WHY MINI GLIDES ARE MY NEW FAVORITE LURES FOR FISHING
I've become addicted with mini glides for a multitude of game fish and have had a bunch of memorable days with them in the last two years
I’ve been fishing mini glides a bunch the last two years, and it’s opened up a new dimension in fishing for me that I've really enjoyed lately. I thought I’d share some of my learnings, a bunch of fun baits you will have success with and a lot of awesome fish catches from the past year both from me and other good anglers I fish with.
These mini glides are not only very productive for a wide variety of fish, they are a hoot to fish with as a lot of bites are visual, reactive and aggressive. It allows for more creative presentations and retrieves, and these mini glides can actually be the golden ticket on tough days of fishing I have found this year. Bear with me, and I’ll explain.
THE MINI GLIDE BAIT EXPLOSION
A couple years ago, I got a hold of one of the Era Bait Glides. I wasn’t really sure about a glide bait that was so small because in my experience, most of the drawing power of a glide comes from it’s shear size and how much water it pushes. But I still thought it might be fun to see what all would bite a small bait that swam like a glide but came in the size minnow most fish species were used to eating.
My first outing with it was on a neighborhood lake, and I was immediately hooked. Since that time, that tiny Era glide has caught hundreds of largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, white bass, yellow bass, bluegill, crappie, shellcracker, trout and more. And from that first outing, my understanding of the action was expanding. I think the fish are reacting to more than the size. The ability to be erratic and enticing in small space at variable speeds makes a glide bait extremely versatile for all fish.
Since that first bait turned me on the market seemed to expand almost overnight for mini glides, and frankly I’m here for it. Now glide bait makers offer a bunch of swimbaits from 2 to 4 inches in a wide array of designs, shapes, actions and colors.
Deps, Jig Shack, York Casting, Gan Craft, Imakatsu, Jackall, Trefle Creations, Eurotackle, and Maxed Fishing have joined Era Baits in the mini glide revolution.
APPLICATIONS FOR MINI GLIDES
This revolution for me comes out of frustration. The number of big spotted bass and smallmouth bass that have come up and smacked my glide baits over there years and not gotten hooked has been, well heart breaking. A little mouth and big hooks often doesn’t jive well. I have landed quite a few nice ones on glides too. But I’ve had some that would have for sure been my biggest ever not get hooked. And that was frustrating.
The mini glides have given me another tool for coaxing big bites out of a much wider group of fish. And it has a lot of new applications that I’ve had my eyes opened to even as recently as this month.
But I’ve found these mini glides are a lot like jerkbaits and have a ton of applications both shallow and deep. And I’ve found the way you can work them and be aggressive or super subdued has led to a bunch of cool catches for me. I am beginning to believe these mini glides are more effective than jerkbaits and other similar baits because of how I can cover the strike zone so differently. I’ve had some awesome days in deep clear water and recently had an incredible day in shallow muddy water with a mini glide when a spinnerbait, jig and swimbait had failed to produce fish in cold water.
So I’m telling people fish these where you would throw a topwater, spinnerbait or crankbait and then you can also target fish with them deeper with some additions like lead wire on the hooks or lead boards on the belly.
MY EXPERIENCES WITH MINI GLIDES
I was first blown away by how many fish will hit these smaller glides. My first outing with one, I caught bass, bluegill, coppernose, shell cracker, black and white crappie and a catfish. Everything thought it was a struggling baitfish. And everything attacked viciously. Like I had never seen crappie bite like that before. Talk about a thump.
Then I started applying them to my regular bass fishing on the big reservoirs and was quickly enamored with how many bites they could generate. Get around fish and they instantly were drawn in and reacting. As that become more and more the case, I really started to experiment with different baits in different scenarios and I started realizing that you could change your retrieve three or four times in one cast to cater to how the fish was reacting.
The number of fish I saw track, then react to a change in my cadence and then finally bite after a third change in the retrieve really sold me on how interactive and programmable these lures are for fishing.
My buddy Harbor and I swimbait fish, BFS fish and bounce ideas back and forth on all of the above and he had some of his best days this spring glide bait fishing for red ear with mini glides. He told me if he could catch them consistently doing that he might now fish for anything else. I believe him because I tell people all the time if red ear were plentiful and easy to pattern, I wouldn’t fish for anything else.
I actually took Harbor on his first trout fishing trip, and he caught his first trout on … you guessed it — a Maxed Fishing Raptor mini-glide.
I recently was fishing a small lake that was drawn down for winter and it was very muddy from recent rains and the low water exposing muddy banks. And with cold water, muddy is never good. I tried a spinnerbait, a jig and regular sized swimbait for a while and only had one fish to show for it that just barely nipped at it as I was pulling my spinnerbait out.
That lethargic reaction told me I need a bait that stayed in that zone a little longer. So I pulled out the mini glides. I tried the Jig Shack Mini Glide that has a rattle and the York Casting Nugget. Both produced a bunch of epic bites. I was giggling at one point about how stupid the fishing got with me catching 14 bass between 4 to 6 pounds on the two mini glides in an hour after going more than an hour with one bite.
THE MULTI-SPECIES EXPANSION
I’m on a mission now to catch a big brown trout on a mini glide. I’ve caught big smallmouth, big largemouth, big bluegill, big red ear, big white bass, big crappie and even a big catfish on these mini glide baits but now I really want to see if I can fool a big old predator brown working a mini glide. I think I can and it will be a heck of a cool video when I do.
But I think the reaction from so many different fish has solidified my beliefs not only on how versatile these lures are, but also how receptive fish are to the way you work these lures. I can try fast, slow, erratic or smooth retrieves and dial in the fish. And if you fish in places where you just want to catch fish and there are a lot of species there, these baits provide a lot of fun. You can fish through areas and come out of one area with several different species of fish.
But when I really dial in what fish are doing, I can usually pick up the glide and work just how the fish want it and get bit. The amount of times that has worked for me this year has been pretty uncanny.
HOW I FISH THESE MINI GLIDES
You can fish the mini glides on BFS gear, medium light spinning gear, and regular baitcasting gear like a spinnerbait or jig rod. It’s a fun way to fish on all three setups but the crucial part in these baits these really comes from how you work them.
I am generally a start steady and then change up from there. So in warmer waters I will fish pretty fast either working the bait with twitches and turns or just reeling quickly to see if I can find aggressive fish.
If I get followers or don’t see a response then I will start slowing down and working the bait with more pauses. Keeping it around longer. This becomes really important in the colder months. A fish might come shallow to feed, but it will take him a minute to get on a bait and eat it.
I generally start with a few short casts to see what the bait looks like on a straight retrieve and various retrieves with reel handle turns and rod twitches and pulls. Sometimes just a light pull of the rod will get the bait to inch in a direction and then a light pull gets it gliding the other direction. This can be very effective. I generally let the fish tell me.
What I mean is when I see a follower, I will start experimenting with how I move the bait. What I find a lot is the fish reacts to a change. A quick dart, a couple quick darts together, a long pull off to one side. Those changes are where you see followers turn into biters. It doesn’t work every time but you can see the fish’s mood change each time the bait changes. So I may retrieve it slow and straight for 80 percent of the cast and then start pulling and pausing trying to get a follower to react to a change in cadence.
MINI GLIDES I LIKE RIGHT NOW
I don’t claim to be the trend setter here. I’m just enamored with them because of how quickly they have been so effective for me. So I figured I’d let this cat out of the bag for others and see who else has gotten in on this and see some other catches. And I don’t know any of these makers. So I am not pimping anything for anyone. They don’t know me and I don’t know them as I am writing this (although I suspect that will change quickly). These are just the baits that have been good to me in my exploration and experimentations with mini glides.
Eurotackle Nage (technically not a glide but can be worked like one)
Trefle Creation Rafale JT93S (jerkbait - glide bait hybrid)
Jason, can these baits be seen on FFS? Sounds like they would be great for cruising early season crappie. Thanks for the info.
Wow, what an incredible article to be sent to me by a new follower. Had no idea Jason was doing this, never even met Jason. But I’ll tell you this, I’m a big fan of him now 😂