Not Too Big, Not Too Small, with Versatility That Can Surprise and Confuse : CBC's Mini-Sonar (continued)

Once on the bottom, it almost sits upright. Snap your rod tip to get it off the bottom and let it drop again and the Mini Sonar will dart up, then lazily swim back to the bottom - like a real baitfish struggling with its last moments. Spoons and blade baits flutter when you let them sink - this bait swims. Not only that, but pick up the pace on your retrieve to burn it back to your position and the Mini Sonar doesn't blink. It just swims back perfectly upright with no spinning, planing, or blowing out. Begin your retrieve shortly after splash down, and you can even get it to swim just under the surface and give off a wake.

The biggest difficulty with this bait? It's so versatile in the number of ways you can fish it, it's hard to figure out to do on any particular day to get bit. As such, I actually had a great deal of difficulty getting bit on this bait after initial receipt and grew quite frustrated. It appeared the bait was headed towards the long term timeline for review like Megabass's iSlide 262T. That bait had a five year journey before being written up!

Faced with that struggle, I acquired another new bait by ClickBait Customs, the Mini-Shorebanger, thinking that this more conventional crankdown would better suit my fishing style and review intent. The Shorebanger is a crankdown designed to be fished - as you may have guessed - from shore. It has a slightly faster rise rate than usual to help you get up and out of snaggy situations. Otherwise, it's like an oversized squarebill. The mini is just a downsized version of the original.

By the time the Mini-Shorebanger arrived, the BMG had been re-assigned to fish other baits, so I had to recalibrate my combo of choice for these ClickBait Customs baits. I leaned on a slightly more conventional rod for big baits (even though both these baits are small) in Megabass's Destroyer P5 F7.5-76X Mark-56 and matched the rod with my Abu Garcia Revo5 Winch. My intent was to break the ice, so to speak, with the Mini-Shorebanger, and see if that would unlock the mojo for the Mini-Sonar. A rather round about way of doing things, but when you've been at the review game as long as I have, superstition creeps in.

Superstitious or not, it worked. Fishing the more conventional and familiar crankdown, I was able to catch a fish relatively quickly on the Mini-Shorebanger's first journey out on the water. That relieved the pressure and allowed me to slow back down and rededicate my efforts with the Mini-Sonar. So I swapped baits and proceeded to try and unlock that bait's secrets. In hindsight, I think the Mini-Sonar's versatility was my downfall. I was so stuck on fishing it different ways on each retrieve, I didn't give any particular technique a chance. So I concentrated on its distinguishing action - that deadly swim as it descends in the water. The sort of yo-yo retrieve was a given, but I mixed in some retrieves, instead of lifts, stopping after a couple of cranks, to let the bait sink again. Then it happened.

On one drop on a cast over a shelf, a fish hit so violently, it nearly ripped the combo out of my hand. I guess my grip tends to relax when I'm letting a bait drop, but I quickly re-grasped the Mark-56 so I could battle the fish. Based on the veracity of the hit, I thought for sure it was going to be huge. It was just two and a half pounds, but the jinx was gone and my thoughts on the bait validated. As designed, the Mini-Sonar is deadly on the drop.

After another validating that fact with a few more fish (all smaller), I then transitioned to the next challenge - the bait's effectiveness as a swimmer. It's been a long time since I've really fished a swimmer with intent preferring instead to throw glides. That had me burning the Mini-Sonar trying to get a reaction, but really, the fish were not in such a mood as to really chase baits. Then I remembered, the key to the swimmer bite for me in the past was to slow down. Fortunately, I was using the 5.1:1 Revo5 Winch. That reel allowed me to really slow down. So I made a cast, and played with my retrieve a little to see how slow I could get the Mini-Sonar to swim. I found I could almost crawl the bait and have it swim back very naturally. Upon that discovery, as I was retrieving the bait maybe twenty feet from the boat, a dark shadow suddenly appeared and just as suddenly morphed into a blinding white vortex!

It was a good sized largemouth stopped just to the side of my Mini-Sonar and opening its mouth to inhale the bait! In a flash, I saw the bait disappear then reappear outside the fish's mouth attached by the back hook! Like running a play we've executed countless times (and we have), I called for the net while battling the fish. Zander leaped to my side, net in hand. I maneuvered the fish to the side of the boat, he scooped it up, and the bait fell out of the fish's mouth! Save! A quick photo-op later, and the fish was back in the water. That's the type of thrill that drives us here at TackleTour.

Design/Ergonomics: As mentioned earlier, the Mini-Sonar is rather diminutive in the world of big baits, but still larger than your average conventional bait. In terms of size and weight, it's a wonderful candidate for those looking to dabble in the big bait world for the first time. It's versatility can be both a blessing or a curse. The bait comes with good, sharp hooks, and rotating hook hangers to help with the landing ratio. Not sure we would have landed that last fish were it not for the rotating hook hanger to be honest.

Price & Application: Click Bait Customs retails the Mini-Sonar for $100. At least that was the price at the time of this writing. Garage built big bait prices rise quickly based on demand, so that price may or may not change. Otherwise, the Sonar and Mini-Sonar were really designed to be fished in cold water situations where you'd typically throw a flutter spoon. I've never been too good with those baits hence my early struggles with it and then I thought I had lost my window after the water warmed up. But then I found the bait really is as versatile as I thought able to catch fish in warm water situations too.

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Pluses and Minuses:

Tie it on, fish it with intent, and look out - the Mini Sonar may very well become your next favorite lure