Topwater Fishing

[J.T.]

Hi folks,

Last night I was wrapping up an afternoon of crappie fishing at Lake Thunderbird. Around 8pm, the baitfish moved into the shallows and the crappie and bass started tearing them up.

I fish Tbird quite a bit and grew up fishing it when I was I kid. I would suggest doing away with the topwater approach and target small sand/white bass. I am however not trying to tell you what you saw was not bass and crappie but having witnessed this same evening frenzy several times it has more often then not been ten to twelve inch sandies. Might try to through an inline spinner or 2 1/2 inch tube jig in the middle of the madness and see what happens. Just my .02.

 

[257wby]

try something that looks as real as possible to what the bass and Crappie are going after if it is shad, try a spoon, crankbait, etc...

^^^THIS^^^

I like throwing in a spoon, or plastic that looks like a shad

(http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/t...parentType=index&indexId=cat601348&hasJS=true)

 

[SoonerATC]

Thank you everyone for the suggestions. I'll give them each a try and report back!

 

[criticalbass]

When fish are hitting bait on the surface, try throwing a deep diver past the action and retrieving it underneath. Big lazy fish often lurk underneath, picking off sinking wounded shad. This works well on stripers, striper/sandbass hybrids, and sandbass. CB

 

[Teeeroy]

I've had good luck on schooling fish using a Zell pop or Pop-R. I think it's timing, as much as anything else. You think about how fast those fish are moving - especially when they're chasing baitfish - and you've got to put it where it gives them the best opportunity to smash it. You may see or hear a fish flop and by the time you throw at the ripples, he's long gone.

I never got to try it myself, but I saw a show on TV once where a couple of guys were fishing for schooling bluefish in a marina. If you've ever fished for blues, you know that they are frenzied feeders like stripers and can plain churn the water when they get going. These two guys on the show were just following the topwater thrashing and throwing a single, weighted treble hook into the huge ball of baitfish. When they would snag an alewife (or whatever kind of baitfish it was), the school of baitfish would react to the injured prey and flee. This would cause a big circle in the middle of the school with just the one fish in the middle. A blue would see this and immediately smash it. Pretty clever, I thought!

 

[SoonerATC]

When they would snag an alewife (or whatever kind of baitfish it was), the school of baitfish would react to the injured prey and flee. This would cause a big circle in the middle of the school with just the one fish in the middle. A blue would see this and immediately smash it.

There's something just wrong about that. "All for one and ...well, it was nice knowing him!"

 

[Bassin'ForLife]

Depending on how aggressive the fish are, a Pearl/Smoke Strike King Z2 can fill up a live well in a hurry. Weightless with a wide gap hook, work it like a jerkbait.