Fishing Topwaters for Multiple Species
The 19 1/2-inch stocked Atlantic salmon exploded on a sizeable jerkbait the moment it hit the water’s surface. That day in May, the salmon busily worked clouds of herring among weeds in depths of about seven feet.
Smoke and Heat
I wasn’t expecting to write on fishing topwaters for multiple species; I expected to write on trolling for largemouth bass and pickerel, even though I expected to cast and retrieve much of the time Cronk and I would fish together on Thursday. Despite the smoke from Canadian wildfires. Despite the warm water. After all, I expect summer water temps at 80 or more.
I want to apologize, also, for getting this post online so late, but really, don’t expect me too much of me. There are just too many things I involve myself with.
I did get out and fish on Cronk’s renovated boat. Pretty radical to have a bow-mount MinnKota on a 12-foot Starcraft, but it works really well. Brian got us right at the edges of weeds and wood, and though nothing hit while doing it, I felt the satisfaction of having tried what does work. Just that sometimes it doesn’t. The Hot ‘n Tot easily gets down to 12 feet, even 15 feet or more by letting out enough line. I also cast a Mepp’s Aglia over the tops of weeds, worked a Senko-type worm, and a Chompers on an inset hook. I tried a popping plug and a twister on a jig. Brian likes a big Whopper Plopper that makes a lot of noise, and a big swimbait that really does look like an outsized shiner. He also tried a tube with an inset hook and got hit twice by what was apparently the same fish. (Pickerel do that. Hit repeatedly at the same spot.) I saw the boil the second time.
At 84 degrees, the water was almost double what it was when Brian last fished here in March. 43 degrees. Now that’s when I’d expect to get skunked, but I fished with a serious intent to get results, and I did get one of them: a bass of about three pounds.
If the water was too warm on Thursday, it certainly was too cold back in March.
Middle of the Night
I’ve updated the following article, though the original appeared on New Jersey State Federation of Sportsmen’s Club’sNew Jersey Federated Sportsmen’s News.
Smallmouth bass will hit topwater plugs in streams and small rivers.
The three of us had a series of ponds in mind. During our teens in the 1970s, we camped along Stony Brook in Princeton Township, catching smallmouth bass. Hiking to those ponds in the middle of the night, we cut through woods, waded across the brook, and accessed a roadway that led up a big hill. We fished topwaters for largemouths long before first light.
Nothing happened until after sunup, but it goes to show how deeply motivating the mystery of slowly working the surface in the calm and quiet can be. You can meet very deeply with the possibility of hooking fish, because the object of pursuit is out there lurking where you can’t see, which gives you an extra sense of it all. And if you talk to fishermen who catch hybrid striped bass and walleye after dark in June and July, they can tell you the same. Sometimes the night bite for largemouths persists through a heated first half of September.
I’ve caught a lot of bass at night on topwaters since the ‘70s, and where brown trout are present, even they will explode on Heddon Torpedos in the dark, if the water’s not too warm. For another approach to brown trout—use a fly rod. Spray dry fly floatant onto a Muddler and strip it late at night. It worked for my son. A big one crashed the surface, though Matt didn’t get the hook set.
Nice spot for a popping plug, prop bait, possibly a Zara Spook, if especially the Junior. I got some real good, repeated, hits to the right of that skeletal deadfall, on a Rebel Pop-R or Hedden Torpedo, don’t remember which. Around to the left of this spot, I’ve caught at least one nice smallmouth on a Hedden Torpedo.
Most of your topwater fishing is done after dawn. While early and late signal the magic, it’s possible to catch fish up top all day long, even if fishing will be slow. I’ve caught largemouths under noonday sun, the temps near 90, a stiff breeze on the water … by jerking poppers hard in the chop. All sorts of gamefish take a wide variety of lures off the surface, sometimes any time of day. On occasion, nothing else beats a topwater.
Matt Litton caught this largemouth on popping plug. I know he caught it up top, but he’s been living and working in California a long time since.
Poppers or Chuggers
Poppers, sometimes called chuggers, are most popular. The Rebel Pop-R has emerged in recent decades as the best-known, the Hula Popper by Fred Arbogast having previously filled that role. The body of most is widest at the concave face at the head, although some, like pencil poppers used in the surf for stripers, break the rule. A cross between popper and walker, a pencil popper is only one example of saltwater surface plug. Not only bluefish, striped bass, and tuna commonly get caught on various styles of large poppers; too many saltwater species to name in this article get caught on the like.
If you mostly fish freshwater as I do, it helps to remember that plenty of action on the surface happens in the salt, because poppers and other surface offerings like crease flies for redfish constitute open possibility. Whether you have occasion to fish the salt or not, to consider the wider circle than freshwater encompasses is to breathe within a larger space.
Poppers can give you a place of your own, however, catching fish from calm surface in the deep silences of early morning and evening dusk, but they’re very effective in slight chop, too. Keep a tight line, and when you get hit, don’t set the hook until you feel the fish on, which often doesn’t happen immediately. Let that also be the rule for other surface presentations, besides dry flies when there isn’t a tight line between you and the hook.
Walkers and Darters
Cronk with a nice smallmouth he caught by walking the dog.
When “walking the dog” with a Zara Spook or other walking plug, you might feel a fish on faster than when using a popper. The steady retrieve on a tight line makes that difference. Same with plugs like the Yo Zuri Mag Darter, used in the salt. I’ve had the occasion to witness Brian Cronk and Brenden Kuprel fish Zara Spook Juniors effectively, though, as yet, I haven’t tried one. I’ve felt skeptical about the method, because regular motion throughout the retrieve defines it, rather than the bringing to life of immediate impulses I do with poppers and prop plugs. Both of my friends showed me up royally, however.
Brenden Kuprel with the 26-inch pickerel he caught while walking the dog.
The cadence you impart to a popper or prop plug can be a thing of inspiration, but Cronk not only caught a smallmouth about 18 inches long by zig zagging a Spook Junior, Kuprel’s quicker retrieve of the same impressed me as skillfully done in a way that I might never match. Among other fish, Kuprel boated a 26-inch pickerel. It turns out that the regularity of the retrieve is what maddens the fish into striking, as if first they get entranced.
The Doc is a saltwater version of the Spook. It’s not only effective for striped bass. It will catch bluefish. But even more interesting—it catches tuna.
Prop Plugs
As I do with poppers, I try to tease fish into striking prop plugs by bringing pieces of hard plastic and wood to life. My two favorites—the Hedden Baby Torpedo and the wooden Dalton Special—work on a calm surface as well as a surface rippled by a breeze. I often cast to pockets surrounded by weeds despite collecting some of the greenery on treble hooks.
Weedlines are also good for plugging with prop baits, as they would be for poppers as well. So are flats where weeds don’t quite reach the surface, but greenery isn’t the only cover to try. The Hedden Tiny Torpedo proves very effective among rocks of small rivers for smallmouth bass, as does a small popper of 1/16th ounce. And during September, dimples on the Delaware River’s surface belong to shad fry that get swallowed by fish that take plugs not necessarily limited to dimpling, while in small rivers, smallmouths chase other kinds of fish forage. Rock structures hold smallmouths in reservoirs and lakes, and although the wood of blowdowns and docks does, too, wood also holds largemouths and pickerel. Large prop plugs come into their own for the latter.
Paddlers
Unless you’re strictly a saltwater fisherman, no box of topwaters would be complete without the famous Jitterbug. For decades, it’s been regarded as the best surface lure for bass fishing at night. Another paddler from Arbogast, the Crazy Crawler, I’ve found to be very effective for pickerel when reeled steadily back to the boat through chop. Arbogast creates classic plugs that will remain popular for many decades to come.
My bass was caught on a Booyah Bait. I believe it’s called the Phat Frog, and in any case, it’s a soft-bodied weedless lure with tendrils extending from the both sides of the rear. I put up on top of a weed mat and got blasted. But not before my son had the idea and got blasted first. (Photo Matt Litton.)
Frogs and Rats
Soft-bodied frogs, rats, etc. are favorites of many bass fishermen who fish thick weeds and lily pads. I think a lot of other fishermen feel put off by attempting to fish that stuff, but there are a lot of largemouth bass back underneath, often ready to bust through. Heavier than 20-pound-test braid will serve you well, obviously, but if all you have is a medium-heavy spinning rod and a reel loaded with 20-pound braid, you might force a big one out of the thick. That’s all the rod and line strength I use.
Sometimes, working a soft-bodied frog out in the open, maybe in between pad fields, pays off.
You can also try reeling an unweighted plastic worm on an inset hook over weeds or pads to get blasted. That foreshadows my next section.
Miscellaneous
Buzzbaits work much the same as walking plugs and prop plugs like the Whopper Plopper—
retrieved in a straight line. Bass and other species hammer them because they seem to get entranced by the rhythm of blades turning. I once restrained a desire to criticize a friend’s retrieving a big Whopper Plopper over eight-foot South Branch Raritan depths. His casting rod and blades gurgling like a buzzbait’s contradicted my light approach, but I let be and watched a 19 ¼-inch smallmouth explode on that lure.
I’ve done well on a buzzbait reeled through the waves of Round Valley Reservoir. Over seven- and eight-foot depths, it provoked smallmouths. Buzzbaits also cut paths across calm surfaces, violently interrupted. But calm surfaces also call on other options.
While I fished a 12-acre pond for largemouths among sticks and rocks with an unweighted traditional-style plastic worm, no pick-ups resulted as dusk fell, and a popper or prop plug would have caused too much commotion. Twitching a Rebel Minnow, a plastic jerkbait sitting low at the surface, either option might have worked, but a plastic worm designed for floating on the surface seemed subtler…sucked down by an 18-inch largemouth.