Missing smallies on whopper plopper

[Bluebasser86]

12 hours 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.

A lot of my smallmouth come from less than 2' of water, too shallow for a jerkbait to be an option and they rarely show much interest in a spinnerbait. A super spook Jr walked as fast as I can fish it, a small rat, WP slowly plopping along, or a Buzzjet doing whatever it is they do will get crushed though, usually get to see the fish coming from long distances too. 

 

Our lakes are probably a bit of an oddity in the smallmouth world with the way they like to hold extremely shallow a lot of the times and in places largemouth would often hold. 

 

Catch them how you enjoy catching them. I prefer catching my largemouth on a jig over topwater because I lose way more on topwater during the fight than I do a jig and I'd rather have the big rod and heavy line. I read your original post and imagined my world without topwater smallies and it would be a very sad thing for me. Smallmouth are fun however you can get them though, and I do love catching them on jerkbaits and blades when they're eating them, those bites are just much shorter windows for me than the topwater bite is. 

[Swamp Girl]

I fish lakes that are rarely fished. The fish are not lure shy, so I get lots of opportunities to hook fish. I also get lots of opportunities to lose fish. Fishing the surface with poppers, I'll land six in a row and think I've mastered it. Then I'll lose six in a row. You just lose more fish when surface fishing. 

[Ziggy Bones]

Personally I was missing the tw smallmouth on the wp because I wasn't side leaning my hook sets. I always seem to revert back to top setting and I was pulling them out of their mouths, when I focus in on the side lean hook set I never had a problem.

[NYWayfarer]

Smallmouth hook themselves on my WP 90 I use a 6'6" Med/Fast Abu Garcia Vengeance rod with my Lew's tournament MB spooled with 12# line.

 

I chose that rod because of the action. When I see the blow-up all I have to do is pull back and reel. The bend in the tip prevents the WP from getting ripped out of any smallies with that type of hookset.

[JollyJoe]

MH Crankbait Rod of your choice with Braid (25lb-35lb). I use a reel down hookset similiar to sestting hook on a dropshot. Just reel into to them. i'd say im above 90% on strike to land ratio with this set-up and method.

 

Also, helps not to look at the bait the whole time during the retrieve. Seeing the strike combined with the sensitivity of the braid causes a lot of people to steal the bait from the fish.

 

Smallies on a plopper are some of the most fun fish to catch Good luck!

 

-Joe