Rapala Report

Lefebre Says Wake Baits Draw Big Strikes

Rapala Pro Dave Lefebre loves to have a BX Waking Minnow on his line.

“It’s the [bait] that I won Smith Lake in Alabama a couple years ago,” LeFebre says. “It’s the one that I catch a lot of big fish on.”

Lefebre threw a Blue Back Herring pattern Rapala BX Waking Minnow to win the FLW Tour’s 2015 tournament on Smith Lake with a four-day total of 20 bass weighing 65 pounds, 5 ounces. He targeted shallow largemouth in the backs of creeks, where shoreline brush and submerged boulders came together.

“Wolfpacks of giant bass would come up from those rocks,” Lefebre said then in a post-tournament interview.

Wake baits, in general, “are just fun to fish,” Lefebre says. And the BX Waking Minnow is his favorite in that class, he says, because “the fish really seem to think it’s real.”

“These fish are so pressured and so hard to catch,” Lefebre says of the bass populations in many of the waterbodies on which MLF Bass Pro Tour tournaments are contested. “But when they hit a bait that’s so big and bulky like that – and they’re just convinced it’s real – I think sometimes it’s the only thing you can throw to get a bite.”

Measuring 5 1/4 inches long, BX Waking Minnows swim just below the water’s surface with incredible, strike-inducing action. “The slower you can reel that thing [the better],” Lefebre instructs. “When it’s calm, you want to see that V on the water – the back of it just barely sticking up out of the water.”

Unlike many of the baits bass pros throw on tour, a BX Waking Minnow does not require professional skills to retrieve effectively and catch fish – just slowly and steadily reel it back to the boat. “You just throw it out there and just literally reel it in,” Lefebre explains. “You don’t have to worry about rod position … and doing different things. You just cast it out and reel it in.”

When fishing your favorite lake, river or reservoir with a BX Waking Minnow, launch it as far as possible and retrieve it slowly along fish-holding cover like brush, laydowns, weedlines, docks, and the edges of lily pad fields. Weighing ¾ of an ounce, BX Waking Minnows will cast a mile, making it easy to make precise casts to your cover of choice without spooking fish with your boat. They come equipped with three tough No. 5 VMC black nickel round-bend treble hooks that hold true and tight.

When fishing BX Waking Minnows around heavy cover, Lefebre throws them on 30-pound-test Sufix 832 Advance braid to ensure he can wrestle the big fish he hooks out of the wood and into his boat.

BX Waking Minnows feature lifelike 3D eyes, finite scales and gill detail paired with an internal holographic foil for ultimate attraction. They’re available in six color patterns: Blue Back Herring, Firetiger, Gold Shiner, Shadow, Smelt and Yellow Perch.