Rob's Gill Glide

[jkarol24]

Swimbait Review: Rob's Gill Glide

Looking through the archives and found an older video that never went out. Enjoy this handmade wooden glide in action! 

The Rob's Gill Glide is a 2 pc wooden glide, featuring a natural paint scheme and soft tail. The bait comes in at 5.5" and 2.8 oz, casts well, and can be easily manipulated by the angler. 

Starting off at our standard straight retrieve,  the Gill cuts back and forth, with head turning about 45 degrees off center, pulling the rear of the bait along behind in a flood motion. The bait stays nice and upright, with minimal body roll on the transitions. The bait also maintains its depth well, and generally holds depth at the level you've counted it down to. I would categorize thus particular swim as a turning swim, versus the slalom type swim. 

Speeding up accentuates the action described above, as the gill turns harder and faster, creating a thump felt back to the rod. A bit more body roll is present on the transitions, but the bait doesn't blow out unless you are using an absolute dead burn. Again, depth is maintained well as the bait swims back to the angler. 

Moving on to glide inputs, a soft and easy reel bump will produce the widest and slowest glide. For a gill profile, the Rob's gets a pretty good amount of distance to it, turning smoothly and maintaining an upright and level presentation. Due to its xss/ss rate, the bait will hang out at the ends of glides and can be fished super slow around cover etc. I found that the easiest bumps possible produced the most distance, and overhitting the bait would cause it to turn back. 

Moving on to faster and choppier reel bumps, you can get the bait moving and slashing in a more erratic fashion. This does bring some more body roll into the action, but it is still controllable and fluid. Hitting it too hard caused a bit of head to tail rock, but did not hurt the overall action. The reel inputs can be slightly inconsistent in how the bait will move, as sometimes it will glide and sometimes it will cut and turn. Either way, a varied and different action throughout the retrieve is certainly not a bad thing. 

Utilizing the rod as opposed to the reel will give more consistent fast inputs, as the bait turns and cuts hard and consistent with each input. I also found that faster rod pumps caused the bait to get up near the surface and produce a nice wake along with  the body action. Combining the rod twitches with some choppy reel hits will give the angler that erratic and fleeing action seen in the last retrieve. 

To be honest, I don't recall what rod/reel was using in this video. I'd go for either my Levaithan 7 ft 9 heavy, or go down to a Donyns 795. I'd go with the shorter rod for more accurate casts, and a fast but forgiving tip to impart that rod input. Pair it up with a Curado or Tranx 300 and 20 lb copoly, and you're ready to roll. 

Hope you have a great rest of your Sunday, and I will see ya next week!