Fall Glide Bait Masterclass: Where, When & How to Fish It Right

These are glide baits. What is a glide bait? Glide bait is a hard plastic lure that has a single joint in the middle to where the tail swings back and forth like that. Now, there are a ton of handmade options out there on the market. There are some production models out there like this SPRO Chad Shad. We're going to kind of give you some general ideas on—and I classify these in three different sizes.

This is a medium-sized glide. Yes, it is 7 plus inches long to the tip of the tail, but I'm considering this a medium-size glide. There are smaller glides that are in that 5 to 6 inch range. Then there are glides which are in that 8 to 10 inch range. Each of those kind of are in a different category as far as I'm concerned.

First of all, we're going to talk about the setup on what we need to be throwing these on with glide baits. In that medium range, I usually use 18 to 20 lbs Sunline FC Sniper. I like that Sniper. It has a little bit of stretch to it. It's a little bit forgiving because we're talking about baits that are two to four oz. With that middle size, with the smaller glides—the five to six inch—I'm going to probably be using 16 or 18 lbs Sunline Sniper. Kind of that a little bit lighter line allows that bait to be a little bit more free. And then on the larger glides, only gonna go up to 20 LB test.

If you go bigger than that, say 25 LB test, you're gonna start to inhibit your line and your action of the baits. Even with a really big glide bait like a Deps 250—a big, big glide bait—that's gonna have inhibiting action for that. So you don't want that. You want that glide bait to be free and natural and very erratic. We'll get to the action here in just a few minutes. But as we're going to start fishing that glide bait, the line size is important.

The rod and the reel are important as well. I like a high-speed reel. This is a 150 size reel. This is a GS model from Seviin. The 150 size will work for your smaller and medium-size glide baits. When you go to that 8 to 10 inch, you might need to go up to a 300 size reel—a little bit bigger reel—so that it can handle that 6 to 8 or even 10 oz glide bait. That's when you're getting serious, that's when you're getting heavy.

And then the rod needs to have that action to where it's a heavier-type action. As you can see right there, it's a heavier, but it's moderate. It's moderate, which means that that action bends throughout the rod. It's not just at the tip like you would a flipping stick. You don't really want to throw these baits on a flipping stick. You want to have a swimbait-style rod, which is a heavy action or extra-heavy action on those larger baits, but with that more moderate action. That more moderate action will help you cast the baits better. It'll just kind of pendulum back and swing, and you're really just kind of tossing these baits out there because they're so big and heavy.

And with that joint, that joint will turn it sideways and the bait will sometimes want to go this way or that way. Not the most accurate baits you'll ever cast—I can promise you that—because of the nature of them. And they can catch the wind and kind of take off a few feet to the left or a few feet to the right. But just know that you're going to be tossing them.

And I'll also pitch my glide baits to the targets that I want to as well. You can pitch these baits because they are so heavy. You can pitch them to where you want them. But as I mentioned earlier, high-speed reel. I like an 8-to-1 gear ratio. You can get away with a 7-to-1, but I don't like anything slower than that because a lot of the action that you're going to impart on that glide bait is with the reel, with the reel handle and the speed of the reel. So you're going to be doing different reel bumps with that reel in order to make that bait go side to side. That's kind of how you want to start to fish it.

Now in the fall, glide baits can also be very productive. I love throwing glide baits in the fall. But one of the things that I've noticed in the fall is that having a color like the bone definitely is something that triggers more bites in the fall. I'm not really sure why that is. I think that the fish really get keyed in on eating baitfish in the fall in most lakes and impoundments more than other times of the year. So they just get that silver. It's like they see so much of it. When they see something that is brighter—kind of stands out a little bit—I think it helps them find that bait a little bit more in the fall.

I've seen that with crankbaits, I've seen that with jerkbaits in the fall, and I think that that mentality carries over to glide baits as well. So in the fall, this is more of what I'm going to pick up.

Where are we going to fish these glide baits in the fall? Now we've got different size glide baits as we've mentioned: the smaller ones, the medium size, and the large ones. In the fall, I'm going to be picking up that small and medium-sized glide bait quite a bit. That's a lot of the baitfish tend to be smaller in the fall. They've had spawns—the baitfish, the shad, alewives, whatever—they've had spawns throughout the summer typically. So in the fall there can be just a lot of little smaller baitfish.

So downsizing your glide bait just a little bit—from a medium maybe to that small size, that 5 inch range, or from that large in the summer to the medium—can actually help quite a bit.

So where are you going to focus? In the fall, I'm going to try to find those areas where there's a big shad presence because that's where you're going to typically have your fish population. Like the bulk of the fish will be where that shad is. If you've got pockets, coves, creek arms—those kinds of areas that have more baitfish—that's where I'm going to start.

But I'm not going to be fishing the baitfish with a glide bait. It's a little bit different mentality than other times of the year because I feel like those big bass in the fall—if they're actively chasing the shad—they're going to be keyed in on baits that are this big. They're going to be looking for little tiny baits. They don't make glide baits that are two inches long, but they have a ton of those little shads. So you throw something like this in there.

I've not had good results with fish that are actively feeding on little teeny tiny bait, but I've had good success on the next closest cover to where those areas are. So if you get a bunch of—let's say a bunch of shad right in the middle of this pocket—and there's a few active fish feeding on them, I'm going to be fishing a laydown or a dock or a point that might have some rock on it.

If I've got a bluff-style bank in that area, I'm going to fish that bluff-style bank. I'm going to look for the closest cover that a big bass might use wherever that shad is. I'm not fishing the baitfish. I'm gonna fish the closest cover to where that is. So I think that can help you.

We get to fishing around docks. We're gonna fish the shady side. We're gonna hit the shade as much as we can. That seems to be where they—they're predatory animals, right? The bass—they're going to be hiding in that shade, looking to run out there. And if there's anything that they can—and the big bass are typically lazy. So if you can throw something that's only a few feet from their face and it's large and it's a Big Mac looking meal—boom—they're going to run out there and snag it.

A lot of times when I'm fishing the bluffs, there's two ways to fish bluffs. Most people, like with a jerkbait, with a crankbait, they're going to parallel those bluffs. The paralleling the bluffs can be pretty productive with a glide bait, but don't be afraid to pitch that glide bait all the way to the edge of the bluff. And we're talking about, you know, shorter bluffs—not, you know, main lake bluffs—shorter bluffs.

Wherever the baitfish are, pitch it to that bluff, let that bait go down a few inches. And then you can just jerk it a couple times, pop it a couple times, and it'll almost sit in place. You could probably work it 6 or 8 or 10 times and the bait's not going to even move really like 5 or 6 feet forward. It's just going to kind of walk back and forth—boom, boom, boom, boom.

If those fish are on that bluff in that area, they'll a lot of times run up there and grab it. So you can hit that glide bait maybe 6 or 8 times and reel it in and pitch it to the next. Because if they're there, they're going to run up there and grab it.

Laydowns are also another huge ambush point for bass. If they don't have docks, if they don't have a bluff, they don't have anything else in that area where the baitfish are, laydowns can be a primo cover for a big bass to be sitting on. They'll sit in there. Sometimes they'll sit kind of suspended at the end of that laydown. So even if you see a laydown, you might have to throw further out than you can see visually where the log is. But then sometimes they might be closer to the bank, you know, around the bigger base of that laydown. So you can fish the whole length of it if you can. So start at the end, kind of work your way in on those laydowns, and you can effectively catch bass on glide baits in the fall.

And just like fishing it in—I would say the springtime and sometimes in the summer—you're gonna start that glide bait out, letting it go down just a little bit, bump it two or three times, kind of get the glide back going, try to get that fish's attention. And once you get that fish's attention—boom, boom—then you're gonna start speeding it up a little bit, get a little bit more erratic. Don't let them get a good look at it. Because if a bass—if this is sitting perfectly still and a bass runs up there and looks at it—8 out of 10 times they're not gonna eat it.

But if that thing's kind of constantly looks like it's trying to get away from them, I think that triggers something in their brain and boom, they're gonna run out there and snag it. And a lot of areas in the fall, bass are looking to feed, they're looking to load up, they're looking to get fat for the winter. So they're looking for some big meals. And that glide bait provides that.

So take that out there next fall that you're going to fish. Go fishing with glide. I don't care if you think that they won't eat it in your lake, I'll bet you that they will if you take that advice I gave you. Look for those key pieces of cover wherever the baitfish are, and I bet you'll catch some fish on the old Chad Shad.