Tail slapping

[Guest]

What's up with fish slapping topwater lures with their tails. Have a lot of you noticed this behavior? Brenden mentioned it in his Sammy article. I saw it happen at least once last time I was fishing clear water, which may never happen again with all the rain. Maybe these fish are stunning their prey or disorienting it first. Maybe they're just playing with their food. I've kept bass in a fish tanks for years and after they had eaten their fill often they'd kill the rest of the minnows in the tank. That was an artificial situation.

If the water ever does clear up I'm going to spend some time throwing soft top waters; a weightless tube and a weightless twister tail. The twister tail gives you a faster buzzbait look. Fish will hit these bait and hang on to them longer than hard baits. Also you can fish tubes and twisters swimming or bottom bumping so you have less stuff to carry.

Phil

[Bterrill]

Phil, 'Walk the dog' bass often have a hard time seeing the bait well. Maybe the tail slap is a complete miss due to disorientation? Maybe an angry reaction or last second denial that something is wrong up close? Seems to happen much more with WTD.

 

P, is that a twister tail on a buzzbait?

 

 

[Mike Clifford]

When I used to fish largemouth, quite often they would do anything (yes, even tail-slap) on my topwaters because they were corralling shad (or other minnows), and saw my bait as competition.

 

Figured they were blowing up on it and missing, until a guy with an underwater camera told me years ago that he witnessed bass slapping at lures to remove them from their gorging session on the real deal.

 

Back when Braidwood had fish, we'd hit an entire shoreline that had swarming shad pools about every 20 feet.

Our buzzbaits, spooks and pop r's would sometimes get knocked clear out of the whirlpool, or whatever you want to call that circle of crazed baitfish.

[kend]

"Tail slapping", is merely a fish propelling itself, as its tail is near or above the surface.

 

A fish rises to the surface, turns its body, and descends to the depths.

 

A fish propells itself with its tail, which results in what sounds like what some call, "tail slapping", when its making a fast descent, after reaching the surface.

 

When a fish rises slowly to the surface, and returns to its depth, his head goes down first, and its tail is near the surface.

 

A slower moving fish, doesn't make the tail slapping sound, unless it has been spooked,

generally all you may see is a swirl or the tip of its tail momentarily, just before it descends.

 

 

 

[Guest]

Brenden it's just a nose hooked 4" twister weightless pulled quickly across the surface. I read about it in an article on the Gary Yamamoto ? website. Worked pretty good I might try a 5" twister for more weight. I know I've had bass hit a lure up in the air and then you could see them in the water sort of looking around for it ready to attack. When you threw back in the strike was immediate.

Phil

[kend]

Brenden it's just a nose hooked 4" twister weightless pulled quickly across the surface. I read about it in an article on the Gary Yamamoto ? website. Worked pretty good I might try a 5" twister for more weight. I know I've had bass hit a lure up in the air and then you could see them in the water sort of looking around for it ready to attack. When you threw back in the strike was immediate.

Phil

 

 

Phil,

Rigging a Yamamoto "Twin-Tail" grub, 4, 5 or 6", rigged weightless, is an excellent topwater presentation.

I rig them using an EWG G-Lock, Gamakatsu hook.

Select a hook size that is 2X the dia or thickness of the plastic body.

 

They can be fished on the surface, subsurface and crawled along the bottom---

a very versatile lure.

[Mike Cummings]

I know I've had bass hit a lure up in the air and then you could see them in the water sort of looking around for it ready to attack. When you threw back in the strike was immediate.

Phil

 

I've seen this too. One time, in SMB camp... I watched a smallie hit a topwater floater 3 or 4 times knocking it into the air about 4-5 inches each time but never hooked up. Each time the smallie would position under the bait then wait for the opportune moment to strike pushing the bait out of the water with his body right behind it. He would then reposition under the bait and do it again. The bass kept this up until it was about 5 feet from me and recognized there was this dude standing in the water watching him. But it was interesting to see.