After years of swearing I didn’t need any more crankbaits, I splurged again this weekend. Wrote about this site a lil’ while back as having good prices and fair shipping rates, so I went back into my favorites and looked up Xtackle.com again for some Reef Runner 800’s. If you are not familiar with the numbers next to the bait model, its something they just started a few years ago and refers to the second largest deep model of their crankbaits. Reef Runner just came out with a larger 900 series this past spring.
I tried to get a sampling of metallics, pinks, purples and some glow baits.
Some I reloaded on, some I wanted to try for the first time. Lots of anglers familiar with fishing Hot n Tots will recognize the last picture as the “Captain’s Choice” color pattern. I killed two birds with one stone by going with the “Blue Wonder Bread” pattern, not only did I get the wonder bread pattern I wanted, but its also a glow bait.
Even though you only need an $100 order to qualify for the $5.99 shipping rate, it wasn’t long before my original list of lures had passed the $250 plateau. With ice fishing around the corner, I cut that down to $130 or so. Didn’t want to do it, but then I remembered that last spring when I found the website, they had a “free shipping” offer on orders over 100 dollars. So I got enough to get me by this fall, and will do it again when the ice melts.
Also learned while surfing the site, that Dave’s Lures are going out of business. This is the Storm family that go back into the business after Rapala bought out the company a lot of us loved so well. Unfortunately after four or five years they are hanging it up again and closing down. Most of the lures that the site has left have gone on sale, but a lot of color patterns have been sold out already.