Poppers Sometimes Work in the Chop

Plans changed a couple of times yesterday, but I got out and fished as I set out to do. I just didn't fish for very long, when I had expected a topwater bite after sundown. I left long before then. The fact that I'm not getting as much done as I'd like to started gnawing on my conscience, so I left before that bite might have materialized, set upon waking up earlier this morning than I would have. I got the grocery shopping done, and I managed to get back home before 10:00 this morning, when I set upon the task of cleaning the oven once I got the groceries put away.

Instead of fishing where I knew rocks and smallmouth bass exist, I tried what proved to be a shallow pond of maybe six acres, weedbeds existing out in the middle of it away from the shoreline. I found that out once I switched from a topwater plug to a Yum Dinger and soon caught a 15-inch largemouth by casting straight out, rather than close to the shoreline with grass overhanging the water. The depth out there is about five feet, judged by when my line would go slack, the worm having found bottom. The water drops from the shoreline edge surprisingly fast, though, giving you the illusion that it might be deeper out there.

Poppers Sometimes Work in the Chop

I had begun with a 3/8-ounce Rebel Pop-R despite direct sunlight and wind on that water. The outing was supposed to be about topwater fishing, but I realized once I got there that I had arrived a lot earlier than would have been convenient. 

I've done it before. Summonsed a largemouth to a topwater plug with sun on the water and wind creating chop. By using a popper made by Adam Mihara. It seems to me the trick is to pop a plug steadily and hard, retrieving at a slow to moderate pace. My friend Brian Cronk's favorite topwater is the Zara Spook and he does well on it, but I'd think twice before trying to walk the dog through chop, though a prop plug like the Hedden Torpedo might work. And a gurgler like the Heddon Crazy Crawler might be an excellent choice. My son and I had some success with Crazy Crawlers in choppy water many years ago on Lake Musconetcong.

I could have otherwise tried a Chatterbait, but I had left mine in the car trunk and wasn't interested in walking back. 

Where the pond gets narrow, I cast all the way across, leveraging power with my 7-foot medium-heavy Lew's Speed Stick. The 20-pound Power Pro braid I use is low diameter and generally casts well, but I got a bad wind knot yesterday, though I managed to untie it. My best cast had me retrieving away from the bank where it turns at a corner. I popped and retrieved just a yard or two before the bass pounded that plug, and I believed I had a smallmouth on, it fought so hard, though it proved to be a 16 1/2-inch largemouth. 

I doubt any smallmouths exist in that particular pond with the weeds and mostly earthen bottom, though I could be mistaken. A bunch of open water spaces are connected, marshes in-between. Smallmouths are more plentiful than largemouths, when you take the whole into account. 

In the Chop