(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
Table Rock Lake guru James Watson may be best known for his heroics with a big flutter spoon, but he’s a true topwater expert as well. It’s a genre of baits that doesn’t always produce big numbers, but if you stick with it consistently you’ll have some monster days – and you’ll have a blast doing it. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, though.
The key, Watson said, is to “keep it in your hand and keep going.” He’s had well-publicized success with the Whopper Plopper, but utilizes a wide variety of surface lures throughout the year. “They all have their place, all have their time.”
He’ll start throwing them in the spring when water temperatures exceed 55 degrees. This is a time when he likes to throw a white buzzbait or a walking bait to “call a bass up,” especially in pockets with grass and trash.
As the water starts to warm up, and especially when bass are guarding fry, he’ll turn to a frog, running and gunning through the backs of every spawning pocket looking for lone stick ups and sawdust. While his colleague Ish Monroe says he’ll put down the frog when the water temperature drops 3 degrees, that kind of change doesn’t deter Watson. He’ll just go “17 times slower than everyone else.”
As the fish leave the spawning grounds and head offshore to suspend among deep trees on points, Watson believes that they typically want “something slowly being waved in front of them.” This typically means a walking bait, and he’s never had success under these conditions with toads, buzzbaits or even his favored Whopper Plopper. He does use the toad a bunch in the summertime, typically in calm conditions, and especially in gin clear water. Under those conditions he’ll also work in the 90-sized Whopper Plopper and a diminutive 1/8-ounce buzzbait. If it’s windy, he skews toward louder lures, switching from a Horny Toad to a Ribbit, and from a small Plopper to the bigger one. Later in the year, he relies heavily on topwaters around bluegill beds, and in the fall he typically keys in on rocks.
His tackle always involves a 7:1 or faster gear-ratio reel. With most of his treble-hooked lures he likes a shorter rod like the Jason Christie Signature Series from Falcon, because it doesn’t have a long handle that gets in the way. With his Ploppers and toads, he uses a 7’6” heavy-action flipping stick around cover and a 7’10” model in open water. He’s a huge fan of braided line with topwaters. With his poppers, prop baits and pencil poppers, he’ll add a 6- to 8-inch segment of monofilament, but with others he goes with straight braid. The Whopper Plopper 130 and toads get 50-pound braid in open water and 65 if he’s around heavy cover or throwing over dock cables.
For the vast majority of his buzzbait fishing he uses a War Eagle model – silver blade with white skirt in the spring, and gold blade with black skirt in the fall. On occasion, though, he’ll get out a quad-bladed version from Omega called the Alpha Shad. Both of them are fished straight out of the package. He’ll add a trailer hook if the circumstances allow.
If you want to learn some of the other keys to Watson’s topwater tactics, including his favorite trailer hook and the surprisingly wide variety of lures he uses it on, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
