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This year I have caught the following fresh and tidal species on top water: crappie, bluegill, redbreast sunfish, pickerel, LM and SM bass, rainbow trout, a lone chub and of course, stripers.
By far stripers exhibit the most difference in their topwater strikes. I think that’s because unlike the other fish I mentioned, stripers will school in a feeding frenzy. Yesterday I was in a boat, not my kayak, so I have no kayak report. But we found several schools of breaking stripers.
Incredibly, I could pull a popper through the boiling water of breaking stripers and not hookup. They’ll slap at the popper. They’ll swat it into the air. Some will pull it under and hold onto it for a time and then release it. Several times I had to make repeat casts into the schools of frenzied stripers to actually bring one in. Admittedly, that could be due to the fact that I do not use treble hooks on my poppers. I use only a single hook on all my topwater lures and flies.
My experience with breakers got me to thinking. My striper hookup ratio is far greater when I blind cast. When a striper is working alone, I believe its strikes are more accurate than when it is in a school. Nevertheless, they too will miss and I find that it’s important to keep the popper moving because they’ll come back to it whereas some of the species I mentioned above will hit once and leave.
LM bass rarely miss on top. They will hit the popper when it is moving but their accuracy increases greatly when it is not. It’s a good tact to let a popper sit completely still for a LM after twitching it a few times.
SM will hit a free-floating popper in the current. I will fish for river smallies like stream trout. I will dead drift a popper like a dry fly after starting it off with a few chugs. But like stripers, if a SM strikes and misses, I will move the popper because that movement activates their escape senses and they will come after it. Bluegills, sunfish and LM often do not chase a moving popper after they miss it.
Pickerel are very close to LM in their popper behaviors in my opinion. They infrequently miss. And they will hit a popper that is completely motionless. The only difference I notice is that pickerel strikes are always savage, never subtle, whereas a LM bass will sometimes inhale a popper while hardly making a ripple on the surface.
Bluegills, sunfish and crappie each make an initial hard strike at poppers. It’s rare that they do not excite you with a big splash. They too will hit poppers when they are stationary. Small poppers almost always hookup. That’s why I upsize my poppers when fishing for LM because I want to avoid the smaller fish as a bycatch. Even so, bluegills will find a way to get hooked on large poppers.
My experience with freshwater trout is not as extensive as with warm water species. This year, I have caught them on top by floating dry flies over them. I make absolutely no artificial movement of the fly, despite a great temptation to do so given my warm water experiences. Instead I seek a natural looking float – no drag that may otherwise entice a warm water species to strike. I will say that trout strikes are accurate. They rarely miss.
So those are my topwater observations. I thought I would share them after my striper experience of yesterday which brought into focus the differences I have observed in surface hookups by various species of fish.
Just curious, have you noticed the same or different behaviors?
By far stripers exhibit the most difference in their topwater strikes. I think that’s because unlike the other fish I mentioned, stripers will school in a feeding frenzy. Yesterday I was in a boat, not my kayak, so I have no kayak report. But we found several schools of breaking stripers.
Incredibly, I could pull a popper through the boiling water of breaking stripers and not hookup. They’ll slap at the popper. They’ll swat it into the air. Some will pull it under and hold onto it for a time and then release it. Several times I had to make repeat casts into the schools of frenzied stripers to actually bring one in. Admittedly, that could be due to the fact that I do not use treble hooks on my poppers. I use only a single hook on all my topwater lures and flies.
My experience with breakers got me to thinking. My striper hookup ratio is far greater when I blind cast. When a striper is working alone, I believe its strikes are more accurate than when it is in a school. Nevertheless, they too will miss and I find that it’s important to keep the popper moving because they’ll come back to it whereas some of the species I mentioned above will hit once and leave.
LM bass rarely miss on top. They will hit the popper when it is moving but their accuracy increases greatly when it is not. It’s a good tact to let a popper sit completely still for a LM after twitching it a few times.
SM will hit a free-floating popper in the current. I will fish for river smallies like stream trout. I will dead drift a popper like a dry fly after starting it off with a few chugs. But like stripers, if a SM strikes and misses, I will move the popper because that movement activates their escape senses and they will come after it. Bluegills, sunfish and LM often do not chase a moving popper after they miss it.
Pickerel are very close to LM in their popper behaviors in my opinion. They infrequently miss. And they will hit a popper that is completely motionless. The only difference I notice is that pickerel strikes are always savage, never subtle, whereas a LM bass will sometimes inhale a popper while hardly making a ripple on the surface.
Bluegills, sunfish and crappie each make an initial hard strike at poppers. It’s rare that they do not excite you with a big splash. They too will hit poppers when they are stationary. Small poppers almost always hookup. That’s why I upsize my poppers when fishing for LM because I want to avoid the smaller fish as a bycatch. Even so, bluegills will find a way to get hooked on large poppers.
My experience with freshwater trout is not as extensive as with warm water species. This year, I have caught them on top by floating dry flies over them. I make absolutely no artificial movement of the fly, despite a great temptation to do so given my warm water experiences. Instead I seek a natural looking float – no drag that may otherwise entice a warm water species to strike. I will say that trout strikes are accurate. They rarely miss.
So those are my topwater observations. I thought I would share them after my striper experience of yesterday which brought into focus the differences I have observed in surface hookups by various species of fish.
Just curious, have you noticed the same or different behaviors?
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