Havoc craw fatty

so this past trip out i got to thoroughly test out the craw fatty. designed by bobby lane for pitching and flipping into heavy grass. the color i have is okeechobee craw  and the lure is 4 in long. its very wide with 2 good sized pincers and very thin. i guess to allow it to get down in the grass easier??. i made the mistake of using not changing my hook when i switched to this bait and the 5/0 gamakatsu was way too big. the result was the first bite i had on the bait never got the hook and held on to a pincer and the body and eventually let go when i pulled, leaving a nice set of scratches from his teeth down the length of the body. the bait is designed to be flipped and pitched in heavy heavy matts like florida has. here in hawaii that type of cover really dosent exist often, although after a flooding rain we do get thick debris matts that take some punching through at times. hence i was using a 1/2 oz sinker and a 3/0 vicious wide gap hook and texas rigging the bait on 14lb  yo zuri hybrid line. first impressions are that its not gonna do much. it isn't a fisherman catching lure. it looks pretty plain and of course the Havoc line has no bells and whistles so you get a few baits without the berkley scent in them and at a cheaper price.as i pitched it up into the ironwood roots and around the laydowns it didn't seem to have much action , i would hop it a few times. shake it a bit, maybe drag it a few feet. trying to get a feel for what it was gonna do best. i tried a few shallow casts to see how the bait looked underwater and despite the lack of water clarity the color stood out well in the heavy stain. it also had great flapping movement to the arms but it required a lot of speed to active this. perhaps the 1/2 sinker wasn't getting this and you'd get much better action on the fall from  3/4 oz or 1 oz sinker. it looked better suited on a retrieve than as a flipping bait. i could really see it working behind a spinnerbait or maybe a  swimming jig, perhaps a buzzbait. something moving  fast enough to get that action out of it. still the bass seemed to have a different opinion than mine. caught and lost 2 pretty fast just hopping it. caught another on the fall next to a log. so i guess the water movement it puts out or vibration it makes still works to attract. its worth noting that i didn't get a single hit when i was retrieving it quickly back to the boat and getting all that arm flapping action. again what do i know its a fish catching lure not a fisherman catching lure. all in all i wouldn't go out of my way to make sure i had a few in the boat. its a fairly generic design and most creature style baits would fit this type of fishing, some might be worth a little more money and get a built in scent to help on tough days. its not a bad deal though for 8 baits its 2.99$ and they do hold up well. 4 fish and the bait still had some life in it, even for being tugged on during that first fight.