I'm interested in trying out chatter baits and was wondering if any of y'all have a good way of fishing them. I've heard putting a crawl or something similar on the hook works good, but I don't know how to fish them.

I moved to Texas July last year. I'm from California and never fished a chatter bait so once I picked one up I fished it for months strait to learn how to fish it. I fish mine with the lake fork tackle swim bait. I slow roll mine a lot fish it you will learn

+1 on the lake fork tackle swim bait.
I work between slow rolling it like a spinner bait and swimming a jig.

get comfortable with it and you'll find what they want

They are tough to fish wrong. They fish very much like a spinnerbait. Use all the same tricks you would with them. Changes in retrieve speed, fish the "twilight zone," roll them occasionally, etc...

I like a medium heavy moderate action rod, a fast reel, 15lb copolymer. I throw it just about everywhere and play with the retrieve til I get a good cadence going, mostly this is slow. I use the fast reel because a lot of the time the fish will hit it and throw slack in your line, keeping it slow takes some patience but it's definitely worth it. And when I say I throw it everywhere I mean everywhere! I also paint (or sharpie in a pinch) all my blades except the white ones, I've never seen a bluegill with a shiny silver head and I'm betting the bass haven't either. This is a great time of year to throw them, but they can also be deadly in the summertime! And like anything else I keep the colors simple, I have white, white/chartreuse, green pumpkin, and black and blue, thats it. For trailers I like the lake fork magic shad, the zoom swimming fluke jr, keitech swimbaits, or a myriad of craw style trailers.