Do you still find the whopper plopper to be the most consistently effective topwater bait for river smallmouth or do you consider it a “dead” lure?

[Swamp Girl]

26 minutes ago, Bluebasser86 said:

I caught a dink on a Choppo Saturday, first fish I can remember catching on a plopper style bait this year and I couldn't tell you the last one before that. 

 

I've been having much better luck with walking baits than ploppers. 

 

Well, you da man. You're a heckuva fisherman Bluebasser86, but I have yet to provoke a hit this year on a walking bait. Weird, huh? What works in Kansas doesn't in Maine and vice-versa. 

[ironbjorn]

Most of the time, it is completely dead for me. I don't even pack them anymore. The one exception is small, untouched streams.

[gim]

1 minute ago, ol'crickety said:

Weird, huh? What works in Kansas doesn't in Maine and vice-versa. 

Walking topwater baits are more subtle and not as loud, which usually produces better in pressured waters.  Your Maine bass are very unpressured so the biggest loudest lure possible is going to continue to work...until they wise up.  Keep strikin' while the iron is hot, I say.

[Swamp Girl]

1 hour ago, gimruis said:

Walking topwater baits are more subtle and not as loud, which usually produces better in pressured waters.  Your Maine bass are very unpressured so the biggest loudest lure possible is going to continue to work...until they wise up.  Keep strikin' while the iron is hot, I say.

 

Agreed...and I think they're steadily wising up. 

[Cdn Angler]

Here in Canada, before the Choppo came out, it was extremely hard to get a whopper plopper. You had to either find a super niche tackle shop and pay $27 or get it shipped from TW and pay a lot of shipping/duty. So only hardcore bass anglers and not the average fisherman had one. 

 

The WP during this time was the closest thing to a magic lure that I've ever fished. In virtually any conditions fish, especially big fish, would destroy it. It wasn't uncommon to catch 10-15 bass in a morning of fishing, with many between 3-4 lbs. Pike/Muskie also bit it. It was extremely hard for me to put it down and fish anything else since it was fun, effective and you can cover a ton of water. 

 

Fast forward about 7 years and the choppo can be bought everywhere and anywhere and is relatively inexpensive. The WP still works, but it is no longer a magic bait, at least on waters that get any fishing pressure. Topwater in general is still a great option here, especially with active fish, but I've noticed that every topwater gets bit a bit less than it used to (spooks, WP, poppers, wake baits etc.). I still use the WP, but it is more situational and doesn't seem to get the same bites. For moving baits I have to go subsurface more now. I'm catching more pike/walleye as a result and probably fewer big smallmouth. 

 

I can only guess that so many fish bit the thing that they have wised up. I don't know if this is biologically true, but I wonder if fish would observe other fish not being interested in a bait and would learn from that? The opposite is true as we all know so I don't see why not?

[gim]

22 minutes ago, Cdn Angler said:

Pike/Muskie also bit it.

The original version was a muskie lure, size 190.  Its been out for 2 decades.  About 10 years ago River2Sea realized they were missing out on a huge demographic of anglers by only having a muskie sized version so they started making smaller ones.  Then they marketed the heck out of them.  Then Chris Lane won an Elite event on Toledo Bend with one.  Publicity and marketing is what sold this lure, not catching fish.  There's now, what 5 or 6 smaller versions widely available?  You could probably walk into a gas station and find them now.

[Ohioguy25]

46 minutes ago, gimruis said:

The original version was a muskie lure, size 190.  Its been out for 2 decades.  About 10 years ago River2Sea realized they were missing out on a huge demographic of anglers by only having a muskie sized version so they started making smaller ones.  Then they marketed the heck out of them.  Then Chris Lane won an Elite event on Toledo Bend with one.  Publicity and marketing is what sold this lure, not catching fish.  There's now, what 5 or 6 smaller versions widely available?  You could probably walk into a gas station and find them now.

Yeah it’s pretty worn out, esp since the explosion in popularity of fishing since Covid.  I would love to have fished it when it first hit the market.

[Cdn Angler]

56 minutes ago, gimruis said:

The original version was a muskie lure, size 190.  Its been out for 2 decades.  About 10 years ago River2Sea realized they were missing out on a huge demographic of anglers by only having a muskie sized version so they started making smaller ones.  Then they marketed the heck out of them.  Then Chris Lane won an Elite event on Toledo Bend with one.  Publicity and marketing is what sold this lure, not catching fish.  There's now, what 5 or 6 smaller versions widely available?  You could probably walk into a gas station and find them now.

 

I can say that around where I fish, before it became too popular, it was a fish catching machine. I've caught countless large SMB, LMB and Muskie on a Whopper Plopper. I'm talking like thousands of fish. It outproduced any moving bait during that timeframe (we have a lot of grass too, so harder to use subsurface hard baits) and I expected to get 8-15 good bites/day on it. 

 

I've caught multiple 5 lb bass (big here), 4 lb SMB x 20, doubled up, caught muskie/pike. 

 

There was one day I was fishing under a dam with a WP, probably only 100 meters by 200 meters, and I caught 13 SMB in like 2 hours, most between 3-4 lbs. 

 

It worked at normal times when a topwater would work, but I also caught fish over 20 feet of water, mid-day, cloudy, sunny, raining, clear water, muddy water, near weeds, near rocks, basically any condition other than high winds or extreme cold. 

 

So I disagree that it was all hype. It just seems to have fallen off in terms of effectiveness as fish have become conditioned to it. 

[TnRiver46]

All anyone throws is ned , plopper, and chatterbait. It’s easy to be different 

[ne_dan]

It was and still is mostly a night time lure for me.  I usually start with a big wakebait in high probability areas then move on to covering water with a 110 WP.  Still do just fine like that.  On faster moving water where its tough to work other top water like spooks and poppers, it still does pretty good at the right times.

[Ohioguy25]

On 7/18/2023 at 11:44 AM, TnRiver46 said:

All anyone throws is ned , plopper, and chatterbait. It’s easy to be different 

Yeah won’t be long before the Jackhammer goes the way of the plopper. They wise up to specific sounds like that.

[N Florida Mike]

I caught a fish on a WP . One…

[MGF]

I did well with a plopper several years ago when I first tried it...really good the first year. By the second year I started seeing others throwing it on the river and I still got a few bites. By, I think, the third year I just couldn't buy a bite on it and haven't used it since.

 

On my river, anglers like the chunk and wind...crank baits, spinner baits, bladed jigs and whopper ploppers. Not that they won't produce but I do a lot better using other stuff.

[RRocket]

I too reside in Canada and the price of Whopper Ploppers are eye watering.

 

So I looked for alternatives and one of the best ones I've found for noise and "plopping" is the Culprit Incredi-Frog.

 

It's also casts a mile, is quite weedless and seems to be rather durable. All for about $1 a piece.

 

I have since replaced it with another topwater I prefer more...But always keep a couple in the box if I need a real attention-getter.

 

 

[Chilidog]

I almost always have a whopper plopper tied on.  For me it is mostly an end of the day lure or for sure low light days. There is hardly a lure that can cover water like the plopper.  It is a great fall bait for me whether it is the river or the lakes here in Minnesota.  

[MIbassyaker]

I was just thinking about this, because I used a whopper plopper again last Sunday for the first time in 2 years and caught my three biggest fish on it for that trip.

 

It is possible bass in some places have either undergone avoidance learning to the whopper plopper from being caught, or catchable bass have been selected out by harvest or mortality -- these would be the main mechanisms of reduced catch rates due to "fishing pressure".  Generally, anything bass perceive as unnaturally-distinctive should be vulnerable to pressure -- the more they can tell the difference between it and typical food, the easier they will learn to avoid it. This is presumably why Spinnerbait effectiveness has appeared to wax and wane over time (Just google "are spinnerbaits dead?"), while things like worms, jigs and grubs really haven't. 

 

But in order for an effect of pressure like this to be really noticeable for the WP, a very large percentage of bass in fishery would have to be affected in the short time the Whopper Plopper has been really popular... and that seems implausible to me except in small, very heavily-fished waters.  The size and speed of the drop in effectiveness people are reporting seems to me unrealistic to be due entirely to fishing pressure. 

 

On the other hand, there are plenty of people who have never found the WP very productive at all. They tried it, never had much success, and have never really understood the hype.  And then there are people like me who often catch "a few" with it, who use it situationally, but have never had any of these big blow-out days where bass are jumping on it every other cast, and haven't really noticed any change in effectiveness.  Some of the waters I fish get more pressure than others, but none are "untouched".  And it happens that those where i have had the most success with the WP are among the more pressured.

 

This leads me to think we're mostly dealing with something that is more perception than reality -- in particular, an instance of Regression to the Mean. 

 

Initially when the WP became popular, some people did really well, some did not, but mostly due to random factors. The big successes got a lot of attention (helped along by Chris Lane's Toledo Bend win), the failures did not, creating the perception of something more "magic" than it really was, and the WP blew up. 

 

But because of the law of averages, random variations cancel themselves out over time, and those who did really well with the WP initially have just came down to earth, as they should if initial successes were due in a large part to healthy contributions of random chance. 

 

And if you never had success with the WP initially, you wouldn't be fishing it now.  So the opportunity to observe random swings of changing success in the other direction does not arise.

 

I would bet what people are experiencing here is maybe some fishing pressure, but only on top of a larger degree of regression toward the mean. Unless you're in small, heavily fished waters.

[fin]

4 hours ago, MIbassyaker said:

Generally, anything bass perceive as unnaturally-distinctive should be vulnerable to pressure -- the more they can tell the difference between it and typical food, the easier they will learn to avoid it.

 

That's a good way to put it. I've always thought that, but never in exactly those terms. I've always thought the simpler a bait, the better. For an oversimplified example; a red and green bait will not do as well in the long term as a red bait or a green bait.

[Darth-Baiter]

i dont love throwing a plopper type bait.  it is simply boring for me.  thankfully, i havent beent hat successful with one anyways.  bleck!  

 

i own four or so, and all they do at this point is tangle up in my box.  haha..i should give them to my buddy, that LOVES them.  

[Spankey]

I would not say it’s a dead type bait but on the river I don’t use it there. Heck Pop-R’s are a go to for me. I’m lumping Rebel, Storm, Rapalas of those type together. Spook puppy is great along with the Rapala Skitter Prop. Small buzzbaits will do it. 

[Spankey]

I would never tell anyone what to buy but the Heddon Torpedo is a great bait that is not expensive. Effective prop bait. I only fish the tiny and the baby size. I’m not one for big baits on the river. I’m not sure how much color has to do with topwaters. Buy the pattern you like. I would think for the most part they all appear as a darker silhouette as to what a fish sees. The orange and red cup faces on the Rebels Pop R’s make it a bit easier for me to see when they are rest. 

[fin]

11 minutes ago, Spankey said:

I would never tell anyone what to buy but the Heddon Torpedo is a great bait that is not expensive. Effective prop bait.

 

I used to have a lot of luck with that, but it's similar to the WP in that it worked great for me one year, not so great the next.

 

Also, I get obsessed about whether the propeller is turning like it should on the torpedo. The WP is much more effective in that category. Torpedo is much more subtle though, and I don't feel like it spooks fish like a WP might.

 

[Scott804]

On 7/14/2023 at 3:23 PM, JediAmoeba said:

Yellow Magic or PopMax is way better than a Rico IMO

They're all the same to me practically. It is just a matter of what the people around are throwing that dictates the best one via pressure. 

 

 

As for the main thread, I feel like once a bass has fallen to the plopper trick he is not as likely to fall for it again, unlike many other baits. Even buzzbaits seem to hold up better, despite being so similar. I still think it is totally relevant though. Plenty of guys on MLF tour still used a plopper when they were in the old "catch as many as possible" format. It just isn't a "throw it anytime in the summer and you'll get bit" like it used to be, which is how a lot of hot baits end up. Last year at the Hobie BOS on the Susquehanna it was won half on a Choppo with a full bag of 18 and 19" smallmouth. 

 

But OP, I would really recommend you learn both to walk the dog and to use a popper. You will be a much better angler for it and a smallmouth spook bite is truly one of my favorite bites ever to get on, highly recommend.