The Whole Truth: Outdoor Product Review
Top Lure Company “Swings and Misses”
by Mike Walker of Fishing 24-7 Guide Service
I am not sure what's going on with Lucky Craft, Inc. I've bought their products for years. The Staysee 90, Pointers, and Sammy's are some of my favorite lures. However, a couple of their baits lately have me questioning if the company is living off its reputation instead of the products they are producing now. I called Lucky Craft, Inc., located in Costa Mesa, California to try to see if they were aware of some of the problems I've had with a couple of their lures. At first they acted like they were unaware of problems with any of their lures. I asked to speak with someone about the problems and was told no one was available. I asked if there was anybody in their whole company I could talk to and the answer I got was, "Sir, I am the only one here." "That's hard to believe," I said. She said if I had a problem, I could return it to the store I bought it from. I replied with, "If the bait is not made right and has problems, who made it? Who gave it to the stores and who sells the product for almost double to triple the price of other lures without adequately testing it?" I got no reply and then got mysteriously disconnected. I tried to call back several times over the rest of the day and only received their answering machine.
One of the baits I feel got pushed through for the almighty dollar is the new Lucky Craft Fat Smasher 60. This is described as a crankbait/swimbait hybrid. The bait has three sections, so it can be fished by holding the rod tip low to the water. It has the side to side wobble action of a crankbait with a swimbait profile. The lure is retrieved with the rod tip up and it creates a smooth wake action on or near the surface. The main problem with this lure is the front hook gets caught on the line about one-third of the time the lure is twitched. When holding the rod tip down and reeling in, this bait can't be twitched, and when I say twitch, I don't mean jerk. When trying to give it an injured baitfish look, twitch, pause and start again, the front hook gets tangled on the line. I am not saying it won't catch some fish as I caught several while fishing with this bait, but I caught most of them when I was willing to risk tangling the hook up by twitching it a little.
My feeling is that if they would have done a little more testing, they would have had a great lure. The following day, I called a couple of people and was able to get the number of their Western sales representative. Once I got in contact with him, our conversation went very differently than the calls to Lucky Craft, Inc. the day before. I filled him in on why I called and went over what happened the day before. He said he had not heard anything about this bait yet, that it was new and he had not been able to fish it yet. He said I might be ahead of the curve on this, that he was unaware of any problems with the lure. I find that hard to believe... again I was thinking, how are the lure company and sales rep unaware of problems with their lures? He offered to replace the bad lures for different lures and seemed interested in hearing about the problems. What scares me is that the main office of Lucky Craft didn't even want to hear about it. To me, that's cause for concern. Are they even going to try to fix the problem or continue to sell it as is?
Verdict: Ok idea and good looking, but still needs work. The front hook is a real problem with this lure.
