It was Poppin vs Droppin

This past week has seen a lot of fish put in the boat. Earlier in the week it was a lot of moving baits over brush and then when getting to the brush we were breaking out the drop shot. The moving baits over brush included the underspin and some swimbaits and when marking fish around and over the brush we were dropping LJ's fruity worms and some robo worms. All those tactics have been fun but the reel fun for me has been the topwater bite. With the weather pattern change on Friday the topwater popper really did well. I was able to call fish to the surface on Friday and yesterday and I also got some good fish while they were schooling on the surface. On Friday a front was moving through and the fish were going bonkers on the surface. The wind had kicked up and there was cloud cover which kept the topwater bite going throughout the day. When I got home at mid afternoon I checked the barometer and sure enough it was falling through 29.75. Every once in a while when a front comes through this time of year the fish can get pretty active.

Yesterday LJ and I fished together in a charity tournament and it was droppin and popping all day. We were fishing out of my boat so LJ didn't have his waypoints to fish by so he was at a little disadvantage but we caught a lot of fish. I decided early on that I was just going to throw the popper and LJ handled the dropping duties. We had a blast trash talking all day. LJ caught some good ones on the drop and I busted some good fish on the popper. It was a 3 fish limit and I think we wound up in 4th place. 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th all had between 9.21 and 8lbs and some change so it was very close. We had 8.07. There was a lot of cookie cutter 2-3lb fish being weighed. No videos this week and very few pictures since early in the week but I did manage a few pics from Fridays recon trip.

Wow, beautiful fish; is that Lanier?

Ignaeis28 said:

Wow, beautiful fish; is that Lanier?

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Yes, Lanier. Here is more pics from this week. I put them on another post but here's some from Tuesday and Wednesday.

Way to go. Would have enjoyed some video for the smack talk and banter.

Jim put that Emerald Popper on them yesterday and folks, I'm telling you...that sucker works. I saw the way he fished it and saw it produce our 3 keepers.

Around 10am - he turned the boat over to me and we headed out deep to drop. I was sticking them and upgraded culling out one...then moved to the next place and the spots started attacking Jim's popper....having two at a time on twice in 5 minutes...one being a solid fish that culled out the one I boated deep.

Trash talking....not us .....honestly, it's fun to talk and know it's all trash playing around. Jim and I discussed we needed a plan before the tourney....our game plan was "well, where do you want to go"

I saw it first hand...whatever it is...the color, the little tail feather thingy...whatever it was, that thing works when you work it like Jim does. We'll plan better next time Jim....the flying by the seat of our pants plan almost worked - just needed another pound. LJ

jocko755 said:

Way to go. Would have enjoyed some video for the smack talk and banter.

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I'll bring the video camera for the next one Jocko, we did a lot of trash talking but we were trying to focus on putting bigger fish in the boat so it was minimal trash talk. There were opportunities for major trash talking though.

Lanier Jim said:

Jim put that Emerald Popper on them yesterday and folks, I'm telling you...that sucker works. I saw the way he fished it and saw it produce our 3 keepers.

Around 10am - he turned the boat over to me and we headed out deep to drop. I was sticking them and upgraded culling out one...then moved to the next place and the spots started attacking Jim's popper....having two at a time on twice in 5 minutes...one being a solid fish that culled out the one I boated deep.

Trash talking....not us .....honestly, it's fun to talk and know it's all trash playing around. Jim and I discussed we needed a plan before the tourney....our game plan was "well, where do you want to go"

I saw it first hand...whatever it is...the color, the little tail feather thingy...whatever it was, that thing works when you work it like Jim does. We'll plan better next time Jim....the flying by the seat of our pants plan almost worked - just needed another pound. LJ

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That was a lot of fun Jim. Doubles on the popper and even had 3 separate hook ups in one cast. I don't expect that bite to stick around long but we boated a lot of fish between the topwater and drop shot. We just needed that one good 4+.

We could have caught that 4# spot if you'd let me drop some cheeseburgers from Krystal's. They love them

Lanier Jim said:

We could have caught that 4# spot if you'd let me drop some cheeseburgers from Krystal's. They love them

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What a coincidence, we needed a 4lber and I'm all about the #4 on the Krystal's drive thru menu here in Cumming. It's 4 little cheeseburgers with chili cheese fries and a drank. A lot of 4's, I think you're right.
Here's some popage from this morning.

Pop, Pop, Pop....Boom! You got that popper stuff down to a science!

A few from this evening

Lisa and I did a little evening run tonight. Drop shot and topwater was the ticket.

Sweet.....heck, she needs to teach me how to drop shot!

Lanier Jim said:

Sweet.....heck, she needs to teach me how to drop shot!

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Man Jim, she put the smack down on me last night. She's getting good. She dropped one up from 32 feet! I probably won't hear the end of this for days. They had a little generation window last night so we hit a few spots during generation.

I called water release....said 5:55 to 6:10.....was that right? I thought it was a mistake on the recording....pulling water for 15 minutes seems a little odd.

Lanier Jim said:

I called water release....said 5:55 to 6:10.....was that right? I thought it was a mistake on the recording....pulling water for 15 minutes seems a little odd.

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Yep, we called on the way to the lake yesterday. We were laughing.

I'm not sure what that was about....must have just needed to make sure the gates would open