It’s tough to top the thrill of topwater fishing
The East Texas river was falling hard after a big rise, the water covering the adjacent flooded bottomland forest retreating down little drains and feeder creeks into an oxbow connected to the river’s main channel.
The river wasn’t the only thing to fall hard this summer morning. Another angler took a dive that day, joining the legions hooked deeply and forever on a fishing experience almost universally exalted, enjoyed and much sought after by all anglers. Catching fish on topwater lures does that.
Three of us — a father and son and me — quietly eased the flatbottom boat to a spot within casting range of where one of the narrow creeks emptied into the slough, pouring a slow but steady stream of tea-colored runoff into the rich, soupy green water of the swampy slough.
Where the two waters swirled and eddied together in a wide nook rimmed and shaded by a jungle of green ash, black willow and buttonbush, the surface regularly fairly vibrated with the nervous twitchings of clouds of tiny forage fish – shiners, minnows, mosquitofish.
As we watched and quickly sorted gear, the water would occasionally heave and boil, the little forage fish scattering in a shower of silver and green shards. Conditions had brought together swarms of baitfish and a horde of hungry largemouth bass and several species of sunfish gorging on them.
I handed a rod to the young angler in the boat.
Wyatt was just 12 or so, but no novice with rod and reel. He’d spent many days fishing bays and lakes, mostly with live bait but also learning how to fish with artificial lures, all of them subsurface baits – crankbaits and spoons, jig-soft plastic combinations, mostly. And he’d caught a fair number of fish, including crappie and speckled trout and redfish and the sunfish that almost all of us begin our angling careers catching.
But he’d never fished with a bait like the one tied to the rod in his hands. It was a smallish Pop-R, a hard-plastic lure that floats on the surface. A topwater lure. This one was a “chugger” style bait with a dished face that makes an audible “plop” or “chug” sound when given a sharp jerk.
He cast it into the nook and let it sit silent on the surface for a few moments, as instructed. Then, following the advice of the two smiling adults in the boat, he made the bait “spit” with a sharp, short twitch on the rod, let the bait sit for a couple of seconds and repeated the move.
The water beneath the lure erupted and the young angler was fast to a fine, fat, animated largemouth that had mistaken the lure for a struggling baitfish and easy meal.
A moment to remember
Now, it was the young fisher’s turn to grin. And he did.
It was the first fish he’d ever caught on a topwater lure, and he was as smitten with the experience as every other angler is when they witness a fish seemingly appear out of nowhere in an explosive exercise of predator striking prey.
That grin accompanied by pure, wide-eyed astonishment was repeated a score or more times that morning as bass crashed the topwater lures he worked over the fish-filled stretch of water.
“This,” young Wyatt said several times as yet another bass or a big bluegill or warmouth slammed the little topwater lure, “is sweet!”
Yes, it is.
Fishing is largely a tactile sensory experience. There’s all the handling of gear and casting, of course. But the primary and essential tactile thrill is connecting directly with a wild fish via the thin link of a fishing line.
In most instances, that connection – a fish striking a bait or lure — occurs unseen, hidden from the angler’s sight beneath the water.
Topwater fishing adds a visual component to that magic moment, and the impact of that can’t be overstated. Just ask any angler. There is something both visceral and satisfying in witnessing a predator attack what it believes is a meal, especially when the angler is both instigator and beneficiary of this trickery. Truth is, there is no greater thrill in angling than to witness a fish strike a lure on the surface. And that applies as much to the delicate sip-like “take” of a freshwater trout gently inhaling a dry fly as it does the absolute explosion — “like dropping a bowling ball into the lake from the top of a three-story building, “as one angler described it – when a snook, peacock bass, big largemouth or any number of big, hyper-violent predator fish attack a surface lure.
Texas anglers are blessed to have an abundance of opportunities to enjoy taking fish on topwater lures. The state’s inland and coastal waters offer options, and some of the best can occur during summer.
Largemouth bass, the state’s premier and most popular freshwater game fish, is particularly susceptible to surface lures. While summer’s heat and bright sun can send largemouths into areas too deep to draw them to the surface, there are times and situations when the fish are vulnerable to topwater plugs. Mostly, that’s very early and very late in the day, when water’s cooler and sunlight lower in intensity. Largemouths will move shallow at those times, looking for sunfish or other small finfish as well as some terrestrial or semi-aquatic fare such as frogs, large insects and even snakes. Fishing at dawn (or before) and dusk (or after dark) and working a topwater – a chugger, stickbait or propeller-equipped “slushbait” that imitates the thrashing of a frantic shad or other potential meal — over shallows holding submerged vegetation is a classic tactic during summer.
But bass anglers can enjoy some very good topwater fishing even during the heat of a summer day. Areas with very thick surface cover such as flats with expanses of lotus or “water lilies” often will hold bass during even the hottest, brightest parts of the day. The fish hang in the shade and shadows created by the surface cover, waiting to pounce on an unwary sunfish, frog, crawfish or other meal. Weed-less topwater lures, especially weed-less frog imitations fished in “lily fields,” can draw explosive topwater strikes.
Smaller game is also more than willing to give freshwater anglers plenty of topwater action during summer. Sunfish — bluegill, redbreast, longear, warmouth (goggle-eye), green – will slam and grab appropriately down-sized topwater plugs fished in weedy littoral areas all summer long. Even better, small popping bugs or dry flies imitating grasshoppers or other insects and wielded on a 4- or 5-weight flyrod are almost guaranteed to draw constant “pops” from hungry “bream.”
On the coast, topwaters imitating baitfish such as mullet or menhaden can be the ticket to heart-stopping hits from redfish and speckled trout as well as the occasional jack crevalle. The key to successful topwater fishing for specked trout is often predicated on finding areas holding concentrations of mullet, a primary target of larger speckled trout. Find a flat where rafts of nervous mullet are skittering or grey-hounding on the surface and odds are good a cigar-shape topwater fished with a classic walk-the-dog retrieve will get scars from the fangs of yellow-mouthed trout that try to crush and devour it.
Hitting the spot in summer
Then there’s the back-bay lakes and sloughs and marsh flats where schools of redfish prowl and will jump all over mulletimitation topwaters. These shallow backwaters of the bays are one of the best places to find topwater action during summer, and arguably the best way to access the fishing in these often knee-deep or less areas is via a kayak. Silently drifting a back-bay lake in a kayak is an excellent way to find a wolfpack of redfish rooting for crabs and shrimp and killifish but more than willing to detonate on a mullet-imitation topwater plug.
Yes, there are much more effective ways to catch redfish and trout, largemouth bass and sunfish than trying to tempt them to strike a topwater lures. And the angler who opts to chunk a surface plug isn’t likely to catch as many fish as they would have soaking a live shrimp or working a jig/soft-plastic combination for trout or redfish or dredging a jig or plastic worm or grinding a crankbait around structure in 15-20 feet of water for bass.
But that’s OK. Those fewer fish caught on topwater plugs almost certainly will carve a larger and longer-lasting memory and result in wider smiles. Witnessing the water around a topwater lure erupt is magic manifested. Every time it happens, it’s as surprising and heart-stopping as the first time. Magic is like that.