Introduction
Fishing with topwater baits can provide some of the most exciting action an angler will experience. The visual spectacle of a bass, pike, or other gamefish exploding onto a surface lure never gets old. However, while tempting fish to strike topwater offerings has an element of chance to it, reliably catching fish on the surface also requires practice and adaptation to conditions.
This comprehensive guide on mastering topwater baits will explore the various types of surface lures, their best applications, and how to employ proven retrieving techniques to target different species. With the knowledge provided here, anglers can understand the specialized niche these baits fill for locating and triggering aggressive strikes.
Thesis Statement
This article will provide an in-depth examination of topwater lure types, their distinct actions, optimal conditions to fish them, and strategies for retrieving them effectively when targeting a variety of freshwater and saltwater species. It will also offer recommendations on rod/reel setups tailored to topwater techniques.
Types of Topwater Baits
The topwater bait category encompasses a wide array of lure styles designed for surface fishing. While retrieves and actions vary, all topwaters share the ability to create disturbance, flash, vibration, and/or sound to trigger reaction strikes from fish. Here is an overview of the most popular varieties:
| Topwater Type | Action | Strengths |
| Poppers | Concave lure face creates popping noise on retrieve | Long-range fish attraction, great for calm waters |
| Walk-the-Dog Lures | Dart side to side, imitating wounded baitfish | Draws exciting strikes in rippled water |
| Prop Baits | Spinning propellers churn water | Good for calm or rough water, covers water quickly |
| Buzzbaits | Spinning blade + fast retrieve makes buzzing sound | Efficiently explores new areas, excels at low light |
Now let’s examine the characteristics and best practices for each type of topwater lure in greater detail:
Poppers
Poppers produce their signature popping and splashing action courtesy of their concave, scooped face. This allows them to land face-down on the water and displace water aggressively. Poppers represent an excellent choice when targeting visible, inactive fish that require some long-distance coaxing.
Their ability to project sound and disturbance over long distances makes poppers a sensible option for lowlight periods like early morning and evenings. Their versatility also allows using them over submerged structure, along weed edges, over points, and across flats.
Popper Advantages
- Creates long-range disturbance to attract distant fish
- Effective for wary fish in clear, calm waters
- Works well over various structure types
- Easy-to-master technique
Pro Tip: Want to wake up inactive lunkers? Start your retrieve by walking the dog a few feet before implementing pops. This extra surface commotion can prompt lazy follows or shocking strikes!
Walk-the-Dog Topwaters
Walk-the-dog lures take their name from the trademark side-to-side shimmying action a proper retrieve induces. Thanks to their elongated, minnow-esque shape, anglers can impart this baitfish-mimicking action with ease. Their ability to replicate injured prey makes these lures deadly in areas holding active pike and bass.
While other lures work better for drawing fish from afar, once bass zero these baits, they tend to commit to catapulting strikes. Persistence and an erratic action are prerequisites for these lures.
Walk-the-Dog Attributes
- Side-to-side darting simulates wounded baitfish
- Mesmerizing action triggers aggressive attacks
- Shines around wood, weeds, reefs
- Require angler “input” for action
Tip: For heart-stopping strikes, occasionally stop the lure during your cadenced twitching to impart the profile of a stunned bait!
Prop Baits
As their descriptive name implies, prop baits incorporate either a single or double feathered treble hook to impart water-churning action. Their splashing, burbling action goes a step beyond most topwaters in imitating the commotion of a fleeing creature.
Thanks to their ability to cast a disturbance over moderately long distances, prop baits shine for covering open water quickly. Anglers chiefly employ two retrieving techniques: a slow, steady wind or a stop-and-go cadence involving various pull intensities followed by pauses.
Prop Bait Qualities
- Noisy surface disturbance travels far
- Imparts action with little angler input
- Versatile retrieve speeds
- Allows slow inspection of structure
Tip: When fishing pressured water or smart bass, throw prop baits on braid/fluorocarbon leaders for superior sense detection. You’ll put more big fish in the net!
Buzzbaits
Of all the offerings in the topwater family, few lures deliver the raucous disturbance of buzzbaits. These lures feature a fixed or free-swinging overhead blade appended above an angular, weighted body. This setup allows reeling at high speeds to produce a resounding buzzing.
Savvy anglers turn to buzzbaits when trying to draw vicious strikes from hidden lunkers lurking in the thickest cover. Their ability to explore water rapidly makes them ideal when seeking reaction attacks at dawn, dusk, or night.
Buzzbait Perks
- Covers expansive areas quickly
- Noisy disturbance triggers reaction bites
- Perfect for targeting shallow cover
- Excellent when light levels are low
Tip: For enhanced fish-attracting abilities, experiment with snapping buzzbaits over matted cover like grass or wood!
Advantages of Topwater Baits
Now that you recognize the main styles of topwater lures and their motor aspects in attracting strikes, let’s study why they can be such superb fish-catchers.
Visual and Audible Attraction
Unlike lures working deeper in the water column, topwater baits stimulate fish through both sight and sound. Fish often crush surface lures reactively by zeroing in on their disturbances with their lateral line, even in turbid water.
This ability to prompt instinctual attacks is what makes topwater success possible under adverse conditions unfavorable to most presentations. Just as critically, anglers also gain the benefit of seeing the explosive grabs at their offerings!
Multi-Sensory Advantage
| Stimulation Type | Fish Response | Angler Benefit |
| Audible Disturbance | Triggers reaction & pinpoints bait | Allows fishing in muddy water |
| Visual disruption | Attracts strikes & followers | Observe heartstopping bites |
Targeting Aggressive Fish
As discussed earlier, certain styles like buzzbaits and walkers truly shine for activating the predatory instincts of aggressive fish guarding fry or stationed around ambush cover. Their ability to impose and rapidly trespass makes them ideal for getting inside the heads of aggressive targets.
This tendency of reaction baits to electrify fish in a heightened mental state is precisely why guides have tremendous confidence in topwater plugs for record-class fish. They simply have an edge for tapping into a predator’s attack impulse thanks to their pushy, imposing nature.
Keys for Agitators
- Exploit Protective States
- Guarding fry
- Defending cover
- Access Reaction Zone
- Wake/noise travels far
- Erratic change of direction
Covering Water Quickly
When targeting transient roamers over expansive areas, most anglers naturally reach for their fastest offerings to maximize areas covered. However, this typically involves diving cranks or vibrating jigs ignoring the upper strike zone where active fish often lurk, especially at low light periods.
Topwaters enable efficiently searching quality acreage while focusing precisely where aggressively feeding targets intercept prey – at the surface! This ability to simultaneously speed prospecting of new areas and thoroughly work a vulnerable zone gives anglers a profound advantage for contacting inactive wind vagabonds & structure cruisersTransition sentence into the next section would help the flow..
Wide Coverage & Upper-Column Focus
| Presentation Style | Water Coverage Speed | Depth Targeted |
| Crankbaits & Vibrating Jigs | High | Mid to Bottom Water Columns |
| Buzzbaits & Prop Baits | High | Primary: Topwater Column |
Techniques for Using Topwater Baits Effectively
We’ve covered bait specifics and why this niche family deserves a spot in every angler’s lineup. Now let’s drill down on applying essential topwater skills guaranteed to help subdue more surface feeders!
Perfecting the Retrieve
As with any lure category, sufficiently alluring retrieves separate results-producing practitioners from new adopters quickly frustrated. Mastering varied cadences and understanding their utility is crucial.
A deadly popper routine involves aggressively working the rod before allowing the lure to rest in its “sweet spot”, leaving tempting, momentary opportunities for curious fish to strike.
For walkers, operating the tip rhythmically to impart realistic bends while reeling in slack generates the most visceral blows.
Prop baits either get aggressively ripped or slowly rolled, depending on conditions and desired disturbance intensity.
Burning buzzbaits swiftly explores territory and let their disruptive nature handle the rest!
Match the intensity level to bait profile/size and lure purpose, then experiment until fish tell you precisely how they want it on a given day.
| Lure Type | Retrieving Insights |
| Poppers | Aggressive pops followed by resting sweet spot |
| Walkers | Medium twitches to walk bait steadily |
| Prop Baits | Slow roll or aggressive rips |
| Buzzbaits | Swift steady reel maintaining blade spin |
Presentation: Time & Conditions
While topwaters certainly catch fish under diverse scenarios, paying attention to timing and conditions stacks odds decidedly in your favor.
Low Light functionality speaks to their unique niche and inherent advantages over subsurface baits when visibility goes sideways. Dawn, dusk, overcast days, and the shady face of cover all warrant tying on a topwater.
As for weather, nothing signals feeding windows more reliably than precipitation. Barometric shifts dropping pressure typically spur appetites. Poppers and prop baits shine once initial raindrops send bait scattering.
In terms of seasons, topwaters absolutely excel for exploiting spring spawn pre- and post-spawn fragility due to heightened awareness and easy prey sources. They continue paying dividends when motivating response attacks during hot summer.
Topwater Sweet Spots
| Prime Conditions | Strategies | Season Notes |
| Low Light, Overcast | Focus floaters near wood, bridges | Spring: Spawners & guarders
Summer: Shady pockets |
| Rainfall (Dropping Pressure) | Poppers/prop baits over grass flats, drains | Post-cold front feeding windows |
| Windy | Wakebaits on windblown banks, whitecaps | Fall turnover supercharges shallows |
Hookset Fundamentals
All anglers fully understand the sheer torment of watching a trophy largemouth slowly rise in an indifferent posture to inhale a carefully worked popper…then immediately open its maw to free it upon a misguided hook sweep.
Recognizing bite windows and exercising appropriate restraint comprises one of the steepest learning curves in this discipline. Often merely a visual explosion or swirl gives the only clues a fish attacked the bait.
The most effective strategy involves visually confirming the lure fully enters the fish’s mouth, then allowing one…two…three excruciating seconds to pass before sweeping back in a firm, level motion to plug the lure deep and rotate the hook point into position.
Patience facilitates solid hookups. Let predators defeat themselves through their violent tendencies!
Target Species for Topwaters
The information above delivers a strong general overview about topwater bait selection for most gamefish. Now let’s narrow the field by examining specific techniques and gear considerations for major target species.
Bass
As the most popular and accessible gamefish for a wide section of North America, as well as notoriously aggressive predators, largemouth and smallmouth bass naturally serve as the prototypical targets for topwater tactics. Regional nuances and feeding behaviors impact approaches.
Up north, smallies spend ample time chasing shoals of bait near the surface, making it a natural for slender walking plugs and smaller prop baits. Standard smallmouth gear consisting of sensitive fast-action sticks around 7’ paired with low-stretch 8-12lb fluorocarbon helps anglers feel subtle bites and ensure solid hooksets.
Their southern bucketmouth cousins focus more on ambush hunting, especially around thicker shallow cover. To punch and pull fish from heavy grass and wood, strong 7-7’6” medium-heavy rods get paired with 50-65lb braid for ultimate power transmission on hooksets and extraction ability.
Tailored Bass Gear
| Species | Rod Power | Line | Lure Size | Structure Targeted |
| Smallmouth Bass | Fast Action, Light | 8-12lb Fluoro | Smaller Walkers & Props | Rocks, Docks, Timber |
| Largemouth Bass | Medium-Heavy, Moderate | 50-65lb Braided | Buzzbaits, Standard Walkers | Grass, Dense Shallow Wood |
In warmer months, focus on pockets and the shady sides of cover to rouse lethargic bass unwilling to expose themselves on sunny banks during midday. Poppers and prop baits excel for this finesse scenario of coaxing neutral fish to strike. Come evening, tie into a buzzbait and target scattered grass clumps and wood borders to capitalize on increased activity under low light.
Pike & Musky
The aerial theatrics of esox when greeting a walker or prop bait must be witnessed firsthand to fully appreciate. When targeting these toothy predators, focus on methods to access productive zones holding fish while considering safety.
Their two key hangouts from ice-out through fall involve shallow, emerging vegetation mats and transitional drop-offs or sunken humps tops in the 6-12’ range. Focus the former zones early morning and at night when cruising for a quick meal. Deep spots shine more midday.
Stout gear helps muscle bulldogs away from disastrous cover like snag-laden reeds. Fast 7-7’6” heavy power rods with strong line counter reels loaded with 50-80lb braid prevent cutoffs and control the fight. Steel leaders proposed prevent slicing light line. Whopper Ploppers and Magnum-sized spooks produce explosive encounters!
Musky & Pike Topwater Setup
| Species | Rod/Reel Combo | Line | Lure Sizes | Prime Habitats |
| Pike | Heavy, Moderate 7’ Rod + Line Counter Reel | 50-80lb Braided Line + Steel Leader | Standard to XL Walkers, Prop Baits | Shallow Emergent Grass, Drop-Off Edges |
| Musky | Heavy, Fast 7’6” Rod + High-Capacity Baitcaster | 80lb Braided Line + Steel Leader | Magnum Walkers, Mega Prop Baits | Humps, Channel Turns, Rocky Points |
Saltwater Giants
Anglers hunting saltwater gamefish can up their chances by capitalizing on conditions spurring increased surface activity, then prepare accordingly with specialized gear. Let’s examine tactics for two popular targets.
Redfish: Gather in late summer around expansive grassflats preceding fall, terrorizing schools of mullet & shad near the surface. Stealthily position up-tide then bring the noise with noisy prop baits and poppers to draw explosive reactions from passing schools.
Battle bulky 8’ medium-heavy rods with 4000-size spinning reels holding 30lb braid to prevent reef cutoffs and quickly usher red drum from structure during lengthy fights characteristic of the species. This setup also handles other inshore species like oversized trout well.
Tarpon: Reside in warmer coastal waters and ravage passing bait schools when prey gathers pinned against mangroves or jetty walls thanks to shifting tides. Find bait gathering en masse then throw magnum-sized topwater plugs like Super Spooks or Maniac Mullets to draw explosive strikes from tarpon lying in wait under bait schools.
When hooks get buried in their bony jaws, hold on! Spool up with heavy 30-50lb braided line on size 4000-5000 spinning reels and pair them with 7-7’6” heavy power fast rods in a boat or ≥8’ options for pier fishing. Remember to play them slowly and use appropriate drag to tire out these acrobatic deadline testers before gaining control boatside. Pay close attention to forecasts for optimum windows.
Prime Inshore Saltwater Targets
| Species | Gear | Approach | Prime Windows |
| Redfish | MH Spinning Outfits, 30lb Braid | Work Loud Lures Around Grass Flats | Tide Changes Moving Bait, Early Morning |
| Tarpon | Heavy Spinning Outfits, ≥30lb Braid | Throw Large Lures Against Structure | Around Bait Schools, Nighttime on Full Moons |
Conclusion
As evidenced throughout this deep dive into mastering topwater tactics, few lure families offer as exciting of a niche as tempting fish blowing up on surface offerings. Blending knowledge of bait specifics, best conditions prompting feeding activity, and adaptable retrieval techniques together constitutes a reliable fish-catching blueprint for fresh and saltwater species alike.
Anglers should now understand optimal gear considerations and strategic approaches to catch more fish on their favorite walking, popping and buzzing surface lures. As challenging as this discipline can be at times, proper preparation and persistence pays off for those finding means to consistently get it done when so many other methods fall short.
The next step involves taking these lessons to heart and stringing together patterns on the water. Now quit reading and go make some heart-stopping topwater memories!
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Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What time of day is best for using topwater baits?
A: Early morning, evening, and nighttime are optimal due to low light conditions concentrating feeding activity higher in the water column.
Q: Can topwater baits be used in rough water?
A: While glassy smooth conditions allow better bait tracking, models like prop baits and buzzbaits shine around chop and whitecaps thanks to their loud, displacing natures.
Q: What is the best retrieve speed for topwater baits?
A: Varying cadence and speed is best. Start fast while searching then slow down once fish locate bait. Pause abruptly ripping prop baits but keep steady tension for walkers.
Q: Are topwater baits effective in cold water?
A: Sluggish metabolism makes surface techniques largely ineffective under frigid conditions outside special scenarios like warm water discharges and flows. As water warms up through spring, shallow feeding accelerates.
Q: What equipment should I use with topwater baits?
A: Round out arsenals with 7-7’6” Medium Heavy moderate to fast rods and mid-capacity low profile reels capable of picking up line quickly. For most species, 20-50lb braided line increases hookup percentages.
