Afraid the heavily pressured fish in your lake have seen it all? Don’t worry, they ain’t seen nothing yet!
Not if you tie on a Rapala Snap Rap this spring and summer, says legendary angler Al Lindner.
“It jumps off the bottom and it flops right back down in the fish’s face,” Al explains. “And they’re reacting to that bait - they just go ‘Boom!’ and hit it!”
Not only are the winged glide baits unique looking, they also impart an action unique to open-water angling.
“A lot of times you hear people talking about fishing for bass with a reaction bait, something that’s moving real fast through the water column and going in a horizontal movement,” Al explains. “Well this is a reaction bait with a vertical movement.”
The Snap Rap elicits bites best when fished with snap-retrieve method. That is, making the lure dart up aggressively with a firm rod snap, then quickly glide back to bottom.
“Hopping, ripping, whatever you want to call it, you put that Snap Rap on and get down there and start bouncing it and you’re going to catch the fish of a lifetime,” Al says.
The key to the Snap Rap presentation is a rhythm, Al explains. “You get a rhythm to the depth and the speed, to the wind and you just catch a load of fish.”
For anglers fishing deep lakes with sandy and gravel bottoms, or deep, West Coast reservoirs, the Snap Rap technique is both “simple and unbelievably effective,” James says.
James initiates the technique by flipping a Snap Rap out away from the boat on a short cast and letting it sink to the bottom, all while drifting with the wind.
“You’re not actually fishing the bait totally vertically, you’re actually dragging the bait away from the boat, at about a 60-degree angle,” he explains.
Once the Snap Rap hits bottom, rip it up with a jerk of your rod tip. Then just as quickly, let it fall on slack line back to the. The slack-line fall is key, James stresses.
“It seems like that is a little bit better of a trigger,” he says. “You don’t want to slow the drop speed of the bait.”
Watch Al and James Lindner demonstrate how to catch fish on the Snap Rap:
Constructed with lead and heavy-duty plastic, the Snap Rap’s durable body and enticing action makes it perfect for multiple species of game fish.
“You know it’s a really good technique when it catches so many varied species of fish,” James says. “We’ve caught walleye, big pike, panfish, crappies.”
