How to Fish the River2Sea Whopper Plopper 75 with Larry Dahlberg

A Whopper Plopper built for smallmouth bass this small 75 cm (2.9”) but heavy (9/16 oz) is perfect for drawing smallies to the surface. Available in 11 colors this lure packs the same topwater action of its bigger cousins in a smaller package.

Hi, I'm Larry Dahlberg, and we're in Orlando, Florida at the 2018 ICAST. And we have just introduced and in fact, like tomorrow, the first big shipment is coming in, of what we call the Whopper Plopper 75, I call it the Fat Boy. And the reason we've designed this was to make a little bit shorter bait with a little bit fatter profile. It's 15 centimeters shorter than the 90 but it actually weighs more than the 90 and it has a little bit more aggressive, louder tail.

I use it in deeper water. I use it in where you have soft bottom as opposed to hard bottom, this little bit louder tail is going to communicate with the fish from a little bit further distance. Or if it's windy, side wind, tailwind, cast it into the wind. This is going to work a little bit better probably than a smaller one.

As far as how I would retrieve it, well that's sort of asking somebody what do you like for dinner? Some people like spaghetti and some people eat tofu. You could crank this thing at a very, very high rate of speed and certain species of fish and certain fish depending on their attitude will come and eat it.

You can fish it with a stop and go retrieve, you can use any combination of speeds, or cadences. It's up to you, so it's unlimited. As far as what line I would use it on, well, I fish in places where there's a lot of snags, and sometimes I throw it into trees or a musky might bite it by accident. So I'm running on 50 and 65 pounds braid most of the time.

But you can run it on anything from eight-pound test mono to 65 braid, it really doesn't make any difference.