Bigger is not always better when talking about soft plastic bass baits. The new Baby Rage Craw might be smaller but, it packs quite a punch for anglers seeking something smaller for a finesse approach.

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Coming in at just 3 inches, the Baby Rage Craw has already proven to be a superior solution for small jigs and/or Texas rigs in finesse applications for proffesional anglers and everyday fisherman. For those of you fishing ultra-clear or hi-pressured lakes; the Baby Craw may be just what the fish doctor ordered.

It can be rigged on a standup jig head, used as a finesse jig trailer, rigged alone on a light line T/rig or drop shot rig and can even be used as a smaller Carolina rigged bait. Available in 9 fish-catching colors for the 2009-2010 season, the Baby Rage Craw is sure to be a great addition to the bass anglers arsenal.

Checkout the RageTalk area of the website for more information and to add your comments or ask questions concerning this great new soft plastic bait from Rage Tail.

Question: What trailer are you putting on the football-head jig?

VanDam: I’m either using a Rage Chunk or a Rage Craw. I personally like to fish the Rage Craw on the football-head jig. The Rage Craw is a little longer than the Rage Chunk. I like the Rage Craw because when it comes over a rock, that crawfish-looking trailer on the back appears to jump over the rock just like a crawfish will.

Those pincers have great action. When you combine that action with the fish-catching ability of the Rage Craw on the back side of big bass bait like the football-head jig, you have the most potential for catching the biggest bass you can catch in a Part of fishing. I’m not trying to catch 100 fish a Part when I’m fishing the football-head jig with a Rage Craw trailer. I just want to catch a quality stringer of bigger bass.

Question: Denny, why do you like the Rage Chunk?

Brauer: The Rage Chunk is designed to be the trailer for the Denny Brauer Premier Pro-Model Jig. It’s the perfect size, so the angler doesn’t have to add anything to make it fit on the jig. Also, he doesn’t have to bite off a portion of the bait and then worry if he’s bitten off too much or too little for the chunk to look natural on the jig.
The Rage Chunk is the perfect size when it comes out of the package. The angler only has to thread it on the jig and go fishing. The Rage Chunk has the same kicking action with the claws as the Rage Craw does. Strike King has incorporated all the good properties of the Rage Craw into the Rage Chunk. I really like the Rage Chunk because it has all the kicking and the swimming action in its pincers as the Rage Craw. When the fish are really hitting the jigs on the drop in thick cover, I’ll use the Rage Chunk as my trailer.
I always match the color of the Rage Chunk to the color of jig I’m fishing, which is based on water clarity. When choosing jig and trailer color to match the color of lures to the color of the water and the sky, remember to change colors when the light penetration changes. When fishing on a clear day and cloud cover rolls in, the time has come to change color. When fishing in clearer water and moving into slightly-stained water, change the color of your bait.

If the wind picks up, and there’s a little chop on the water, the light doesn’t penetrate as deeply, and the color needs to be changed. When the light penetration into the water becomes less, use darker colors, and when the light penetration into the water increases, fish with more-natural colors. When the water’s calm, use a lighter-shade bait, and when the water becomes choppy, use a darker-shade bait.
Weather and water changes will happen throughout the day, so when I get to the lake, I make a decision on the color I’ll fish. I start with that color, but then I pay close attention to the water and the weather changes and change the colors of my jigs and my lures accordingly.

Strike King Pro Greg Hackney, nicknamed ‘Hack Attack’, set a new 3-day total with a whopping 109 lb. 6 oz. weigh-in at the FLW East-West Fishoff at Falcon Lake in Zapata, TX in November. His weapon of choice was the RageTail 10″ Anaconda worm in Bama Bug and Red Bug colors.

When he spotted bass under the boat, he cast out past the school. Instead of turning on his trolling motor, he let the wind push the boat and drag the Anaconda right into the school. He never turned the first bass that took his bait. The big bass took the Anaconda and kept going, finally breaking the line. It was a monster. He sat down in his boat, and tied-on a new Anaconda. On the next three casts, he caught three 7-pounders in back-to-back casts – one weighing 7-pounds 14-ounces, another 7-pounds 11-ounces, and yet another 7-pounds 8-ounces. On the first day, he ended up with 32 pounds of bass, and was in 4th place.

On the second day, Greg caught two bass on the Plum 10″ Anaconda. He also used the new RageTail Lobster with his new Hack Attack Jig to show the bass a different lure. He used a green-pumpkin-colored jig with a perch-colored skirt and a watermelon-red Rage Lobster on the back. He put the Rage Lobster, which is a really-big craw, on the back of that light jig to slow-down the fall of this jig. The bass wanted a bait with a big profile that fell really slowly. He would drag the lure through the brush very slowly to get the fish to bite.

The last day Greg caught four bass on the Anaconda and one bass on the Hack Attack jig. He weighed in 15 bass in the tournament and 12 of those were caught on the Anaconda, while three were caught on the Hack Attack jig. This was the first time he had fished the Anaconda in a tournament. He said the 7-pounders he caught during practice built his confidence in the bait. The Anaconda is a big worm but also has a really-big tail. About 2/3 of the worm’s body is tail with a unique swimming action and a big profile that really turns-on the big bass. Hackney quoted, “I’ve decided the Anaconda will be the only worm I fish. I caught nearly 110 pounds of bass using the Anaconda.”

Denny Brauer was quoted when asked about the new Rage Tail Lobster:

“The Rage Lobster is a real man’s bait. It truly appeals to big fish. I’m a big fan of the Lobster because I target big fish in tournaments. If you can catch those bigger fish in a tournament using big baits like the Lobster, you can win. Because the lobster is an oversized crawdad, it appeals to big, heavy bass. Big bass probably don’t want to waste their energy chasing small baits. So, when they see a big bait like the Lobster moving slowly, they’ll attack it. I’ve had a lot of success this past year fishing the Lobster.

If you’re fishing a body of water that homes a number of big bass, the Lobster should be your lure of choice. It will make those big bass bite. If you’re fishing a tournament, you’ve already caught a limit of bass in your live well, and you want to upgrade your stringer with bigger fish or catch the big bass of the day, the Lobster is your go-to bait. The Lobster will appeal to bigger bass. You can put the Lobster on the back of a jig to give it a slower fall and a different look. If a versatile bait is fished many-different ways, it has a variety of applications. You can Texas rig the Lobster, flip it, cast it or use it on a Carolina rig or a flip trailer.

Question: Denny, when you put the Rage Lobster on the back end of a 1/2- or a 3/4-ounce jig, you’ve created a big bait, haven’t you?

Brauer: Absolutely. Many times bass really prefer that gorilla-sized bait. For many years, anglers thought a bait could be too big for a bass to eat. However, in recent years, with the success of the new big swim baits, like Strike King’s King Shad and Shadalicious, many anglers’ eyes have been opened to the size of forage fish the bass will take. Many people want to catch any kind of bass, so they downsize their lures. Therefore, the bass are accustomed to seeing small to medium-sized lures. When you put an oversized bait in that type of environment, it’s a new type of creature the bass has never seen before and the bass will strike it.

If you rig the Lobster and color coordinate the Lobster with the jig skirt and jighead so the Lobster looks like an oversized crawfish, the bass will often gobble up that bait. The Lobster is a tremendous bait we’ve never seen previously. With all the new lures from Strike King this year, I feel like a kid in a candy store. I’ve got so many-different baits from which to choose that I can cater to the size of the bass and the fishing conditions much better than I’ve ever been able to before. The Lobster is at the top of my list of favorites of Strike King’s new 2009 baits.”

October 13, 2007, Mark Rose of Marion, Arkansas, a longtime Strike King pro, won $125,000 for fishing in the 4-day Wal-Mart FLW BP Eastern Division Tournament held on Pickwick Lake in northwest Alabama. This is Rose’s first, 1st-place finish in his 9-year career as a tournament pro. This week, Rose will tell us how he won, what lures he won with, and what techniques gave him this career-high check.

Part 1: Having Good Feelings

When asked why he thought he had a good chance to win at Pickwick, Mark Rose commented:

“My goal for the tournament was to finish in the top 30. I was about 48th in the points to qualify for the FLW Series East/West Championship. On this circuit, I didn’t have enough points to fish my year-end tournament. I knew I had to come in at least in the top 30 in the Pickwick tournament to finish in the top 30 on the circuit and have a chance to fish the end-of-the-season championship between the East and the West. I went to Pickwick Lake before the lake was made off-limits to get in some extra practice.

I fished Strike King’s new Tour Grade Football Jig with the new Rage Tail Craw and tried to drag it along the bottom as much as I could to learn what was on the bottom in different locations. I found four good schools of fish holding on mussel beds, realizing the Tennessee River was known for having sandbars and mussel beds. The main river ledges seemed to hold the bass most of the time. But I knew in the fall of the year, the bass would start moving toward the pockets and the coves, and would tend to move up on more-shallow bars, sometimes only 14- to 20-feet deep.”

On the subject of catching smallmouth vs largemouth bass he said:

“Primarily largemouth bass. But during the tournament, I weighed in two smallmouths. I felt really good about what I’d found before the cut-off date, and that I could place where I needed to place. Now, I never tell my wife how I think I’ll do in a tournament. But when I left home to fish at Pickwick, I just casually mentioned, “Well, I guess I’ll go win Pickwick this weekend,” as a kind of a joke. I didn’t know that I would win, but I felt I’d have a really-strong tournament.”

Rose added what he had learned in practice:

“I learned what depth the fish were holding in, and that the fish were holding on certain little sweet spots on about four mussel bars. I found that the mussel bars that had a lot of mussels on them were much-more productive than the mussel bars that didn’t have as many mussels on them. I learned where there were boulders that could serve as ambush points on the mussel bars and lined-up my boat with those boulders as waypoints on my GPS receiver. Then I’d get visual targets on the bank so that when I got my boat in position, I could cast at one particular tree on the bank, a bush or a stump. I knew the way my jig should come across the bottom to come through that sweet spot where the fish were feeding.”

Part 2: The First Day of the Tournament

Mark described the first morning:

“I learned that there were two times the bass would bite on the spots I was fishing –at first light and whenever current was being pulled through the lake. For the first 30 minutes of daylight, I’d cast a 1-ounce chrome spoon, run it just under the surface and get a top-water bite. Then after the sun came up, or if the lake quit running current, I’d use the Football Jig with a Rage Tail Craw.

After the early-morning bite ended, the bass would pull off the mussel bars and move out to the edges and the ends of the bars. That’s when the Rage Craw really would pay off for me. The first morning of the tournament, I caught six bass on top of the bar using the spoon. I had two, 4 pounders and three other keepers.

When the sun came up, and the current stopped coming through the lake, I moved out to the edges and the ends of the bars and fished the Football Jig with the Rage Tail Craw. I was able to cull three of the bass I’d caught that morning. I was using a 7-foot, heavy-action rod with 15-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon line with a 3/4-ounce green-pumpkin Strike King Football Jig with a green-pumpkin Rage Tail Craw.

The water was so clear I wanted my baits to be really compact. So, I bit off about 1 inch of the craw and trimmed-up the skirt. Then I sprayed the tips of the craw with chartreuse Spike-It dye. I used the Spike-It dyes to give that crawfish a little bit of flash. Also, I knew that chartreuse attracted smallmouth, and I’d hoped to catch some of them, too.”

I was dragging the Football Jig with the Rage Craw slowly on the bottom over the mussel beds. I didn’t hop the jig at all. I kept it in contact with the bottom throughout the entire retrieve. I wanted it to look like a crawfish easing along those mussel beds. Because the crawfish were feeding on the mussel beds, the bass expected to see them there. If that Rage Tail Craw came by a big boulder, more than likely there would be a fish hiding behind that boulder, and it would come out and eat the bait.

On the first day, I had six bass in the first 30 minutes of the tournament. I caught all six on the spoon, and then using the Football Jig with the Rage Tail Craw, I culled the three smallest fish and weighed in 18 pounds and 15 ounces for five bass for the day. At the weigh-in, I was in first place, and Terry Bolton was 3 pounds behind me with 16 pounds. I was feeling pretty good about the first day of the tournament.”

Part 3: The Second Day of the Tournament

About his strategy on the second day of the tournament, he said:

“I wasn’t going to change anything on the second day after doing so well the first day. I really had the fish dialed-in, and I was leading the tournament with the pattern I had. So, there was no reason to change. As soon as I pulled up on my first spot, I caught four bass on the spoon, which gave me about 12 pounds. When the spoon-bite quit, I went back to fishing the Football Jig. The first two days of the tournament, this area had current early, up until about 8:00 am. I’d have 15 to 30 minutes those first two days of good early-morning fishing, while the bass were on top of the mussel bars. When the current stopped running, the fish would move to the sides and the ends of the bars, and I still could catch them on the Football Jig.

Also, on the first and the second day, Pickwick Lake had clouds and wind. With clouds, wind and current, the bass usually will bite really well, as they did for me the first 2 days. I had so much confidence in the Football Jig and the Rage Tail Craw that I started fishing them before the current was turned off on the second day.

The first four fish weighed about 12-pounds total. I finally caught my fifth fish on the Football Jig, and then I caught six or seven more fish, which let me cull one more fish. Then I went to the weigh-in site early. I was pulling these fish out of deep water and I was afraid I might have a problem with the fish dying. So, I came in to the weigh-in early. Right next to the ramp, before I weighed in, I caught a 3-1/2-pound smallmouth and was able to cull one more time. I had 15 pounds, 15 ounces, and I was still in first place. I had a 6-pound lead going into the third day of the tournament.”

The Third Day of the Tournament

Mark decribed what happened on the third day of the tournament:

“The world changed. We didn’t have overcast skies. Instead it was a bluebird day. We had no wind, and the water was slick and calm. I still threw the spoon first thing in the morning and caught one, 2-1/2-pound bass. I caught the rest of the bass on the Football Jig with the Rage Tail Craw and the Spike-It-dyed pincers. I had to work all four of my hot spots to get a limit. I was really struggling. I’d spend 1 hour on each one of my four mussel beds and then let it rest and go to the next mussel bed. I was rotating between all four sites.

About his decision to use a green-pumpkin Rage Tail Craw, he said:

“Green-pumpkin is a clear-water color and it matches the crawfish. I’ve seen crawfish that color in bass’s mouths, and I’ve seen pincers that color on the bottom of my live well after I’ve put bass in it. At this time of year, green-pumpkin is the color of a crawfish, so I stuck with it. I put the Spike-It dye on that bait because when you’re fishing that deep, the dye glows. The Spike It dye adds a bright color the fish can see easier, and it encourages the bass to bite better.”

The Last Day of the Tournament

Mark described the last day of the tournament below:

“We had the same kind of weather we’d had the previous day. The sun was out, and we had no wind and no current. I’d had so much success throwing the spoon early in the morning on the other days that I had to try it. I didn’t get a strike for the first 15 minutes. I was about to put the spoon down when I got a hit and set the hook. I had a mushy feeling on the end of the hook. The fish had missed the spoon the first time, and I’ve learned over the years, that many times if a fish missed the spoon on the first strike, you could let it fall back, and the bass would take the spoon again. So, I let the spoon fall back, and when I felt the fish, I set the hook. But I had a really-spongy feeling like I was dragging a water-soaked sponge. The fish wasn’t moving, and when it did move, it moved really sluggishly. I said to myself, “Mark, you’ve got yourself a Friday-night, fish-fry catfish.” But when I got the fish to the surface, it was a 4-pound largemouth. The spoon had hooked the fish on the side of the gill. I put it in the boat. I was feeling really good because that was the kicker fish I knew I needed. I hadn’t caught a fish that big the previous day. I really felt I could catch a limit with my Strike King Football Jig.

On my first two casts with the Football Jig, using the Rage Tail Craw with the Spike-It dye, I caught two bass that weighed about 2-1/2-pounds each, which gave me about 9 pounds for three bass. I was beginning to think I might have a chance to win. Two more half-way good fish and I might be able to pull this tournament out of the fire. I finally caught four or five more keepers, which gave me 13 pounds, 11 ounces going to the weigh-in stand. Riding back to the weigh-in stand, I didn’t know whether I’d won or not, but I thought I’d given myself a chance to win, if the second and third place contestants had had bad days. I didn’t really think I’d won it, although I felt I’d fished as good as I could possibly fish, taken advantage of every opportunity I had and put myself in a position to have a chance to win. I knew the second-place contestant had to have 14-1/2-pounds to beat me.

Since I was the leader, I was on the hot seat. They weighed-in in descending order with the 10th place guy weighing-in first. I still had a good lead on the 10th, the ninth and the eighth place, but I didn’t know how much weight the rest of the contestants had. I was going to be the last person to weigh-in.

The third-place contestant, Jim Moynagh, weighed-in and I had a 2-pound lead over him before he weighed. I knew he had to have more than 15 pounds to beat me. When he weighed in, he had 14 pounds and some change. So I thought to myself, “Well, I got second place for sure.”

I was guessing I had about 12 pounds. But Terry Bolton from Kentucky, who was in second place, had caught 17 pounds the previous day. He grew up guiding on the Tennessee River and was an excellent Tennessee River fisherman. I felt he’d win it. But just before he weighed in, Tom Mann, Jr. came over, leaned in close to me, and whispered, “It looks like you’re going to win this thing, Mark.” I said, “No, Terry’s probably going to win. He weighs-in next.” Tom Mann said, “No, he’s only got two fish.” Then my heart skipped a beat, because I knew I’d beaten the guy who had just weighed-in, and if the only man who could beat me only had two fish, I could really win this tournament. I was really hoping that Tom Mann, Jr. wasn’t playing a joke on me. When Terry Bolton only weighed-in two fish, I couldn’t believe it. I felt I pretty much had won.”

He summed up the $125,000 purse as follows:

“It’s going to give me a little peace of mind and some breathing room. Tournament fishermen spend a lot of money trying to make a little, and finances are pretty tight for most of us. But this win will help pay some bills and make fishing tournaments a little easier for the next year or two. It will take some of the pressure off my fishing. I feel really grateful and want to say thank you to my family and my sponsors for sticking with me through the hard times. This win was for y’all.”

In January 2008 on Falcon Lake, professional fisherman Tim Reneau caught the heaviest day-four weight in both Stren Series and FLW Outdoors history. Reneau, from Del Rio, Texas, bagged five fish weighing 33 pounds. The group was so large that the biggest (9 lb. 8 oz.) had to be weighed separate from the others. The second place finish was accomplished with the use of a Strike King Rage Tail Chunk on an Oldham jig using 80-pound braid.

The Rage Tail Craw is one of the original soft plastic baits released under the Rage Tail line of soft plastics by Strike King Lure Company. The Rage Craw is unique in it’s ability to create a huge amount of vibration, move lots of water and still have a life-like appearance.The ragetail craw is available in plenty of colors, it can be fished T/rigged or used as a jig trailer making it a great choice for bass anglers interested in crayfish baits.

If you would like to add your feedback and comments about the Rage Tail Craw, feel free to add them here.

The Rage Tail Chunk is a exceptional soft plastic jig trailer for bass fisherman.
The Rage Chunk’s patented claws are packed full of action. The vibration produced while moving and the life-like defensive posture while sitting makes the Rage Chunk a great choice for bass anglers seeking a unique jig trailer or even a finesse craw to be used in light line applications.

If you would like to add your feedback and comments about the Rage Tail Chunk, feel free to add them here.