The display on my sonar screen lit up.

My partner for the day, Sid Brown, and I both dropped Acme Hyper Rattles over the side. The heavy jigs, nearly an ounce in weight, plummeted quickly to the bottom. Once there, we each began instilling an erratic motion to the baits, one that would shoot the lure a few feet off the bottom, at which case it would then glide side-to-side swiftly back to the bottom.

Within a few pumps of his rod, Sid announced that he was into a fish. After a spirited battle, I scooped up a two-pound white bass. Moments later, I, too, was into a good-sized white bass.

That experience took place a couple of weeks ago on Pymatuning Lake. By the time we got off the water, we’d caught around 20 white bass, a dozen walleyes, and a wide assortment of panfish. Nearly all of them came on the gliding jig.

A week later, I returned to the big lake for a solo outing. Again, I scanned offshore structures with my Garmin Echomap Ultra, looking for the presence of baitfish and gamefish. The results were similar.

By the time my seven-hour outing concluded, I’d taken 20 white bass, a half dozen walleyes, and an assortment of other species that included crappies, yellow perch, white perch, bluegills, and pumpkinseeds. All came on a gliding jig, either an Acme Hyper Rattle or Rapala Jigging Rap. Lots of lessons were learned during those two adventures, which I’ll detail here.

Lesson 1:

Gliding jigs can be efficient

Gliding jigs are an unofficial category of baits that include the Rapala Jigging Rap, Acme Hyper Rattle, Moonshine Shiver Minnow, and several other similar lures. Though they may differ somewhat in design, all are minnow-shaped chunks of lead as well as a plastic tail. The tail gives the lure a gliding action when it falls on a slack line back to the bottom.

Walleyes were the intended species during these two outings. The strategy was to scan likely-looking structure looking for fish to target. When spotted, I’d stop the boat and we’d drop the heavy baits down on them.

The gliding jigs were efficient at not only dropping quickly on the fish, but also in getting a reaction bite from the active ones. Nearly all the fish we caught were first spotted on sonar.

Lesson 2:

Be prepared for all sorts of bites on gliding jigs

Fish hit gliding jigs in a variety of ways. The water we fished ran from 12 to 18 feet deep. We fished vertically, i.e., didn’t cast them. Once the lure hit bottom, we’d rip it up off the bottom a few feet, then allow it to fall back down on a slack line. Sometimes the fish would pin the bait to the bottom, and you’d set the hook when you’d make the next upward rip.

During others, the fish would intercept the lure on the way down. This happened a lot with the white bass. They’d hit the jig on the initial drop, or during the fall of a subsequent rip.

Lesson 3:

Pymatuning has a lot of nice-sized white bass

The white bass we caught during those two trips — and there were around 40 of them — were all nice sized, ranging from 12 to 16 inches. Like their striped bass cousins, white bass will herd baitfish. In some spots, one could sit on a spot and watch, on the sonar screen, schools of baitfish being attacked by white bass. In such cases nearly each drop of the lure would produce a strike.

Garmin’s Vision Plus mapping program also played into the success of these two trips. In a future column, I’ll look at this exciting lake map product.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle