FLIPPIN’ OUT FOR A LIZARD. PHOTO: JOSE CHAVEZ
[MU LTISPECI ES]
POPPING MAD W
work a Zoom Horny Toad around the weeds,” he says. Horny toad? Now that is weird.
MORE TOPWATER TACTICS BY RIC BURNLEY
homp, fomp, whoosh, zing! Watching a big fish pounce on a topwater bait
sounds as much fun as it looks. In anticipa- tion of a big explosion, an angler’s nerves are on edge the moment a surface lure splashes into the water. To get in on the excitement, we got three experts to take us to the dance.
LIZARD KING Sometimes largemouth fishing gets weird. “Lizards, worms and flukes are a big part of what I do,” says bass pro Tim Stewart of Charlotte, North Carolina. In spring and fall when largemouth are fattening up, Stewart rigs the plastic with a light wire hook and bangs the bank. “A lot of time I’ll cast it onto shore then pop it into the water,” he says. When the fish are feeding aggressively on the surface, Stewart switches to a Lucky Craft Gunfish. “I can walk it across the top or pop it and stop it,” he says, “depending on what the fish want that day.”
Stewart suggests varying the retrieve until the fish respond. “A good fisherman remem- bers exactly what he was doing when the fish hit,” he says. In spring, Steward heads shallow looking for spawning bass. “I like to
LET ‘ER RIP! The noise and commotion of a topwater bait absolutely enrages predatory fish. To really piss off calico bass, California kayak pro John Pawlak works subsurface plugs as fast as he can crank the reel. “Rip it back,” he says, “and hold the rod tip high.” That combi- nation keeps the bait zipping across the sur- face silhouetted against the sky. Reels that bring in over 30 inches of line each turn of the handle and a rod longer than eight feet really get the lure ripping. Pawlak reserves his surface assault for the last minutes be- fore dawn. “When the first ray of the sun hits the water,” he says, “the topwater bite is over.”
SEA MONSTERS When king mackerel, jacks and other toothy monsters have bait schooled up on the sur- face, Ty Southerland (www.30milesoffshore. com) rigs up a big popping plug. “I use a 5- to 6-inch Chugger,” he says, “that makes enough noise to compete with the bait and fish busting all around.” He attaches a 10- inch trace of 45-pound single strand wire to the plug and adds another five or six feet of 30-pound mono shock leader to the main line. “Hooking a killing machine on topwater is the heat,” he says, “One time I had a king knock my lure four feet in the air and anoth- er fish launched out of the water and ate it.”
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