Reaction Innovations Spicy Beaver Soft Plastic Bait Product Review

Lure Review

Spice Up Your Fishing with Reaction Innovation's New Beaver Variant

Date:	6/24/19
Tackle Type:	Lures
Manufacturer:	Reaction Innovations
Reviewer:	Cal

Total Score: 8.17 + EDITOR'S CHOICE AWARD

Introduction: Reaction Innovation's Sweet Beaver is one of the more iconic soft plastic baits on the market. When it comes to bait profile recognition and imitation, the Sweet Beaver is right up there with the Yamamoto Senko and Zoom Brush Hog. Another general indication in how successful a product has been for a manufacturer in the tackle industry is in the number of variants that are available. Not only is there the Sweet Beaver, but there is also a Double Wide, Smallie, and Kinky variant. Today, we take a look at Reaction Innovation's latest twist on this iconic bait, the Spicy Beaver.

Introducing the latest twist on Reaction Innovation's iconic bait, the Spicy Beaver

Reaction Innovations Spicy Beaver Specifications
Type	Trailer Bait
Material	Soft Plastic
Colors/Patterns	14
Sizes	One, rated at 3.75" measures 4"
Scent/Plastic Treatment	None
# per package	6
Resealable Bag?	Yes
MSRP	$4.99

The Spicy Beaver is packaged with a clear, soft plastic tray helping to keep the baits in good shape before you open the package

Impressions: The Spicy Beaver is rated as a three and three quarter inch (3.75") bait but measures closer from tip to tip at four inches (4"). It shares the same shape and profile more or less as the company's Sweet Beaver trailer bait, but the Spicy Beaver's body is maybe half a wide. What makes this Beaver "Spicy" is the addition of swim flaps at the end of the claws. This seemingly simple, yet obvious modification adds more than just a little spice to the Beaver.

These baits measure 4" from tip to top

Real World Tests: I fished the Spicy Beaver on two different setups for its tests. The first setup was a Texas Rigged soft plastic using a smallish tungsten bullet weight sinker with a peg stopper and a 4/0 Gamakatsu Finesse Heavy Cover straight shank worm hook. I top-shotted some 12lb Hi-Seas 100% Fluorocarbon with 50lb Daiwa 8x JBraid in chartreuse spooled on a trick shop enhanced 13 Fishing Concept Z mounted on a brand new Megabass of America F8.5-711X Warhammer.

The bait's profile is very similar to the Sweet Beaver

The second setup was as a jig trailer on back of a Brian Schmidt Hybrid Football Jig tied to a top shot of 10lb Hi-Seas 100% Fluorocarbon on top of 50lb Seaguar Smackdown in stealth gray spooled on an Abu Garcia Revo4 IKE casting reel mounted on a Megabass of America Orochi XX F5.5-75XX Braillist. It was a take no prisoners kind of testing experience for the Spicy Beaver.

This is where Reaction Innovations added the spice

The Spicy Beaver's body, without the flaps, measures two and a half inches and rigs up perfectly on a 4/0 sized hook. An interesting enhancement on this bait is the addition of a wedge of soft plastic at the bait's head serving as an anchor against which to brace a hook's baitkeeper.

Rigged on board a 4/0 Gamakatsu Finesse Heavy Cover hook

Additionally, like the standard Sweet Beaver, the Spicy's two flaps come out of the package attached. Fished in this manner, the Spicy Beaver behaves like a standard Sweet Beaver. Split the tail and the flaps flutter at the slightest movement with the bait.

That little wedge of plastic at the head helps brace the bait against your hook's baitkeeper.

Once I saw how well the bait swam, I never fished the Texas rigged version without motion. I'd cast or pitch it up to shore, hop it a few times, then swim it back to the boat. Hits came as the bait was sinking, on the hop, and during the swim. Something about the way this bait flutters really attracts a lot of attention as the bite activity on this bait was relentless!

We found success right off the bat with this bait

Next Section: Mixing it up with the Spicy Beaver...