Originally Posted by
Obi _ Wan
Yeah i'm guilty, i have 4 of those evergreens in my tacklebox, 3 ES Drives and 1 ES Flat. Two of the flats came by way of the internet so i can't remember how much they were, the other ES Flat i bought here was $75 and the ES Drive was $65.
To much/ you betcha, not again, i got them for a comp at Proserpine a couple of years ago (2008), only had one follow and the fishing was very very poor.
After that i was interoduced to barra plastics by the Doctor at Awoonga and did not use any other style of lure. The begining of last Spring saw me out of action for six months, back to it early February this year with Nagg and the 4 fish i landed and the one i lost were all on plastics.
When i first started on barra, 7 or 8 years ago the B52'S were getting the hits but there were busted, the tail broken off with busted B52'S on everyones wall, i refused to buy them for that reason.
I and everyone else had a very good run with the Halco scorpions, the way to go, then we changed to barra classics, wow what a lure a real fish killer, and of course all along the Lively Lures Afura Barra was and still is responsible for a lot of fish. And all these lures will continue to catch fish.
Now these Rapala XRaps are brilliant, certainly catch fish, no doubt about that, but IMHO are too easy to break, seems to be nearly always at the tail end with some of the plastic split/broken, internal wire ripped out, half way up the belly of the lure. In the the minor breakages it will let water into the body of the lure making it sink, i have seen people plug them up with silicone. Barra and Mangrove Jack break these lures, a jack my son caught snapped one clean in half.
But we keep on using them because they catch fish and they are not that expensive overall. Those big jointed XRaps catch fish too, ask the Vet what he caught his 130 odd fish on.
I will always have half a dozen in my tackle box come hell or high water.
A couple of days ago i was talking to the rep from Freetime who distribute the XRaps about their easy to break problems, he was aware of a problem that they had with the bibs on the XRaps and they were addressing that problem but he was not aware about the arse end problems.
To me its the plastic they use to mould, it seems too brittle, i can remember some rebel lures i used over thirty years ago, made with a plastic that you could not break with a hammer, those big yellow fin loved them.
Oh sh###e, there you go i've said too much.
Cheers,
John.