Knapp: Using surface lures is one of the most fun ways to catch smallmouth bass
Dan Brown made a cast close to the bank, something he’s quite adept at.
Soon after the lure’s splashdown, with his casting rod held high to lift the line off the water, he began a steady, moderately paced retrieve. The surface bait moved less than a foot before a chunky smallmouth bass intercepted it.
The scene replayed itself dozens of times during a trip last week to the Allegheny River. By the time we loaded the boat back on the trailer, Dan had boated over 50 bass, the majority of them on the topwater lure.
Much of the credit for the high catch numbers can be attributed to Dan’s skill, his ability to consistently place cast after cast tight to the bankside willows. I suspect some of these fish would have hit other presentations, and in fact he did dupe some of them on Chatterbaits, jerkbaits and finesse jigs. But there’s little doubt in my mind the topwater lure choice was a significant contributor for a couple of reasons.
For one, the depth these fish were holding in was often less than a foot. A floating lure had the obvious advantage of not sinking and becoming snagged.
The bigger factor, as I saw it, was the seductive swimming action of the lure, one that provoked a reaction bite from fish that seemed somewhat lethargic in the hot, 80-plus-degree water. They might not have wanted to eat but couldn’t help themselves.
Dan’s killer lure that day fell into the category of wake baits — surface lures that skim the surface and produce a V-shaped wake.
More specifically, it was a Duo Realis Rozante Perj 95. It’s a pricey lure with limited availability presently. I purchased one a couple years ago when Dan put on a fish-catching clinic from the back of the boat. Now I wish I’d bought a couple more. I have similar lures, and while they catch some fish, the Duo Realis bait engages — starts its wake-producing action — nearly immediately upon starting the retrieve.
Like any other family of lures, wake baits certainly aren’t the one-and-done answer to the questions of “what surface lure should I use?” Much has to do with the attitude of the fish, the type of water being fished and personal preference of how one likes to catch them.
A couple days after Dan’s outing, Don Gariglio joined me. During this trip, Don put several nice smallies in the boat by way of the River2Sea Whopper Plopper.
The Whopper Plopper — which features a solid body spinning tail section that kicks up quite a ruckus — is a more aggressive presentation, and one bass respond well to some days. It’s also a great bait for covering the water as well as attracting fish from longer distances. I like to use the Whopper Plopper on lakes to coax bass up out of weedy flats.
And then there are the classic surface lures like Heddon’s Zara Spook, a cigar-shaped topwater that requires more input from the angler than the two previously described. With a Spook, a well-timed twitch-pause-reel cadence is used to produce a zig-zag motion commonly called walking the dog.
Moving forward another couple of days, Frank Cipollone was with me for his second trip of the summer.
The water temp had dropped a few degrees, along with a bump in flow and slightly stained water. Perfect river conditions under a cloudy sky. We were crushing smallmouth bass on fluke-style soft jerkbaits when Frank mentioned how he once loved to catch smallmouth bass on the scaled-down version of the Zara Spook, the Zara Puppy.
Reaching into the utility box that houses my topwater baits, I retrieved such a bait and rigged it up for him.
It didn't take long for Frank to get back in the rhythm that makes a Spook so effective. A couple smaller bass blew up on the lure but didn’t get hooked, a common occurrence due to the erratic movement of the lure. But then a solid 2 ½ pounder engulfed the bait, putting the exclamation point on a fine day.
Few would argue that when fish are willing to take a surface lure, it’s one of the most fun ways of catching them.
Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle.
