We have been able to fish a bunch of new crankbaits this year, and I really enjoyed fishing with the new SPRO Rk Crawler 55 designed by Mike McClelland. This crankbait was designed for a specific purpose but we’ve found it useful for a lot of applications. Check it out in action here and then see what we had to say about below.
So I’ll break it down quickly for you by talking about the following aspects:
- Features
- Design
- Why you will like it
- Applications
FEATURES
The SPRO Rk Crawler comes in 7 great looking crawfish colors. In fact, I don’t think their is a bad color in the line up. They have some translucent colors and solid matte colors that hit the highlights and colors that attract all 3 species of black bass.
The bait weighs 1/2 ounce, so it casts like a rock. That’s a good deal with smaller crankbaits in clear water, where you often make long casts that you want to land inches from the rocky bank without busting your bait. And it will dive to around 10-12 feet so you can cover a lot of water with one cast. It has a great hookup ratio with two No. 5 Gamakatsu treble hooks.
DESIGN
The SPRO Rk Crawler is a crawfish crankbait. It does not come in shad or bluegill patterns. It’s meant to mimic the crawfish that frequent many clear, rocky fisheries across the nation. Elite Series pro Mike McClelland lives on Beaver Lake and has spent countless hours on Table Rock, Bull Shoals and other Ozark and White River highland impoundments where clear water can make for tough fishing.
But one staple of those fisheries is that on windy, cloudy days, the spotted bass, smallmouths and largemouths that frequent those types of fisheries will flat chomp on crawfish crankbaits crawled over and through rocky banks, points and flats.
The bait crawls rocky banks really well and gets wild as it goes along. That hunting pattern over irregular bottom contours is very attractive to bass. But you need your bait to not get hung up. That was what I was probably most impressed with on the Rk Crawler was how well it fished on rip rap, and around big rock.
WHY YOU WILL LIKE IT
It throws great, retrieves great and it catches bass. I was able to catch several bass this spring on it around rip rap. I really liked that it’s small but fishes like a bigger crankbait. I could feel it well on a medium cranking rod.
The colors really are great on it. Chartreuse is a real trigger color for smallmouth and spotted bass but they made some real pretty baits that just have subtle orange and chartreuse accents. It’s obvious a lot of thought was put into the color, the action and the fishability of these crankbaits.
APPLICATIONS
The obvious application for this crankbait is on clear water fisheries where crawfish are prevalent. It was really effective in the prespawn for me. I will start picking it up again as I look for fish that come back shallow in the hot parts of summer because it’s small profile matches the size of yearling baitfish.
But I feel like it will be effective anytime there is an overabundance of shad, and when the fish stay shallow on clear fisheries hunting like smallmouth often do on norther natural lakes.
It will also be very effective when the crawfish are molting on full moon cycles. And again in the fall when the bass go foraging before winter.
It was probably designed as a coldwater crankbait, but it won’t surprise me to see several big catches in other times of the year on fisheries where crawfish are the main forage like a lot of northern natural lakes that are more rocky than grassy.
I liked the Rk Crawler. I think it’s well made, well designed, in the right colors and it fishes well. It’s a premium crankbait. You can find the SPRO Rk Crawler 55 at TackleWarehouse.com or at local retailers that carry SPRO crankbaits.
