Kimmel in the Clutch
While early swimbaits may have resembled west coast species like trout and hitch, and generation 2.0 keyed in on shad and bluegills, that didn’t fully cut it for NPFL pro Justin Kimmel. Many of the Georgia and South Carolina waters that he fishes are chock-full of blueback herring, and the bass there fixate on them, so he needed a lure that would match the profile and fleeing action of those prolific baitfish. Kimmel worked with Josh Pladies of Clutch Swimbait Company to produce the Darter, a now ultra-popular glider that fulfills that mission. Here’s what he had to say about it:
HPFC: Where did the idea or need for a blueback glide bait come from?
KIMMEL: The world had blueback imitating swimbaits and some blueback profile glide baits, but the world did not have a true blueback-imitating glide bait – something that not only looked like a herring but also acted like one. For four or five years I’ve been using big baits and jerkbaits to pull big fish off of cover and targets. Some were just so big and they would never commit. I couldn’t find something that would convince those big smart ones into eating.
I wanted something the exact profile – and that’s what we have, a 3D-printed version of a 5-3/4 inch herring that got spit up on my boat. I took all kinds of pictures and measurements, but it still didn’t have what I wanted. I wanted it to move fast and cut through the water. I didn’t know if it would be possible. I talked to a couple of other bait makers and they told me there was no way in the world of glide baits – something that thin, and strong enough to hold up, but also to act the way I wanted it to act without blowing out. You know what? They were right. It’s not possible. I have to give Josh all the credit in the world for solving that riddle. I told him what we wanted. What we had could get some fish to come out, but it still wasn’t right. It was too slow, and when I picked up the speed it would blow out. That was a full resin-body bait. He figured out the secret was another material which he laminated on the body of that bait. It keeps it high in the water column, which is what we wanted. When herring are being chased, a lot of that is going on on top of the water in the warm weather months. I wanted something I could through from April through the rest of the year because I felt like the traditional glide bait space was slow, so they excelled in colder water. This gives us another bait in that space.
HPFC: So start to finish, how long did the testing and prototyping process take?
KIMMEL: We got the bait right in six months. We’re about two years into the journey. April of 2022 is when we had the first finished version one of the prototype. That bait moved like I wanted but it was kind of limiting at first because you had to move it fast. We made a couple of changes so that version two a full year later, right before things got wild last year. We thickened the tail by 6 percent. That doesn’t seem like much to the naked eye, but it solved a few of the pain points we were having. In the first model you could only go fast, but now you could slow it down a little bit and then pick up the speed. A lot of times that’s a good way to trigger bites. The back hook was also flying up and catching the tail. That was kind of a pain point for user experience even though 95 percent of the bites that I get are on the front hook. They like to head shot this thing. Between thickening the tail and increasing the bait’s overall durability, which was already good, we also added rotating hook hangers which kept that back hook from coming around. That’s important to a lot of swimbait nuts out there, having those rotating hook hangers to not give those fish leverage on a big, long bait.
HPFC: Other than those hook hangers and those engineering mods, what other design components were important to you?
KIMMEL: It’s funny because most people will look at the bait and say that joint’s too far back. That was important for us to give it the action and speed. It’s not possible with full resin. That other material to support the buoyancy and super-slow sink to keep it high in the water column, that was a combination to generate that herring-like speed we wanted.
HPFC: Clutch offers quite a few colors. How do you pick which one to fish? Is it dependent on water clarity and forage, or is there a single one you’d recommend as a good starting point?
KIMMEL: The VIP is my favorite – Tackle Warehouse calls it “Purple Illusion” but we refer to it as “Violet Illusion Pearl.” That’s been a popular color. Bone has been by far the most popular color and it’s a really good choice to start with, if you don’t know.
The foiled colors are herring lake colors. Bronzeback really hit it off with the Elite Series guys on Lake Murray. There were probably five or six with that Bronzeback color on their deck. We could see Patrick Walters boat flip a 6-pounder on Bassmaster Live. He caught four or five of his biggest fish that first day of the tournament to put him in 3rd place. That bite tailed off for him as the wind died off but he weighed in at least six or seven fish on the Darter. Brandon Palaniuk got his finish on that Darter. I owe those guys so much. We didn’t pay them to throw it. They’re not sponsored. They’re friends – Patrick’s one of my roommates on the NPFL but Brandon’s an overall good dude. He doesn’t have a sponsor in that space right now. He edited those catches in on his YouTube channel. He didn’t have to, but he’s real about who he is and what he catches them on. Clutch benefitted from that. That truly took the company from the blueback herring space to the tournament world.
I had already had a BFL Wild Card on Wheeler that I thought I was going to win. I was in first place out of 200 boats after Day One. The Wild Card is a two-day event. I felt like the second day should have been canceled. We had 40mph winds and there was a boat wreck. I still sent it. I had about a 25 mile run into the teeth of that cold front. It was the Tennessee River, and of course there’s no herring, but I lost a mega-bag of smallmouth that day and I blew the All-American. I should’ve just stayed by the ramp that day and thrown a spinnerbait and a Chatterbait and made sure that I got into the All-American, but I saw that opportunity. I thought the largemouth were going to shut down from the cold front and the smallmouth would fire up.
That really opened my eyes that this is just a good tournament bait. It’s not an overthreatening size. The profile is just not that big. It says it weighs 2 ounces but I’m telling you that 2 ounces is light. When you hold it in your hand it feels light.
HPFC: So that leads to my next question. How do you know when to use it on lakes that don’t have blueback herring, or that are primarily largemouth or smallmouth fisheries?
KIMMEL: We’ve proven that all three species hate it. We’ve kind of proven it with those Elite Series finishes and four top ten Bassmaster galleries between the Opens and the Elite Series last year. The year before that it helped me to a top ten finish in the All-American. The overarching thing is that it’s just an incredibly fun bait to throw and you don’t have to go buy all the swimbait gear. I just designed a new swimbait rod for Kissel Krafts Custom Rods. I call it the Chopper, and it’s designed for lighter weight, chop-style baits like the Darter or anything else under 2 ½ ounces. But you don’t need that. I came up throwing the prototypes of this bait on a 7’3” swim jig rod and a 7’6” heavy action rod that you’d use for flipping a jig or casting a Carolina Rig.
HPFC: What are the dimensions and advantages of the rod you designed?
KIMMEL: It’s a 7’8” heavy, with the right moderate-fast action. There are a lot of different moderate-fast actions. It’s all about where the bend is. I don’t want it to go halfway down the rod like you’re slinging a big crankbait or what a lot of guys like for a Chatterbaits. I still want the bend somewhere between halfway and where a normal flipping stick is. I think with these smaller glide baits a lot of times you stab ‘em. You still need a good backbone, but that tip needs to be enough to let those treble hooks play. I went through three blanks trying to find the right blank. It was a 7’9” blank and I cut it down by an inch. It’s got titanium guides for durability.
I use a split grip because the difference between that and a full EVA or full cork handle is a split grip is better when you’re making target casts. Full grips are better when you’re bombing it out there. Seventy five percent of the time when I’m fishing the Darter I’m casting at targets – docks, laydowns. At places like Wheeler I just fished it going down the bank and they’re just cruising munching on bait. It’s not just a big fish lure, either. I caught an 11-pound limit on it in one tournament. It catches them all but for the tournament guy it’ll generally appeal when he’s looking for a bigger bite. It’s won tournaments at Lake Hartwell, Clarks Hill, Lake Lanier, Smith Lake. A lot of the guys just won’t talk about it.
HPFC: Now that you have the perfect rod for it, what do you look for in the reel to pair with it?
KIMMEL: Again, I want to emphasize you do not need a special rod or reel. You can throw this on gear you already have, like your jig rod or your frog rod. But I will say this, you can throw it on a 6:1, 7:1 or 8:1 reel. It really shines on an 8:1 gear ratio reel. You don’t do that with other glide baits. They don’t respond well. It’s fighting it, but man, that 8:1 reel makes this thing come to life. It’s so thin and so responsive to the reel handle and you can kind of do a moderate or normal glide bait retrieve, walking the dog. I get two types of bites on the Darter. One, they come out and wolf it. The other times, you’re going to get fish that follow, just like any other glide bait, and when they do that a lot of times I’m studying their behavior. I know when the right time is to trigger them by picking up the speed. A quick one-two-three and they’ll commit a lot of times.
HPFC: What’s the key to keeping big fish pegged once you have that big bait flopping around?
KIMMEL: I’m constantly winding to keep the line tight. If they jump on me I’m reeling with the jump. I don’t stop. It’s kind of like tarpon fishing. The rotating hook hangers help, but you’re going to sometimes lose fish when they have a lot of leverage. I don’t lose a lot of fish on it because it’s not as heavy and I’m constantly cranking. Even if I have to crank slower at times if they’re really big fish.
The smallmouth really lock you up. They come and hit it so hard and you’re just kind of holding on, the rod’s bending, and they’re just jumping and going nuts. You’re trying to reel but it’s hard to even gain anything for the first 10 seconds of the fight on those 4- and 5-pound smallmouths. I caught my biggest smallmouth on the Darter. It was 5 ¾. I had my biggest spot ever on it but I didn’t get to touch it because I kept it in the water at the boat because it had a wolfpack of six or seven 4-pound-plus spotted bass with it. It was the most insane thing I’ve had in years. It was a true 6-pound spotted bass and I kept it in the water so that my buddy who was pretty green could throw a wacky worm in and hook one of those 4-pounders. He caught his, but mine flopped off. I’m never doing that again, but that’s what we do with those big wolfpacks here if you’re in a team tournament. If you keep the fish in the water those fish stay around and someone else can hook up.
HPFC: Is the lure sensitive to line type and line size?
KIMMEL: Yes. There’s only two types of line – fluorocarbon and copolymer. Copolymer will keep it pretty high in the column. You throw 20-pound test. You do not throw 17. You don’t go under 20 and you really don’t need to go over 20. Twenty five is just a little too thick in terms of diameter. I use 20-pound fluorocarbon almost exclusively but I use the copolymer when I want to keep it super-high. Sometimes I do that when there’s a good topwater bite offshore, if I’m throwing over brush piles. They seem to commit when I keep it up higher.
HPFC: For the angler who’s just starting out with big baits and wants to try the Darter, what’s the one piece of advice you’d offer to help them get off on the right foot?
KIMMEL: Just know you’re getting a chop-style bait. You cannot just wind it in consistently. You need to make half to three-quarter turns of the reel handle to make it work right. It’s all about those choppy turns of the reel handle. It’s definitely a chopping bait, just one that you can go way faster and cover a lot more water with it.
HPFC: Does Clutch have plans for any modifications, updates or additions?
KIMMEL: We’re definitely happy with what we’ve accomplished, but you can look out for some custom color drops soon. We’re collaborating with some other online retailers. One is going to happen with Lures and Lead in the next couple of months. Keep a lookout for that in March. It’s a new retailer that’s going to be doing a lot of custom drops and custom bait stuff, not just swimbaits. They’re trying to introduce smaller baitmakers from all over the US. Clutch will be doing a custom drop that will have the herring guys super-excited – some paint jobs guys have been asking for, they’re about to get.
Here’s a video breakdown that Kimmel filmed with the crew from Clutch:
