Summer / Fall Bass on Topwater

Don't forget about Largemouth Bass at this time of year!  They feed aggressively as the water cools down through Fall.  And yes, they definitely will hit topwater flies.
Here's some nice fish from this month:

19"

18"

17"

17"

This healthy bass measured 19.5":

Flyrod Bass Poppers-2

My friend Dale S. gave me a tool/jig he built to aid in cutting foam "flip-flops" into shape for blockhead-style poppers.  He even gave me some flip-flop pieces in all the good colors!

Well, I'd been very interested to try making some of these poppers and trying them on the local fish, so I had to sit down and cut some up right away.

Wow, it worked great!  I quickly cut @ a dozen heads in just a couple minutes!  The tops and bottoms are angled....I can see I may need to also angle the sided, but there was some cool texture on one side that I kind of wanted to keep.  I can trim some more in different ways later.

Here's the first one I tied up:

I think it should work really well.  Yesterday I went fishing during lunch, and hadn't packed this new popper into my flybox/sling pack yet.  I resorted to using one of the poppers I mentioned in my previous blog entry.  Conditions were extremely tough at the public pond I fished, with a 25' wide solid band of floating algae mat on the surface around the entire pond perimeter!  I found a couple openings in it, and saw some decent bass around one of them.  First cast with the popper...I could see a bass come up to look it over...it slowly moved forward, I just let the popper sit...and the bass sucked it in, turned and dove.  Fish ON!  :)

It was a nice 17" bass!

Anyway, I hope to try the blockhead popper soon.  Another huge THANK YOU to Dale for the awesome foam cutting jig!!