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.
Reel up some but not all of the slack line on the pause. It’s important to pull through just a bit of slack on the pull forward. It’s the sudden, gentle removal of the slack as the rod tip comes into hard contact with the line and then the lure, that causes the subtle wobble-flash-glide on the stroke.
The lure performs well at long distance when the rod tip’s pointing up at about 10 o’clock. At about two-thirds of the way in on a cast of some 50 yards, the rod tip must switch to the down position.
Most of the flat gliders stay shallow, rarely diving more that a foot or two; so in clear, flat water you can see what they’re doing, often even at 50 yards. It’s exciting, because you can see and feel the lure flash and wobble almost in slow motion as it barely moves forward, first left, and then right.
On a gentle 6-inch rod-tip nod, the bait might flash back and forth just a time or two and not move more than a foot. On a 12-inch nod it might flash 3 or 4 times and move a little more than 2 feet. Not a jerk, but a nod. Firmly but gently stroke with the rod tip. The rod tip is you and you are a brush painting a picture of the rolling prairie, not someone beating dead a rabid mouse.
Or, hold your hand in front of you, fingers on top of each other, palm to the inside, just down from your face so you’re looking down on top of the knuckles on your thumb and trigger finger. Ever-so-gently roll your hand from side to the side in a swimming-wobbling motion. Easy does it. You see your palm and then you don’t.
When you get on the water, first work the lure close to the boat. It’s all about gentle wobble and subtle flash. You know it when you got it. And once you got it, you got pike. That’s the essence of success with flat gliders. The rest is detail.
Details
Rod, Reel, Line—Most of the flat gliders run 5 or 6 inches long, but even larger lures can be worked perfectly with a 7-foot 6-inch flippin’ stick, coupled with a wider-spool low-profile reel and 20-pound Berkley FireLine Crystal, which is easy to see against clearer water. The white line is a tracer to help you get visual connection with your lure at long distance.
The use of a superline of one kind or another is critical, because the no-stretch qualities are required to get the right action with minimum rod-tip movement. FireLine’s a smooth fused line while options like Spiderwire and Power Pro have a rougher surface because they’re braided. I like the smoother FireLine in this instance, but it’s up to you. Twenty-pound is way heavy enough unless you’re fishing around heavy cover. Spiderwire and Power Pro are a bit thinner than FireLine, so I’d go to 30-pound if you use them. Substitute a round reel if you want—no big deal. Yes, you can make long casts with these combos and still get hooks at distance.
Leaders—In clear water I add a four-foot section of 20-pound fluorocarbon on the end of the 20-pound FireLine, then use about an 18-inch section of 20-pound American Fishing Wire Surflon Micro Supreme to connect to the lure with a small loop knot. Both connections are made with back-to-back four-wrap uni-knots. In darker water I tie the FireLine direct to the wire. If you’re making hard casts to get distance and catching a fair number of fish, you should retie the line and leader connections several times a day.
Mark Fisher used a Terminator Braided, Pre-Rigged Titanium Leader of 12 inches testing 50 pounds, and did just as well as I did on our day on the water. This leader has a sturdy Cross-Lok snap on the end to make changing lures easy. I don’t like the snap in this situation because it adds just a tad more weight to the end of the leader. See what you think.
Lures—A few flat gliders have always been on the market since the Bagley B-Flat hit the scene in 1978. The early 6-inch Bagley was a good pike lure. It’s available now by special order. I remember beginning to fish it about 4 weeks after pike spawned and they were prowling over newly emergent weedbeds. The 8-inch B-Flat of that era was considered more of a muskie lure although it also accounted for a ton of pike.
Bagley President Mike Rogan remembers a conversation in early 2000 with old Jim Bagley, one of the most famous lure designers of all time, now deceased. The B-Flat was designed to mimic the ciscoes and whitefish that often die during late summer, floating to the surface and struggling there—a dinner bell for big predatory fish. Today’s Bagley B-Flat 8 has a through-wire harness, just like the early lures in production from 1978 through 1982. If you still have some they’re apparently quite valuable among lure collectors.
Salmo offers two options and I’ve used them with success over the years. The two lures are a study in contrasting design, with the Fatso being a slightly rounder-bodied lure (a hybrid flat glider) and the Slider being a true flat glider.
You can feel and see the difference in action between the two lures, but I haven’t spent enough time with them in different situations to say which one’s best when. I had several fine outings with the Fatso just after it was introduced about 10 years ago. We fished areas on Lake of the Woods just outside of Whitefish Bay in mid-July. It was a muskie trip, but big pike were so prevalent and on such a rampage that we ended up fine-tuning tactics for them. That meant in the end fishing almost exclusively with the Fatso. Spinnerbaits, bucktails, traditional gliders, Suicks, and Bobbies. It was the Fatso the fish wanted.
Several other companies in this category include Muskie Mania Tackle and their Magic Maker, a cool-looking 6-inch option, while Sebile has a suspending Stick Shadd in 6 inches, and sinking Stick Shadds in 6 and 8 inches. I haven’t thrown the Sebiles but have seen them in action in a tank and, like the other options, they look tremendous. They’re made of slick, hard plastic. I think Sebile is the only company on the market offering sinking flat gliders.
And there’s the Rapala Glidin’ Rap.
More on Working the Lures—I used the Glidin’ Rap twice after our early October trip, once on a heavily fished lake near our office. On that trip I had to rip the lure firmly three or four times before falling into the “easy-does-it routine” in order to get pike to respond.
In other words, I’d cast and let the lure settle, then with the line tight to the lure and the rod tip pointed toward it at 10 o’clock, I’d firmly snap the rod tip all the way down toward the surface of the water, one, two, three, or four times, moving the lure 4 or 5 feet left, then right, then left, and right. You want the lure to stay down—don’t jerk so violently that it comes to the surface.
This is a technique more attuned to gliders like the X-Rap SubWalk than to the Glidin’ Rap, so perhaps I should have switched lures. I didn’t, so I don’t know what the result might have been. I also caught my last muskie of the year on the lure—a 38-inch fish, plus several small pike—this, on another heavily fished lake on a cold November afternoon. My target that day was muskies. There aren’t many pike on that lake.
My final point is that although the subtle nature of flat gliders is the reason they work well in many situations, you always have to experiment a bit with retrieve cadence. At times, ripping the lure a time or two probably gets attention, while the gentle flashing follow-up gets the fish to go.
Quite a few readers have asked me over the years about pike that jump. That they often do so shouldn’t be a surprise, especially fish that weigh up to 15 pounds or so, and especially during summer. It’s more unusual for bigger fish to jump, but they do so in at least one instance, which was spectacularly illustrated by our final fish of the day last October. That fish weighed about 25 pounds and came up and almost out, head shaking and rampaging three times. It had engulfed the lure so deeply, it was in its throat.
If a fish has a bigger lure far enough down it’s going to jump—or at least get out far enough to head-shake. It’s an instinctive or learned response to having something like a thorny perch or walleye stuck in its craw. It’s harder to shake something out against the water pressure down below than it is in all that thin air. Apparently fish soon learn that; and bigger, older fish know it better than the younger peanuts.
I’ve seen big pike hooked like that jump early spring, summer, and fall. Winter? Well, have you ever seen what most big pike do as soon as you get their heads out of an ice hole? They’re coming up and out as far as they can get, mouth open, head shaking back and forth, trying to get rid of that thing in their throat.
All of us have a lot to learn seasonally about fishing with flat gliders. One reason they should be a sturdy option this coming season is that they’ve not been widely fished. Let me know how you do. ■
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