Glide Baits Right Now!

When it happens at a distance, and it often does, you can just barely see and feel the subtle wobble and flash of the lure as it’s gently pulled forward, left, then right—then left-right. You’re walking a Miniature Daschund, not a Jack Russell Terrier. Jaws open and the lure disappears amid split-second recognition of what is happening. The hookset is instinctive.

Big fish always do the same thing and, again, you can see it happen: Feeling the unusual pressure, hooks still not set into flesh, jaws again open wide to get rid of this bony thing, the head makes one violent shake and the lure slides and the hooks catch—the fish crunches down hard, probably to really kill the thing—reopens and shakes again. Too late.

It is the nature of all great lure designs to inspire confidence because of the way they look and feel in action on the water. Yet there’s only so much time, and with so many lures and different designs today, even the great ones can get lost in life’s shuffle.

So it is for me a rekindled love affair at first cast last year, working the newly introduced Glidin’ Rap from the front of the boat, while Rapala’s Mark Fisher works their new 6-inch X-Rap SubWalk from the back. It’s early October, the plan is to shoot a TV segment and, perhaps, gather photos for an article like this one. We’re on a drive-to Canadian Shield lake and the strategy this day is a good one for anglers hitting any new lake— or hitting a lake they haven’t been on in a while.

What are the fish doing? Which fish are doing what and where? We don’t know what to expect. The lake has impressive walleyes, smallmouths, and pike, but neither of us has been on this water in months. We also aren’t predisposed to catching any one species. Any of the three is fine—or all three for that matter.

Having in the same situation found walleyes, smallmouths, and pike many times before by casting crankbaits over shallow rocky reefs, Fisher begins with a #8 X-Rap Shad, a compact suspending lure with a big rattle and a lot of shake. This design is considered a classic smallmouth option, but walleyes also like it and pike do too. My offering, a #11 Minnow Rap, is a more classic walleye design, sans rattle and with a more gentle rock-and-roll—but smallmouths also like it and so do pike.

We hit main-lake reefs, working around them, staying just off the edge of rocky drops into deep water and casting shallower. We try spots with the wind blowing in and we try protected spots. It’s a fish here and there—that is, a walleye here and a pike there, but no smallmouths. With the warm fall weather the water temperature apparently hasn’t dropped enough to move many fish onto main-lake reefs; so we move into big bays, looking for rocky structures adjacent to large, shallow, weedy areas—true backwater spots.

Bingo. We immediately see a lot more baitfish in the open water surrounding spots. Then Fisher connects with a pike of about 12 pounds and I catch 4-pound walleyes on consecutive casts. After another couple of decent pike, Fisher sticks one about 20. Moving to a similar structural element about 400 yards away, I catch one about 15.

At that point we rethink the situation, given the emerging pattern. We are on some walleyes and really nice pike. And there are many more similar structural elements in this area, as well as other similar lake areas to try. We decide to forego the walleyes in favor of fine-tuning for the pike. If pike are actively eating small crankbaits, might we not do even better if we switch to larger lures?

That’s when I pick up the Glidin’ Rap and Fisher goes with the 6-inch X-Rap SubWalk. We’re fine-tuning but also furthering the experiment. The Glidin’ Rap is what I call a flat glider (it’s flat-sided), and while it can be fished aggressively, it’s really designed to be fished slowly and subtly. The X-Rap SubWalk, totally unique, still falls into a general category with other more traditional gliders like the old Eddy Bait, the Reef Hawg, and a bunch of more modern designs. The SubWalk can be fished slowly and subtly too, but it’s designed to be fished more aggressively. The two Rapala lures are in the lineup to one another. It’s Richardson and Kubek setting the table for Maris and Mantle.

This day it doesn’t seem to make much difference which lure’s in the water. Everyone’s hitting the long ball. The result is one of the most memorable afternoons of fishing of the past year, with numerous doubleheaders and lots of pike between 8 and 16 pounds—really nice fish and lots of them, including one about 25 pounds to end the day. (Walleyes are also eating these lures, by the way.)

I mentioned rekindling a love affair at first cast with the newly introduced Glidin’ Rap. I had not fished the Glidin’ Rap before that day, but I have fished other lures in the same category over the years. The first was the Bagley B-Flat, introduced in the late 1970s.

This lure style has no lip. A combination of design elements, the most distinctive of which is relatively flatter sides, allows it to wobble gently but distinctly as it’s pulled forward. Most of various lures in this category wobble like this on a slow, steady retrieve. You can fish these flat gliders like that and get fish to eat. But the key to transforming the lure into something almost irresistible to pike is this: With the rod tip pointed down, just ever so slightly touch it or nod it down about 6 to 12 inches, pause, then nod down again 6 to 12 inches, and continue.