallow wood cover.

The shallow #7 size cast better than the deeper runners and I haven't had any trouble with tracking. It's still a spinning rod bait, but it has been a big time cold water producer for me since I discovered it a year or two ago.