Topwater lures are the ones fished on the surface, where the strike is visible and the fish has to come up for it. They are the most exciting family and the most conditional: a topwater catches nothing in cold water or bright midday sun and everything in the first hour of a warm summer morning. Below: the five topwater families and the sound each makes, the conditions the guide literature agrees on, the tackle, and the histories from the Heddon Zara Spook of 1939 to the Whopper Plopper of 2008. Topwater is covered here as bass anglers fish it, which is where the lure families and the data come from; walking baits and poppers are also the surface lures for stripers, redfish, pike and seatrout, and the species pages say what changes.
Never tie a topwater to fluorocarbon: it sinks and pulls the nose of the lure under. Mono floats, braid floats, and both let the lure walk.
Start here
- Fishing lures — the section hub.
- Bass fishing — the seasons: topwater belongs to post-spawn and summer mornings.
- Spinnerbaits — the buzzbait’s wire-frame family.
- Fishing line — why fluorocarbon and topwater do not mix.
The five families
| Family | How it moves | Sound | Cover | Reference lures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walking bait | Side-to-side “walk the dog” on rod twitches | Quiet slap, internal rattle | Open water, points, over grass | Heddon Zara Spook and Super Spook, Spook Jr. |
| Popper / chugger | Cupped face pops or spits on each pull | Pop or spit | Targets: docks, laydowns, pockets | Rebel Pop-R, Arbogast Hula Popper, KVD Splash |
| Prop bait / plopper | Tail propeller churns on a steady retrieve | Plop or sizzle by speed | Laydowns, docks, grass edges | River2Sea Whopper Plopper, Devil’s Horse |
| Hollow-body frog | Weedless body walked or crawled over mats | Little | Lily pads, hydrilla mats, thick grass | Snag Proof, SPRO Bronzeye, Booyah Pad Crasher |
| Buzzbait | Blade on a wire arm lifts it to the surface; sinks at rest | Squeak and bubble trail | Shallow grass, docks, wood | Lunker Lure and its descendants |
When topwater works
Water temperature is the first indicator. The guides agree on a band of about 65 to 85 °F, with a steady or rising trend better than a falling one, and Kevin VanDam’s season table puts topwater in post-spawn at 70–75 °F and in summer mornings. Light is the second: dawn, dusk and overcast days, when bass are shallow and looking up, and the bite fades once the sun climbs. Surface is the third: calm to lightly rippled water lets a walking bait be seen and heard; a chop favours a louder popper or a plopper.
Fishing each one
A walking bait is fished with slack line: a rhythmic twitch of the rod tip with a half-turn of the reel each time, so the nose swings left and right. A popper is pop-and-pause, with long pauses in calm water and a walk in chop. A plopper is reeled steadily like a buzzbait, rod tip high and lowered as the lure nears the boat; slow, and the internal beads sizzle, fast, and the tail throws water with the hollow plop that gave it its name. A frog is walked across mats and paused in the holes, and the hookset is delayed: the guides’ instruction is to wait until you feel the weight of the fish, about two seconds, then sweep. A buzzbait is reeled from the moment it lands, fast enough to keep the blade on the surface.
Tackle
Frogs are the exception to everything: a 7 ft 2 in to 7 ft 6 in heavy or extra-heavy casting rod and 50 lb braid to start, 65 lb or more in thick mats, no leader, because the fish has to be pulled out of the vegetation. Every other topwater wants a medium or medium-heavy rod with a moderate action to keep treble hooks in, and monofilament or braid, which float; fluorocarbon sinks and drags the nose of a walking bait under. The Whopper Plopper’s six sizes run from the 60 mm, 1/4 oz bait for spinning gear and 20–30 lb braid to the 190 mm, 2¾ oz musky version.
Where they came from
The walking bait began as Heddon’s wooden Zaragossa; the plastic version of 1939 gained “Spook”, Heddon’s word for a plastic lure, and has been the Zara Spook ever since. Harry Ehlers, an advertising man at Totes rain boots, watched a boot mould being dipped in plastic and moulded the first hollow weedless frog in his kitchen in the late 1950s, selling it through classified adverts in Field & Stream before Snag Proof became a company outside Cincinnati. The buzzbait arrived with tournament fishing in the 1970s, the Lunker Lure first. The Whopper Plopper came out of a 2008 collaboration between Larry Dahlberg and River2Sea, designed as a musky lure that would sound like “a small water bird running across the surface before flight”, with a prototype carved from a broomstick.
Where to go next
When the sun is high and the topwater bite is over, the crankbait, chatterbait and jig hubs cover the water below. The rods hub explains the moderate action and the frog rod; the catfish hub is the other way to spend a summer night.