The topwater bait that helped Rapala® fishing pro Jacob Wheeler win a $500,000 Forest Wood Cup prize during the summer of the 2012 Olympics is now available in two new color patterns that will have anglers everywhere going for their own gold.
Rapala is introducing Rapala® X-Rap® Props in “Florida Gold” and “Black Chrome Orange.” The former features a gold-medal color body, black back and red throat. The latter features a chrome-gold body, black back and orange belly and throat.
X-Rap® Props in gold color patterns are especially effective in fisheries with golden-hued forage species. Florida largemouth, for example, “just can’t stand a golden shiner around them,” Wheeler explains. “And they’re always going to eat that.”
In northern waters, gold color-pattern X-Rap Prop baits drive smallmouth bass mad, yielding explosive bites and exciting fish catches.
Long-casting Rapala X-Rap Prop baits feature an X-Rap body, counter-rotating stainless steel props, 3-D holographic eyes, sticky-sharp VMC black-nickel round-bend hooks and a flash- feather tail on the rear treble. This lure triggers explosive bass bites when ripped aggressively or twitched slowly, depending on water and weather conditions.
The X-Rap Prop is one of Wheeler’s favorite topwater baits.
“It’s a great way to catch a lot of big bass,” said Wheeler, who won the 2012 Forest Wood Cup – Fishing League Worldwide’s season-championship tournament – in part by throwing an X-Rap Prop around current breaks, eddies and bluegill beds on the far reaches of the Chattahoochee River, which is impounded to form Georgia’s Lake Lanier.
“I threw the X-Rap Prop, made a ton of commotion and let it sit,” Wheeler explained at the time. “My whole approach was to irritate the fish so much they had no choice but to eat it. Three twitches and a pause of four or five seconds and repeat.”