Top water plug fishing has become my favorite fishing technique of late. There are a lot of shoreline spots that host papio and kaku ready to jump a bobbing, slurping lure. Even if the water is only a foot or so deep, the lures float and don’t get hung up. With a 25lb fluoro leader, I haven’t been cut off by kaku yet.
Sounds like an ideal fishing method huh? Well, the top water hookup ratio is notoriously low. The fish either hit the lure body but miss the hooks or get suspicious and veer off at the last millisecond.
There are recommended times to fish top water, and some lures are designed to have better hookup ratios than others.
Fish seem to hit top water lures better when the sun angle is low. Dawn or dusk. The fish may be more easily fooled in the low light, or they don’t like looking up into the bright sky to feed. When the sun is overhead I often get weak attempts to pull the lure down.
This lure shape has always attracted fish but often the fish splash next to it a few times and become disinterested. Maybe it’s because the body is so fat that the fish are blocked from the hooks? Look at the scratches on its back, opposite side of where the hooks are. To be fair, most of the attackers are kaku trying to slice off the back end of the lure. If they were decent sized papios they probably would’ve wolfed the whole lure down.
When I miss fish with the chubby lure above I switch to this narrower, bobbing lure. It misses fish too, but eventually hooks one.
Maybe the fish’s jaws are wrapping around the slender body better and eventually finding a hook? Both lures are sold out of Japan and this narrow faced lure is especially hard to find. The model I’m fishing is really a freshwater bass lure that I’ve been putting saltwater hooks on. Look at what it attracted in the past.
This kaku hit an hr before dark. I pinch down the barbs of the hooks so I can tag and release the fish with minimal harm.
And this kaku kept missing my hooks but was hooked by Clay’s lure. Clay employs a much faster retrieve that gets the kaku to commit. I’ve been trying to learn that retrieve. The last time out I walked my lure back quickly and when I was about to lift the lure out of the water a white papio took a swipe and missed the hooks.
Mores misses than hookups but a very exciting way to fish.
When I was a kid, I used to make tiny pencil lures and throw them around the Ala Wai harbor, working them in a slow walk-the-dog retrieve. I used ultralight gear with 4lb test and no leader because the lures were so light. About half the papio strikes were misses. Most would try just once and then swim away. Like you mentioned, best time was at sunset. Really exciting when the water is glassy and you come across a determined papio that keeps smashing the lure until its hooked.
Hi Masa,
Thanks for the feedback. I had been wondering why I got so many boils and yet some didn’t even seem to touch the lure. Super exciting though, yeah?
And yeah, at most I get two boils by the same fish and then it wises up and the spot goes quiet. If I tag a fish in the spot that kills the action too. The tagged fish was either the only one there or it tells its friends that a guy with a sharp applicator is gonna poke them.
I bet Ala Wai still has a lot of fish but it’s so dirty now that it’s not really worth the effort to clean the gear after.
You gotta get out and throw top waters again!
-scott
Haha. Was pretty dirty back then too and yeah, the top water strikes on light gear are exciting. That’s why I find your blogs a really fun read, especially because you seem to fish the same areas I now frequent. Funny thing is you catch a lot of kaku. I never had a kaku hit my homemade lures even though they were all over the harbor. Mostly white papio and occasionally omilu, mempachi papio, and awa awa. Probably because my retrieve was too slow or the lure too ugly for them.
Planning to dunk at sunrise for oio to get some meat for the holidays soon. My one chance to fish each year now. Will try throwing my JDM top water lures on the flats at that time. Picked up a few more after reading your blogs – not cheap. Can’t wait.
I’ll send you an email Masa. Maybe I’ve run into you fishing?
The guy that gave me all that swag earlier this week runs an assist hook from the nose of the large swim-bait lures. He suggested that style or a very short assist from the belly (if I wanted to try the single-hooks). As I was reading your article, I couldn’t help but think that might be a decent idea to try on smaller lures too? I guess the hook on an assist would have to match the retrieve of the lure too. Meaning that it would have to stay at the side of the belly most of the time in order for hook-placement to be where most of the marks on the belly of your lure are. Nice write-up. It’s making me anxious to go throw some lures.
Hey Erik,
I bet the assist hook holds big fish better than trebles but the size I’m getting are puny guys. I’m gonna try to retrieve my lures faster so they are horizontal and not vertical in the water, and if I still miss fish I’ll try the assist hook setup.
Or we can have a side-by-side comparison with different hook setups and see which one hooks better.
Either way we gotta fish again soon! Was fun just to catch the kaku in this post.
-scott