Breaking into the Glide Bait World – One Bass at a Time
While I’d previously caught a handful of fish on a River2Sea S-Waver 168, it was only after attending the Swimbait Universe Gathering that I truly realized how much I wanted to break into the world of low volume glide baits. I’m still pretty green, but eager to learn, so I did something that I’ve been vowing to try for 30 years whenever I’ve wanted to learn a new technique – I committed fully for a day.
That meant I locked everything except my big baits and matching tackle in the storage compartments of my Bass Cat and went to work. I was smart about it, though. I spent the Saturday flinging all manners of poppers, ploppers, spinnerbaits and soft plastics to get it out of my system and to get my share of bites for the weekend. On Sunday, I launched shortly after daylight, around 7:15 with good intentions, but with the backup plan that I’d push the big baits hard until noon. If that failed, I’d bring out the other stuff for a few hours.
By 8:30 I hadn’t seen much activity, despite being in areas where I knew there were active fish. At 9:30, I had my world absolutely rocked – by a 13 7/8” largemouth that thought my Taddo Designs glider was his ticket to stardom. That kept my grinding on the glide for the next 7 hours, and while it was lots of followers, a few slashers, and no more fish landed, I left the lake energized. That sub-14” bass would have been a keeper on tournament day, since the lake has a 12” minimum size limit, albeit a keeper I’d have wanted to cull. Nevertheless, it was one of my favorite fish of 2022. As I’ve repeatedly learned, not all meaningful catches are trophy-sized.
Obviously, I’m hoping that the next bite will be a giant, but I’m willing to put in the work. Rather than completely scratching the itch, Mr. Big Shot just made me want to learn more about how to unlock these baits’ drawing power.
