Let’s talk a bit about the Whopper Plopper. \u00a0Here it is:<\/p>\n
It’s a hard plastic topwater bait that has a softer plastic rotating tail. \u00a0The tail is cupped causing it to rotate in the water when you retrieve it, and it gives it a buzzbait-like action on the surface. \u00a0This bait has received a lot of attention the past couple of months as it has won several national level tournaments (BASS and FLW alike). \u00a0It has actually been around for several years, and I’ve been throwing it for a few years now, but it hasn’t been until recently that it has really caught on.<\/p>\n Ok, so like I mentioned, it’s a topwater bait. \u00a0During the club tournament, contrary to popular bassin’ knowledge, I threw this\u00a0topwater\u00a0<\/em>bait ALL DAY. \u00a0Not to mention the fact that the conditions were the complete opposite of what most people would consider to be a good day to throw topwater. \u00a0I was throwing this thing in 80 degree weather, bright sunshine, with hardly a cloud in the sky, and not much wind… and they were\u00a0smashing\u00a0<\/em>it! \u00a0Popular belief has always been to throw topwaters during low-light conditions or on cloudy overcast days. \u00a0The past few years, I’ve been trying to weed that idea out of my brain, and it has paid off many times.<\/p>\n Anyway, as I said, I missed a lot of big smallmouth bites on it though during the club event. \u00a0I missed some largemouth, too, but most of the fish I was missing were smallmouths. \u00a0I figured it was because the smallmouths couldn’t actually get such a big bait in their mouths, but the largemouths had an easier time actually eating the bait. \u00a0I had swapped out the original stock hooks on the bait for the Mustad KVD wide gap style treble hooks. \u00a0I love those EWG trebles because they really tend to keep fish pinned to the bait better, but the fish really has to be able to engulf the bait for that to work really well. \u00a0After missing so many big smallmouth, I realized that before Fishing for Freedom, I needed to swap the EWG trebles out for round bends in hopes that the smallmouth that were swatting at the bait would hook-up.<\/p>\n And oh, here’s a pic of a couple of fish from my bag in the club tournament.<\/p>\n Well, a couple of days after the club tournament is when I went and picked up my new Nitro Z18. \u00a0I wasn’t planning on pre-fishing during the week for FFF, but I wanted to get the boat out on the water and run it around a bit to make sure everything was good before just fishing the tournament in a brand new boat I’d never been in. \u00a0I figured if I was going to be on the water, I might as well take it up to Belton to poke around a bit. \u00a0Plus I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try and test some new water other than the area of the lake that I was fishing in the club tournament. \u00a0So I went out on Wednesday and conditions were very different. \u00a0It was very windy, temps were cooler, and the sky was darkened with clouds. \u00a0I spent a few hours running around different areas of the lake staying away from where I had caught them in the club tournament. \u00a0I caught a couple of smaller fish on the Whopper Plopper, and managed a couple of small keeper largemouth by flipping a Brush Hog into brush at the very backs of creeks. \u00a0Nothing that got me very excited. \u00a0I started getting a little nervous wondering if the Whopper Plopper bite was still going to work or not. \u00a0After I had enough running around trying different areas and different techniques, I went down to the area where I caught them before. \u00a0It took less than 5 minutes of throwing the Whopper Plopper before I had a 2.5 pound smallmouth in the boat. \u00a0At that point, I figured, well, I guess it’s working, so I put my things up and got off the water.<\/p>\n Tournament Day:\u00a0<\/strong>The weather forecast for the day of the tournament was ugly. \u00a0Lots and lots of rain, wind, and flash flood warnings all over the place. \u00a0Sure enough, the forecast was right. \u00a0It was pretty ugly and it was just pouring buckets of rain. \u00a0I was a bit worried that it was going to kill the Whopper Plopper bite, and I was completely prepared to scrap that and do something else if I needed to. \u00a0We pulled up to our first spot, which was a little point on the lower end that I had been catching quite a few fish off of for the past month and a half or so. \u00a0The wind was howling straight into it, the water was already up a foot or two from where it was at on Wednesday, and the shoreline was all churned up from the wind and waves. \u00a0We fished it for about 10-15 minutes, but despite having caught so many fish off of it recently, I knew the conditions just weren’t right. \u00a0That’s when I decided to seek out calmer, clearer water and see if we could make the Whopper Plopper bite happen, so we ran down to the dam which was mostly protected from the wind.<\/p>\n When we got there, there were already 5 or 6 other bites lined up on the dam. \u00a0There was one small stretch of the dam that was “open” though where we could squeeze in, so we took it. \u00a0I had both of us throwing the Whopper Ploppers because I wanted to see if it was going to be worth doing or not. \u00a0On about my partner’s third cast, he had a smallmouth roll on it, but didn’t hook up. \u00a0A good sign at least. \u00a0We started working our way down the dam weaving in and out of the other boats fishing along the dam. \u00a0I picked up several different baits along the dam while I had my partner keep chucking the Whopper Plopper. \u00a0When we made it to the far side of the dam, my partner hooked up and put a good 2+ pound smallmouth in the boat. \u00a0Between that and the bite he had gotten earlier, that was all I needed to see to commit to the Whopper Plopper for the rest of the day.<\/p>\n After that, it was just all about covering as much water as quickly as possible with the Whopper Plopper. \u00a0The wind was so bad though that we had to seek out mostly sheltered areas for it to be effective. \u00a0We just weaved in and out of boats all day, chucking and winding, and putting quality smallmouth after smallmouth in the boat. \u00a0It wasn’t red hot, but we were putting a good keeper in the boat with enough regularity to keep us going. \u00a0We didn’t catch a single largemouth all day. \u00a0The storm seemed to have shut them down and they weren’t willing to eat on top. \u00a0Luckily the smallies were willing though still. \u00a0However, I did get one bite that I’m convinced was likely a largemouth and it likely would’ve been the tournament winning fish.<\/p>\n Since it was raining so heavily all day, there was lots of water coming in at the backs of creeks\/drains, and there was lots of flooded brush in those areas. \u00a0As we fished along the shoreline, every time that we came to an area with run-off flowing into the lake, I picked up my flippin’ stick and made just 5-10 flips in the brush right where the running water was coming in. \u00a0This did actually account for one of our smaller keeper smallmouth, but later in the day, I hooked what felt like a really nice fish by doing this. \u00a0It was one of those bites that just about knocks the rod out of your hand as soon as my bait hit the water into the bush I was flipping into. \u00a0I set the hook, my rod loaded up with a heavy fish, I saw a big boil, and then *pop!*… my line snapped. \u00a0I was flipping with 65 lb braided line with a 20 lb fluorocarbon leader and it broke the line right in the middle of my fluoro leader. \u00a0It looked like a fairly clean cut as well. \u00a0It had to have been those blasted zebra mussels that have taken over Belton. \u00a0All of the bushes I was flipping into was covered in them. \u00a0When I broke it off, I let out a groan, and just looked at my partner and said, “That was it. \u00a0That was the one we needed to win.” \u00a0Pretty devastating.<\/p>\n After that I had a hard time deciding if we should just keep trying to cull up on smallmouths or if we should spend the rest of our time flipping the drains\/creeks for a kicker. \u00a0Ultimately, I decided to keep trying to cull up on smallmouths with the Whopper Plopper because I thought we’d have a hard time coming by another bite like the one I broke off. \u00a0In the next while, we did manage to cull out our two smallest smallmouth that I had marked with culling buoys and ended up with 5 solid smallmouth. \u00a0I was pretty happy with what we had, but I had a feeling in my gut that the fish I broke off would come back to haunt me.<\/p>\n Anyway, if you’re reading this blog post, you know how the story ends. \u00a0We ended up in 2nd just 0.37 pounds behind the winners. \u00a0It’s hard to be happy with 2nd place when you know you had a key missed opportunity that would have likely given you the win. \u00a0I know a lot of people probably have a hard time feeling bad for me getting 2nd place out of 275 boats and cutting a decent check, but it has definitely been a tough pill to swallow. \u00a0Plus, I’m not really asking anyone to feel bad for me. \u00a0Ha! \u00a0\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Yeah, there is definitely part of me that is happy about 2nd place, but there’s a much bigger part of me that’s not. \u00a0I don’t enter tournaments to get 2nd place. \u00a0There was a time in my life when I did. \u00a0I entered tournaments and just wanted to place, just wanted to get a good finish and maybe win a little money. \u00a0Well, I’m over that stage in my fishing career. \u00a0I enter tournaments and plan to win… period.<\/p>\n Now for me to take a minute to talk about the real purpose of entering this tournament. \u00a0I got to take a real American hero out fishing for a day and spend a day with him in my boat. \u00a0His name is Brian. \u00a0He’s 26 (27? Can’t remember for sure) and he’s been deployed twice. \u00a0I spoke with him briefly about his experience in the military, but tried to keep the focus of the day in just having fun out on the water. \u00a0He’s getting out of the military in 6 months, and I’m extremely proud of him and the great service he’s done for our country during his time in the military. \u00a0Along with all of the other men and women in our armed forces. \u00a0I’m forever in awe of what he and they continually do and the sacrifices they make for us… for you… for me. \u00a0This is what makes Fishing for Freedom and event I look forward to participating in all year long.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, I fished my first tournament out of my brand new Nitro Z18, and I gotta say, the new boat is off to a pretty solid start: 2nd place out of a 275 boat field. \u00a0It was an extremely bitter\/sweet experience though. \u00a0We missed the big win (and a new $30,000 boat) by a mere […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":656,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions\/656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"WP\"](\"http:\/\/andermeine.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/WP.png\")
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