New RageTail Baits - 2012

ICAST 2012
Big-O tells you what's new from RageTail, plus gives new tips on rigging for big bass!
Transcript

Hey, folks. Big O here, Steve Parks, Rage Tail, Strike King. We're here at ICAST 2012 in Orlando. We're having a great time, and I've got some awesome products this year. I think you're going to love them, and let me show you what they are.

The first one that I'd like to show you is called a Shellcracker, and if you'll notice, it's a little brim style, bait fish style and it also has the twin tails on it. Now the key to this twin tail that we've got on this particular bait, of course, you pop them loose like you do on some of our other Rage Tail products, it's got the tear tag. But the key to this is this is absolutely without a doubt the fastest flicker rate action bait in the world. These tails move so fast on the fall, and just with minimal movement of the rod tip, those tails are moving.

A lot of people would look at this and say, "Well, Big O, how are you going to rig that?" Well, believe it or not, I have one rigged right here. This is my favorite way to rig it. I rig it on its side with a flipping hook. You could use a 5/0 EWG would probably be a preference. This is actually one of our flipping hooks, and you'll notice it's rigged like this, just like you would a beaver style bait. When we fish beavers, a beaver style bait, the fish are looking at two things. They either consider it to be the shape of a bait fish, or possibly they see a craw. They see these two flippers or whatever on the back and they see a craw. In my opinion, the fish normally eat bait fish more throughout the year than they do the craw. So we've designed this to be a hybrid flipping bait, and it's actually a little Shellcracker brim shape with some really hyper tails.

Is there other ways to hook it? Absolutely. If you look, it's also got a belly slot right here so that you can actually rig it with a swimbait hook. Now there's a hook slot right here in the back, for your swimbait hook, and I would suggest a 4/0 swimbait hook for this, screw lock's probably best. There's also, when you flip it, or you rig it on its side, there's little hook slots on both sides of the bait so that you can skin hook it as well. One of the keys to it is, when we're flipping baits, in order to keep a bait from corkscrewing like this, let's try to rig the bait as flat as we can and try not to bow it up. We don't want to do this to a bait. We don't want to bow it up so much. A lot of people do. What we want to do is keep the bait as flat as we can.

Now we have some great colors on the Menace. The twin tail Menace is another bait that we just came out with, and you'll notice it's got the same tail that the Shellcracker does. This is a really awesome little twin tail grub. You can use it as a jig trailer. You can also flip it. You can punch with it. The key to it is, and here's another thing, this is one of the things that Kevin has done. He'll take this bait, he'll put a 2 to 3/0 swimbait hook in it, run it like this, with the tails like this, and just run it through, kill it, let it fall.  When it falls with a swimbait hook, the body is shaking like this due to the hook itself, but the tail action is super fast.

Like I said, this is a very versatile little bait right here. Flip it, pitch it, you can cast it, stand-up jig, you can trail it on any jig and it'll work extremely well. Seventeen colors, and the colors that are coming out on it are awesome. One of my favorite colors, of course, being the Falcon Lake Craw. We come out with it in this, and I love it.

I'll show you one of the other new products that Strike King is coming out with. This is called a Slither Rig. This is actually a tungsten weight with a nice thick heavy skirt, and what you do is you just rig this, or the Shellcracker, either one, you rig these on your flipping hook, your favorite flipping hook, and then you can see what it does. It's the perfect punch bait. Or if you want to flip and you don't want to choose a jig, you can always use a tungsten that's smaller. The tungsten's going to be smaller than lead and heavier and probably a little bit better more sensitive. This is a great little rig as well. So I think the Slither Rig is going to be a big addition. I'll be using this a lot this year.

We have one other bait that we've come out with this year, finally, and it's the Recon worm. It's actually the basic tail of the Anaconda, but if you'll notice, this is a ring worm style body. Why ring worm? I'll show you two reasons. Number one, the texture of this. If you'll notice how easy this moves, the texture of that is so soft that when a fish gets it in their mouth, they just crush it. They like that, and their hold time on this is ridiculous.

You can do this, but let me show you a trick. For those of you who like to throw small Senkos, I'm not a Senko fisherman, and I wasn't the one who came up with this, but somebody showed me, and I said, "Yeah, you're right. It's great for that." Look. I've popped this loose. Now I have a five inch ring worm real pliable soft little Senko that you can throw at however you want to. If you want a finesse fish, shaky head, or if you want a wacky worm or whatever, it's sweet. I think you'll like that, too. We came out with a lot of new colors on it.

That's our new product presentation, but here's one of the great things about this year that I've enjoyed probably more than years past recently, is that Strike King just came out with a ton of new colors on all of our baits. On the craws, we came out with just, I don't know, how many new colors. Our Smoking Rooster, our Rage Hogs, we've got a tremendous amount of new colors, so you guys check it out. We do have a new website at Rage Tail. We've got a new website, and it's got all the new colors. It's got all the new baits. We're going to have great rigging information for you.

Just for BassResource, I have something for you. You remember a couple of years ago at one of our RoadTrips I was showing you how to rig the Rage Toad. Well I kept the secret for quite a while, and so I want to reveal that secret to you now. Here's the standard Rage Toad. Remember, we just pop these two feet loose like this. Do you see a difference between this one and this one? You notice how I just pinched out the middle of this? I took a little half moon shape out of the center of this. Why? Two reasons. The Rage Toad is the most aggressive toad in the world. It makes more noise, more racket on the surface than any other toad in the world. If you want to tone it down just a little bit, you trim out that little piece right there in the middle and what happens is these tails, they still make noise, and they still come through the waters making a splash, but you can tone it down as much as you want to. It's sweet.

And what do I do with it? As usual, Big O likes big baits, and there it is, folks. This is one of my favorite flipping baits of all time. I actually had Strike King make me some of my toads in the Falcon Lake Craw color, and I'm using this now on the places that I fish, like Armistead, Choke Canyon, all the big Texas lakes. This is sweet, and I love it. When a fish gets that big hunk of plastic in their mouth, they're not leaving it alone, and it's usually the bigger ones. You guys try that out.

Can you do this with a Shad? Absolutely. If you want the Shad to quiet it down, tone it down a little bit, because it's so radical on the surface, you can actually tone it down by doing the same thing that I did here. Why don't you try that out, and let me know on BassResource how you like it. Good to see y'all again, and next time I hope one of y'all gets to come up here and visit us.