Rapala Super Shad Rap

This is an up-sized version of Rapala's shallow Shad Rap. For Musky fishing, these lures are perfect in terms of size, castability, action and colour selection. The quality of the finish and construction is second to none, outstanding really. Casting, you can cover water from 4-12' depth with lure, it trolls a little deeper. If you look at the general musky crankbait lineup you will see a large variety of expensive, poorly constructed items that have poor workmanship, poor quality finishes and lame action in the water. The Super Shad Rap leaves all of these in the dust - a different (better) class of lure. The Super Shad Rap's action on a stop and go, jerky retrieve is incredible, seems to be irresistible to muskies. My favourite colour in clear water is the Gold Shiner but everything will probably work. My only wish would be for Rapala to upsize its diving Shad Rap into a deeper diving 'Super Shad Rap Deep'.

This is one of my highest confidence lures in my box for river musky. I have it in every color pattern offered stock to match all kinds of forage. You can work it slow, work it fast, troll it, twitch it, straight retrieve it, dive and rise it, anything. It will catch fish. The downside is that these lures are some of the weakest baits I've used in terms of paint, lips, and stock hooks. You cannot hit these things off bridges/rocks/etc. You will be retrieving a mangled bait. They must not glue the lips in place properly as I've found it's always a clean separation when I lose a lip - no 'break', but the lip just pops right off cleanly (nothing super glue can't fix). The hooks are very light, and will absolutely bend if you horse in an esox. I always replace with one size up (4/0 VMC black nickel) or 2x's/3x's in the same 3/0 size. The paint is also very weak, and will chip/scar after one bite. Not a big deal, but I wish Rapala would beef these things up just a wee bit more.