Whopper Plopper Lure: Sizes, How to Fish It, and Where It Began

The Whopper Plopper lure is a hard-bodied topwater with a soft rubber tail that spins on a straight retrieve and plops, “like a small water bird running across the surface before flight” in the words of its own origin story. Larry Dahlberg of the television series Hunt for Big Fish and Simon Chan of River2Sea developed it around 2008 as a musky lure, from a carved broomstick with a cupped rubber tail. Bass anglers took up the 90 and 110 as a prop bait, because it does what a buzzbait does, a steady and noisy surface retrieve, and floats when it stops.

Chris Lane had never thrown a Whopper Plopper before the 2016 Elite Series event on Toledo Bend. A neighbor handed him one while he packed, he finished second behind Kevin VanDam with 88 lb 7 oz, and once the broadcast aired, demand outran supply for months.

Why do bass eat it?

Pete Robbins, who wrote both the Wired2Fish guide and the Outdoor Life review, gives three reasons: constant movement, action and profile. A bass can track a steadily retrieved plopper from a distance, through cover and dirty water, and a bass in clear water gets no time to inspect it and turn away. The slapping tail is faster than a walking bait sashays or a popper spits; whether it imitates a baitfish, a frog or a swimming mammal does not seem to matter. And in his view the long, slim body is the most natural shape there is, so bass find even the 60. Go larger as cover, turbidity and wind increase.

The sound and the bubble trail do the work, not the pause. On a popper or a jerkbait the long pause is the trigger; the plopper does poorly when bass want the lure to sit. Strikes often come within the first one or two cranks, so be ready from the moment it lands.

Which size should you tie on?

FishUSA’s guide says start with the 110, the 90 when the bite is tough, and the 130 when you want fewer bites and bigger ones.

The 110 casts well, makes enough noise to pull bass from a distance, and is small enough that an average fish commits. River2Sea built the 75 for pressured water and small forage and says it sounds closer to a buzz saw than a plop. The 60 and 75 are spinning-rod lures. The copies, the Berkley Choppo among them, follow the same ladder, and “Whopper Plopper” has become the name of the whole type.

In River2Sea’s specification tables, only the standard 130 is listed with a rattle. The rest run silent, the 130S is the silent 130, and the 130SSW is for salt water. So the glass-bead “sizzle” some guides describe is the 130’s sound; a 90 or 110 plops and nothing else. The hooks also climb with the size, from plain trebles on the 60 to a long-shank 4X 5/0 on the 190, which is why the big ones hold a pike.

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When does it work?

Outdoor Life’s review has the plopper drawing strikes down into the lower 50s °F (10–12 °C) and at its best in the 60s and 70s (16–26 °C). FishUSA draws the line at about 60 °F (16 °C), below which the topwater bite slows. Bass Forecast’s guide to the whole topwater family puts it at 65 to 85 °F (18–29 °C), with the bite all but gone below 60 °F.

Those are the bands where the bass water temperature chart puts the fish shallow and fast: post-spawn, summer mornings, and the fall cooling toward 55 °F (13 °C). It is a pre-spawn and fall lure as much as a summer one, and not a winter lure anywhere colder than Florida.

Light comes second: dawn, dusk and cloud, and an overcast day carries the bite into midday. The surface comes third. A light chop hides the lure, and a headwind or crosswind is where the noise earns its keep.

Three waters: edges, flats and rivers

Cover edges. Two dangling trebles are no reason to keep the plopper away from wood. All it needs is a runway along an edge: the sides and front of a dock, both sides of a laydown, the outside of a bed of emergent grass. Bass sit on a limb, a dock post or a small pocket rather than spreading along the edge. So each retrieve should pass several of those, and a dock is three casts, not one. Work the lure parallel to the edge, since a bass in cover faces out. Low water pulls fish to the ends of laydowns, and bright sun pushes them deeper in.

Flats of 2 to 8 ft (0.6–2.4 m). Bass feed on shallow flats for three seasons. Largemouth cross them after the spawn on the way to summer water and return in fall to ambush shad. Northern smallmouth hunt them in packs through summer and fall, running down schools of yellow perch. They hold on ditches, stumps and clumps of grass, and the bait shows you which. Lean on the 90, 110 or 130 so the splash is found from a distance, and do not let wind stop you: big smallmouth crash through waves to eat it.

Moving water. Largemouth in a laydown on an outside bend, spotted bass in the eddy of a boulder and river smallmouth at the head of a pool all eat a plopper. Cast across and slightly upstream, never straight into the current, which washes the lure back on slack line. Steer it with the rod tip across seams, ledges, rocks and logs. The 60 and 75 on a spinning rod are the river sizes, and the lure’s nose-up attitude keeps the line off the water, so no leader is needed.

What rod, reel and line?

Spinning for the 60 and 75, a medium-heavy baitcaster for the 90 and 110, a swimbait setup for the big two.

Mystery Tackle Box rigs the 90 through the 190 size by size, and Discount Tackle puts the small sizes on a medium spinning rod with 20–30 lb braid. Around cover, Wired2Fish wants a heavy, fast-action casting rod of 6 ft 6 in (2.0 m), short enough for the underhand and roll casts that put the lure under a dock. It pairs that rod with 20 lb monofilament, because thick mono does not slip behind bark on a laydown the way thin braid does. On open flats it goes a few inches longer, with 15–17 lb mono for distance. Outdoor Life’s review adds the counterweight: a rod of at least 7 ft with some give in the tip, so the lure is not pulled away from a striking fish, and a slightly stiffer rod with mono than with braid.

Fluorocarbon sinks and is the one line to leave off. Tie the lure on direct; it does not need a walking bait’s snap or loop knot. Check hooks and split rings through the day, and go to 2X or 4X trebles when heavy braid or toothy fish bend the stock ones.

How do you retrieve it?

1. Steady, rod tip up. Keep the tip high through the first turns of the handle. On a long cast the plopper likes to dig in before it spins, and the high tip lifts the nose and gets the tail turning. Lower the tip as the lure nears the boat. This is the buzzbait retrieve, and the one for most days.
2. Find the speed. Too slow and the tail stalls; too fast and the lure planes up and loses its action. Reel at the pace that gives an even plop, and go faster as the cover gets thinner.
3. Pause at cover. Stop the lure as it passes the tip of a dock, a clump of grass or a point in the tules. A bass that has followed without committing usually hits on the pause or on a sudden burst of speed.
4. Stutter and rip. Stutter steps, slight pauses and the occasional rip change the sound without stopping it; leave long pauses to the popper.
5. Twitch or walk it. Twitch it like a popper, work it jerk-jerk-pause like an old prop bait, or walk it on a slack line with a wrist twitch. It is a change of pace for followers, and a way to fish a spot twice.

The one rule under all five: as long as the tail is spinning and you can hear the plop, the lure is working.

When do you set the hook?

When you feel the fish’s weight, not when you see the splash; then sweep. Setting on the splash pulls the plopper out of a mouth that has not closed on it yet. A fish that inhales the lure usually hooks itself. A fish that swipes at it is luck, which is why sharp trebles and checked split rings matter. Braid helps the long-cast hookset, and so does keeping the slack out while the lure moves.

Once the fish is on, do not play it out. A 130 or 190 has real inertia, and a bass that gets a good head shake on the jump throws it. Keep the rod loaded and bring the fish to the boat.

Which color?

Bone in low light, Loon (black) in dirty water, and a shad pattern in clear water under sun.

Bass only see the belly of a topwater, which is why silhouette colors win in low light. Movement, profile and sound outrank color every day. One trick from Mystery Tackle Box for murky water: paint the tip of the tail blade with a dot of nail polish in a bright or contrasting color, so a bass that follows the plopper has an aiming point.

Does it work for pike and muskie?

It was built for them; bass anglers borrowed it. River2Sea calls it Dahlberg’s “secret weapon for musky fishing”. Musky anglers had known for decades that a deep-throated, hollow plop drove fish wild. The trouble with the old metal-tailed baits was that a good tail bent out of tune the first time a fish, a rock or a hard cast hit it.

The soft tail rotates on a wire harness and is built to take rocks, stumps and teeth. The maker’s sound tests suggested its pitch varies by as much as an octave even at a constant speed, where a metal tail drones. The 190, 7 1/2 in and 2 3/4 oz on a long-shank 4X-Strong 5/0, is “roll resistant” and works at any speed. The 130, with its 4X-Strong #2 trebles, is the pike size; rig both as in the table, with a leader against the teeth. The best muskie lures and best pike lures pages place them in their seasons.

Mistakes to avoid

• One speed all day. Vary it; the bite is on the change, and the pause at the dock tip never happens at one speed.
• Fluorocarbon. It sinks and drags the nose down; mono and braid both float.
• Fishing it through matted grass. Two trebles and a propeller collect weed; that is frog water. Along the edge, a light rubber band over each treble, looped to the body, keeps the hooks out of sparse grass and breaks when a fish bites.
• Setting on the splash, then playing the fish out. Wait for the weight, sweep, and keep the fish coming.
• Casting straight upstream in current. Cast across and a little up, and steer with the rod tip.

Against the buzzbait, walking bait and popper

The topwater hub sets all five topwater families side by side, and the lures hub maps the six lure families.

The buzzbait is the lure for the grass the plopper cannot cross, and the frog for the mats neither can. The best bass lures page puts the topwaters in their season.

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The Water Temperature Fishing Chart. Take one water temperature reading, find it on the chart, and see which of 26 freshwater fish are spawning, feeding hard or slowing down. Six pages go deeper: bass, crappie, bluegill, walleye, catfish and trout. For your phone and the tackle box.

• Where they sit and what to throw at every band: bass, crappie, bluegill and walleye; catfish by species; trout: the 68 °F line where you stop, and where they hide
• A bass that drops 3 ft feels more pressure change than the biggest cold front: the front day by day, and what to throw on each
• The three thermometer mistakes that make a reading lie (the first one is the surface)
• The 26-fish chart: who's spawning, feeding hard or slowing down at your reading

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