(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.)
One of the highlights of the 2021 professional bass fishing season was watching Bassmaster Elite Series pro Lee Livesay not only catching monster bags on Lake Fork, but catching them on surface lures. It’s a way that just about every bass angler likes to fish, but most people think it’s highly situational, primarily for low-light scenarios. The Texas pro is convinced that is definitely not the case.
“It’s something I keep in my hand because I’m confident in catching a bigger quality of fish on it,” he said. “I always have two baits tied on 24/7/365, just because I never know when that opportunity is going to come up.” Unless the water temperatures are below 50 degrees, he always has a walking bait and a popping bait ready to go, even in highly pressured scenarios. In fact, that’s when “the bigger ones will eat up.”
At Fork, he used a swimbait quite a bit, but the average size trended upward when he switched to a big Super Spook. He chose his opportunities carefully, noting that “there’s little windows,” and he took advantage of them. His topwater success didn’t just occur in his home state. He also used a 1-2 punch of surface lures to notch an 8th-place finish this year on Lake Champlain. The first was a 6th Sense Dogma walking bait. “This is the bait I can cover water with,” he said. It throws a long distance and makes a lot of noise. When the fish were target-oriented, for example, relating to small patches of milfoil, he turned to the 6th Sense SplashBack popper. “Those fish would not eat anything else but a topwater.”
He throw the Dogma on a Halo HFX 7-foot medium-action cranking rod. It’s parabolic, so it “keeps those fish pinned up.” He also uses 40-pound braided line, which allows for long casts and immediate hooksets when the fish strike. When the lure gets stuck in grass he can rip it free and continue his retrieve, and when the fish blow up he can just reel into them – he doesn’t have to hammer it home. For the popper, he likes a Halo KSII 6-foot-10 medium-action rod with a super-soft tip, but he gets rid of the braid. “I’m mono guy,” he explained. Regardless of which sort of line he employs, he uses a Palomar knot. “You don’t need a lop knot.”
He likes the factory hooks that come on the 6th Sense baits, but he will upsize around bigger fish, like at Fork. At Champlain, or any time smallmouths are in the mix, he’ll stick with a regular gauge. Whether the trebles are dressed depends on where he’s fishing.
“No feather at Fork,” he said. “When I get somewhere where I’m going to catch smallmouths I always have a feather on them.”
Either way, he keeps his colors remarkably simple: white or bone; and black; possibly with something brown around the bluegill spawn.
If you want to learn some of the other secrets of how Livesay fishes topwater baits for giant bass all over the country – including how, where and why he uses prop baits – check out his full on-the-water video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
