By Capt. Cefus McRae, Nuts & Bolts of Fishing Series
My favorite type of fishing is with topwater plugs. It’s all visual. How you work the plug…watching a fish come up from the depths to check it out…and the explosive strike that follows, is what keeps me coming back for more.
As summer fades away and the cooler days of fall show up, fish begin their seasonal movement from deep water haunts to shallower locations as they start filling their bellies in advance of the winter. This is the perfect time to dust off those surface plugs and experience the adrenaline rush associated with topwater action.
Topwater plugs come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Essentially, the idea is to present them as a struggling or fleeing baitfish. For shapes, there’s the Chugging/Popper style, Walk-the-Dog style, Swimming shapes, and variations of each. I’ve got an assortment of sizes and colors in my topwater tray, and virtually any of them will catch fish, but there are a couple favorites that I’ve come to trust over the years. And as we all know, having “confidence” in a lure is a factor in producing fish.
My ‘go-to’ topwater bait is the MirroLure Top Dog. It’s a Walk-the-Dog style plug that has internal rattles, and it’s deadly on both fresh and saltwater gamefish. My preferred colors are the blue back/silver, the black back/silver and the black back/orange belly. They do a great job of mimicking a struggling bait, and they’re almost irresistible to everything with fins. The key to any Walk-the-Dog plug is getting the cadence correct with your retrieve; keeping the rod tip down, and using short twitches on the retrieve. This makes the plug ‘walk’ left, then right, with each twitch. You make the cast, let the plug sit for at least five seconds before doing anything…then start the retrieve. Sometimes the fish will hit on the first twitch. Other times, they will literally follow the plug to the boat. So it’s important to work the plug all the way back. And if you get a follower, keep retrieving. Your plug might get hit several times as you retrieve. Big fish like to play cat-and-mouse. They will slap the bait, literally knocking it out of the water. And ultimately, when they commit, it’s game-on.
My other favorite is the Chugging/Popper style. Chuggers create a lot of commotion on the retrieve. The Chug Bug has been around for decades, and it’s produced a lot of fish. Again, I like the blue/silver and the orange/white color combo’s. The cast/retrieve formula is similar to the Top Dog, except I tend to slow down the cadence and use more forceful twitches to really displace some water with each pull. It’s hard to fish this plug wrong, just remember keep things at a slower pace. The strike will seem as though it comes from nowhere, and the fish will virtually hook itself.
For even better success with topwater lures, you should learn how to tie a Loop Knot. The open loop, versus the knot cinched down on the eye, allows the bait to work more freely and you get better action from your plugs.
You can get a great idea of how effective these plugs are by watching the Nuts & Bolts of Fishing Topwater episodes on CarbonTV.com. And you can learn to tie the Loop Knot in our Pro Tips segments on the Nuts & Bolts of Fishing website.
Topwater plugs will fool fish from Oregon to Georgia. And fall is one of the best times to experience this kind of fishing. Add a few to your tackle arsenal this fall and get ready for some explosive fishing fun.
Tight lines and calm seas,
Capt. Cefus McRae