Missing smallies on whopper plopper

[tkunk]

When fishing for largemouths and muskies, I've had great luck with prop-style baits, so I decided to try a Whopper Plopper 110 for smallies. So far, I've gone 2/20. Half the time, it seems like fish completely whiff. I'm sure I've had days when I've gone ~10/10 on largemouths, so something's not right.

 

I normally use it in moderately windy conditions (never on glass calm days, because I don't fish when it's calm), and the hooks are very sharp.

 

Has anyone experienced anything similar or does anyone have any suggestions? My only guess is that a 110 might be too big to hook them reliably.

 

 

[FryDog62]

I use the 110 for smallies and would say I’m about 2 out of 3 batting average.  I’m not sure going to the 90 would help and many have reported issues with the performance of the 90 (nose diving, grabbing the line, etc).  

 

Maybe you would hook smallies better when it’s calm..?  They might get a better look at it and angle of attack..?

[FishDewd]

I'm the opposite I don't fish topwatwer unless its calm. Usually morning or evening. I've done well with my 90. Im 4/4 using aside set.

[Bluebasser86]

I use straight braid and just reel into them. Those fish that completely miss will often come back and hit it as I continue the retrieve. I use the 90, 110, and 130 sizes for smallmouth and they have no problems with any of them. 

[NHBull]

4 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

I use straight braid and just reel into them. Those fish that completely miss will often come back and hit it as I continue the retrieve. I use the 90, 110, and 130 sizes for smallmouth and they have no problems with any of them. 

^this

[evilcatfish]

I've encountered the same thing with ploppers, lots of misses and foul hooked fish. I have a theory that with the aggressive nature of smallmouth, they can't not at least bump the bait when it comes by, but aren't always looking to eat if that makes sense? On a miss I'll throw the plopper or another bait back to the same spot and often hook up.

[tkunk]

On 6/23/2018 at 12:21 AM, Bluebasser86 said:

I use straight braid and just reel into them. Those fish that completely miss will often come back and hit it as I continue the retrieve. I use the 90, 110, and 130 sizes for smallmouth and they have no problems with any of them. 

I do roughly the same thing: When I get a bite, I reel a little faster, and if there's any weight there, I reel a lot faster and lean back a bit.

 

But your experience is very different from mine. I use a 130 for early season muskies. I often get blow-ups from male smallies on beds (I assume), but I seldom hook them. I wasn't counting them in the original post, because I figured the bait was too big to hook them. If I were to count them towards the total, I'd say I'm about 5/40.

 

 

 

 

[Fairtax4me]

If those smallies are on beds they're probably not eating they're just swiping at the bait to try to scare it off. 

 

Even with the tiny sharp hooks on the 90 I still would get a lot of short strikes fishing for river small mouth. I switch out the rear hooks with VMC round bend trebles with the trailer feather. They also weigh a bit more and help balance out the nose dive that the 90s like to do. 

[Bluebasser86]

8 hours ago, Fairtax4me said:

If those smallies are on beds they're probably not eating they're just swiping at the bait to try to scare it off. 

 

Even with the tiny sharp hooks on the 90 I still would get a lot of short strikes fishing for river small mouth. I switch out the rear hooks with VMC round bend trebles with the trailer feather. They also weigh a bit more and help balance out the nose dive that the 90s like to do. 

I switch to the short shank EWG to reduce the overall weight of the hooks and make the bait ride higher. I fish in a lot of wind with the 90's and still have a lot of success with them. 

[Fairtax4me]

No doubt, I've had much better luck getting bit with the 90 than the 130. The 90 certainly catches more dinks, but some days that's the only thing that will get hit. Its that medium between true finesse topwater and aggressive/just flat out obnoxious that the bigger sizes are. Anything from true dink to 3lbers will hit the 90 on a regular basis. 

Seems like fish need to be in just the right mood to hit the 110 or 130, but when they do it's almost always a bigger fish. The bites on those are just few and far between. At least that's been my experience. One of these days when the bait fish are just right I'm sure I'll have a 5-6+lber just inhale a 90 and I'll be in one hell of a fight because I usually throw that with a 8lb mono leader.

[BassB8Caster]

It's hard to say. I have had fish (both lm and sm) just hit a topwater bait. Sometimes up in the air. I feel that it's either they do not want to eat it or are smaller fish. I do not think it's the size of the bait AT ALL. I caught about 4 13" to 15" smallies on a 9" slammer. So they will eat a big bait.  

[riverangler]

I have had better success on topwater baits using low stretch line, a rod with a slower tip, and don't set until you feel the pull...

[Turkey sandwich]

On 6/26/2018 at 10:00 AM, portiabrat said:

I do roughly the same thing: When I get a bite, I reel a little faster, and if there's any weight there, I reel a lot faster and lean back a bit.

 

But your experience is very different from mine. I use a 130 for early season muskies. I often get blow-ups from male smallies on beds (I assume), but I seldom hook them. I wasn't counting them in the original post, because I figured the bait was too big to hook them. If I were to count them towards the total, I'd say I'm about 5/40.

 

 

 

 

 

I love the Whopper Plopper and it's become my favorite way to catch smallies on top 90% of the time.  I've also had a lot of success with the 90 and 130.  Without fishing with you or seeing video, that sounds like you're pulling your bait away from fish and reacting on sight versus staying patient. Sight is always going to play a role, but a good drill to help with this is to simply not set the hook or reel anything but slack until you feel weight.  You're still going to lose some fish (far less), but it's going to help you tremendously in judging the bite and getting a good hook set.  There are lots of presentation strategies that also might help, but until you get the feel for when to set the hook on a topwater bite, they're not going to help you much.  

On 6/26/2018 at 10:00 AM, portiabrat said:

I do roughly the same thing: When I get a bite, I reel a little faster, and if there's any weight there, I reel a lot faster and lean back a bit.

 

But your experience is very different from mine. I use a 130 for early season muskies. I often get blow-ups from male smallies on beds (I assume), but I seldom hook them. I wasn't counting them in the original post, because I figured the bait was too big to hook them. If I were to count them towards the total, I'd say I'm about 5/40.

 

 

 

 

 

I love the Whopper Plopper and it's become my favorite way to catch smallies on top 90% of the time.  I've also had a lot of success with the 90 and 130.  Without fishing with you or seeing video, that sounds like you're pulling your bait away from fish and reacting on sight versus staying patient. Sight is always going to play a role, but a good drill to help with this is to simply not set the hook or reel anything but slack until you feel weight.  You're still going to lose some fish (far less), but it's going to help you tremendously in judging the bite and getting a good hook set.  There are lots of presentation strategies that also might help, but until you get the feel for when to set the hook on a topwater bite, they're not going to help you much.  

 

 

Also, what kind of wind/chop are we talking about?  One of my favorite conditions to fish the Whopper Plopper in is on a river where a headwind creates a current above the main current going in the opposite direction, essentially where the top water column is actually flowing upstream.  If you can get this either late or early in a day, it can be a great opportunity to fish big, loud baits like the WP, but the chop can make judging a hook set trickier because of how it effects slack like laying on the water.  Anytime you have a swell over a few inches, you need to take into consideration what it's doing to your slack line sitting on the surface.

 

[tkunk]

17 hours ago, Turkey sandwich said:

I love the Whopper Plopper and it's become my favorite way to catch smallies on top 90% of the time.  I've also had a lot of success with the 90 and 130.  Without fishing with you or seeing video, that sounds like you're pulling your bait away from fish and reacting on sight versus staying patient. Sight is always going to play a role, but a good drill to help with this is to simply not set the hook or reel anything but slack until you feel weight.  You're still going to lose some fish (far less), but it's going to help you tremendously in judging the bite and getting a good hook set.  There are lots of presentation strategies that also might help, but until you get the feel for when to set the hook on a topwater bite, they're not going to help you much.  

 

Also, what kind of wind/chop are we talking about?  One of my favorite conditions to fish the Whopper Plopper in is on a river where a headwind creates a current above the main current going in the opposite direction, essentially where the top water column is actually flowing upstream.  If you can get this either late or early in a day, it can be a great opportunity to fish big, loud baits like the WP, but the chop can make judging a hook set trickier because of how it effects slack like laying on the water.  Anytime you have a swell over a few inches, you need to take into consideration what it's doing to your slack line sitting on the surface.

 

 

I've caught three muskies and probably over 100 largemouth on prop baits, so I don't think I'm pulling the bait away from smallies. I missed my first two muskies on prop baits, so now I make a point of not watching them as I'm retrieving them.

 

For conditions, I'd say I've been fishing the bait one-footers.

 

I'll try a 90 and report back once I get a day that's calm enough to fish topwater. Thanks.

[rejesterd]

Topwaters for smallmouth aren't all that good imo.  They miss them a lot.  I much prefer a floating jerkbait.

[NHBull]

Was 75 % today.

straight braid on a MH CB rod

think I have 41’s on the one in the pic

The ones that made it in the boat hit it on the initial splash!

........all of them

[Bluebasser86]

16 hours ago, rejesterd said:

Topwaters for smallmouth aren't all that good imo.  They miss them a lot.  I much prefer a floating jerkbait.

That really is sad. I bet I catch over 50% of my smallmouth every year on topwater. They're much more exciting fish to catch on top than largemouth imo. 

[rejesterd]

23 minutes ago, Bluebasser86 said:

That really is sad. I bet I catch over 50% of my smallmouth every year on topwater. They're much more exciting fish to catch on top than largemouth imo. 

Nothing sad about catching more bass on other lures.  I've just found that topwaters are lower-percentage as far as hookups go.  I rarely miss a hookup with a jerkbait or a spinnerbait.  

[Bluebasser86]

8 minutes ago, rejesterd said:

Nothing sad about catching more bass on other lures.  I've just found that topwaters are lower-percentage as far as hookups go.  I rarely miss a hookup with a jerkbait or a spinnerbait.  

I miss very few on topwaters, and the strikes from smallmouth on topwater are so vicious, plus I can cover a lot more water and fish really shallow more effectively. I'm the opposite, not so much the jerkbaits, but tons of misses on smallmouth with spinnerbaits because of their tendency to ram the bait without opening their mouths. I think one of the biggest things with topwater smallmouth is being able to keep from setting the hook until you feel the fish because they will smash a bait to try to stun it and then come back and eat it really often. 

[Birdman2136]

I use two top water lures for smallies on the rivers. A super spook jr and the 90 size whopper plopper.

 

I have very little trouble on hook up using 20lb braid and a MH rod, the occasional fish that tries to stun the lure as spoke about above. I will stop my whopper plopper and run it like a popper style bait. I suppose I feel it imitates the lure becoming injured, I don't have any percentages, but I typically get that fish to come back and get it. 

 

I don't have any exaggerated hook set either, just reel and lean into it. In my opinion if your missing a fish topwater with treble hooks it because you haven't given the fish the full time to engage the lure. 

[rejesterd]

5 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

I miss very few on topwaters, and the strikes from smallmouth on topwater are so vicious, plus I can cover a lot more water and fish really shallow more effectively. I'm the opposite, not so much the jerkbaits, but tons of misses on smallmouth with spinnerbaits because of their tendency to ram the bait without opening their mouths. I think one of the biggest things with topwater smallmouth is being able to keep from setting the hook until you feel the fish because they will smash a bait to try to stun it and then come back and eat it really often. 

You must be fishing these topwaters extremely fast if you're covering more water than a spinnerbait.  And I don't know of a situation, other than in heavy cover, where you couldn't use a spinnerbait or a jerkbait in shallow water.

My experience tells me that they can't get as good a look at topwaters as they can spinnerbaits/jerkbaits/crankbaits.. so they miss them more often.  I certainly use my spook and chug bug from time to time and see them come back a second time to get it.. but many times, they don't come back.  Just seems like largemouths are more fitting for topwater.

[J Francho]

12 minutes ago, rejesterd said:

Just seems like largemouths are more fitting for topwater.

That's all it is....just seems.  We smoke them on topwater ALL THE TIME up here.  And not just in shallow water.

[rejesterd]

12 minutes ago, J Francho said:

That's all it is....just seems.  We smoke them on topwater ALL THE TIME up here.  And not just in shallow water.

That's not all it is.. it's my conclusion based on experience.  That's it.  I agree, if I threw topwaters every day for a significant amount of time, I'd be catching them on topwaters more often.  I just also think I'd be losing more too. 

[NHBull]

1 hour ago, rejesterd said:

You must be fishing these topwaters extremely fast if you're covering more water than a spinnerbait.  And I don't know of a situation, other than in heavy cover, where you couldn't use a spinnerbait or a jerkbait in shallow water.

My experience tells me that they can't get as good a look at topwaters as they can spinnerbaits/jerkbaits/crankbaits.. so they miss them more often.  I certainly use my spook and chug bug from time to time and see them come back a second time to get it.. but many times, they don't come back.  Just seems like largemouths are more fitting for topwater.

Not to take this sideways, buy I miss far more hits on a spinnerbait than all other techniques to combined..I believe we just become proficient on the techniques we use more often.

Rats, WP and CB account for most of my big fish.....why, because I throw them often and became proficient.  I think big topwaters cover move water because they attract fish from a broader area..."Live Free or Die" ?

[rejesterd]

3 minutes ago, NHBull said:

Not to take this sideways, buy I miss far more hits on a spinnerbait than all other techniques to combined..I believe we just become proficient on the techniques we use more often.

Rats, WP and CB account for most of my big fish.....why, because I throw them often and became proficient.  I think big topwaters cover move water because they attract fish from a broader area..."Live Free or Die" ?

Gotta love NH haha.

You've convinced me to dust off the ol' wp.