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The Strike King Tour Grade Rage Blade Swim Jig.  Say that 5 times fast!  Look, it’s a fair assessment.  This thing is a fusion of vibrating, swimming, stroking, grinding styles of jigging up fish.  Chatterbaits, vibrating jigs, or whatever you call them…….. get bit.  Swim jigs are a whole other universe of topics, but hell yes they catch fish, and in themselves fuse swimbait fishing into jig fishing.  So, connecting, fusing, and borrowing is the name of this bait. I was asked what I thought of this bait, so here goes.  I feel like this flavor of vibrating bait gives off a different vibration and vortex. It’s quite fishable and an innovative work around from Strike King.  My understanding is the Z-Man people have brought legal actions against anyone copying their “Chatterbait”.  It looks to me like Strike King found a way around it from a legal/design/patent perspective and likely has a bigger legal team!

Purchase from Tackle Warehouse:

Where would I fish it?

1. Okeechobee
2. Okeechobee
3. Okeechobee
4. Eufaula
5. CA Delta
6. Chickimauga
7. Guntersville
8. Every other lake and river!

The truth is, where ever you swim a jig or vibrate a jig, this thing is going to work too.  It’s new and fresh, and has a slightly different swagger.  Would a bigbait version of this make sense?  I believe a big vibrating jig would be worthy of putting together. In fact, I’m 200% sure guys have done this since Bryan Thrift smashed them on it on Okeechobee in the early 2000’s and thus launched the Chatterbait (to me anyway).   The wave of the future is clearly ‘bigger’ is better.  The conventional bait companies like Strike King have caught swimbait fire and the natural progression every company needs to be thinking is how to handle the “XXL” or “Super Sized” size of baits.  Look at the 10XD crankbait from Strike King.  Why stop there?  You just go down the line, and make every lure bigbait:  spinnerbait, buzzbait, topwater, jigs, vibrating jigs, spoons (Ben Parker, aloha, and super work on your Magnum Flutter Spoon), WORMS, etc, etc etc.   The horse has left the stable, and the universe of swimbait and bigbait is influencing.  The Strike King Tour Grade Rage Blade Swim Jig is sadly only available in 3/8 and 1/2 ounces which, don’t get me wrong, are excellent sizes and choices. I’m just keeping a pulse on when companies like Strike King go big and where.  Rods, reels, terminal tackle, line and baits have to match up remember, and that is the funky transition we’ll be in until the big companies get it right and make it all and affordable system for the masses.  Then it will truly all be there.   Until then, it’s the innovative anglers who are charging harder, tweaking conventional tackle to make it bigger and badder or just flat out making their own baits.  And then matching rods, reels, line, hooks, rings, etc as it happen.

I would throw thing thing out and make a ton of bottom and rock contact in a non-grass lake.  I would run parallel or whatever angles, even uphill to make this thing cling and clank off as much rock, woods and stuff as possible.  There is a good high stick pump you can use to reel snatch your bait along, letting it make bottom contact a lot but still swimming it.  Rod tip to down to 10 clock (reeling the entire time) and snatch up to 12 oclock and back down to 10 oclock and so on…pumping, grinding and waiting to turn sideways into a full pull against a 8 pound pre-spawn fatty on some perfect staging area you know.  In the grass, braid braid braid and same high stick retrieve.  I would snatch it along like a rattle trap and/or make the most contact with the grass while still being able to snatch and keep my hook clean.  High stick is how I retrieve, a lot.

The Strike King Rage Blade strikes me as a bait you can fish deeper and have more control over at depth.  It doesn’t take much to get this thing running right and with the weight in the blade, it tends to have a truer fall and pickup.  If your fish are tuned into the Chatterbait, you  might want to give the Rage Blade a try, it’s gonna be slightly different.  It fishes very true, is extremely weedless as far as what you can fish it thru, and seems to be a pretty well designed bait, even if it was influenced by the Chatterbait.

Take a look at the Naked Rage Blade (variation on the Scrounger Head).  I gotta believe this would be a good thing to have handy in the swimbait + chatter cricket department.  I know guys throw a ton a paddle tail style swimbaits on Scrounger heads.  This is the same application, but with a fresh vortex and vibration.  How about a Lake Fork Magic Shad Swimbait?  In case you don’t know, fishing a Lake Fork Magic Shad on a vibrating jig or Chatterbait (remove skirt, just the swimbait tail) plus the jig head, is a frickin’ killer.   The Scrounger and Naked Rage Blade give you fresher and move vibrant and lively swim to your paddle tailed swimbait of choice.