 Early
spring is a nice time of year. Almost every back
bay, cove, flat, and shoreline starts out open and weedless. You
are free to choose and use any type of topwater lure at any spot.
Your options can include poppers, top walking dogs, twitching
minnows and an endless variety of treble-hooked surface baits.
But even as bass are exploding on surface lures, weed growth is
also exploding and reaching closer towards the surface with each
passing day. Then one morning you realize that the emergent grass
beds are topping off at the surface and reducing your options.
The poppers and topwalkers really aren't getting to sashay very
far without getting snarled in green. Next you notice that
floating minnows are also running out of the little patches of
open space you need to twitch them in. You instinctively start to
use buzzbaits more and more because they are more weedless with
their protective wire arms and upright single hooks. You plow
them steadily over prairies of grass as if they were miniature
bulldozers. In a few short weeks though, even the buzzbait blades
won't make it across the surface too far before their
fish-calling chatter is silenced in a soft green smother. In
order to continue through the changing season, you switch to big
white, black or brightly-colored soft plastics like 6" Slug-gos
and Zoom Flukes. You snake them through the remaining thin spots
and open holes in the grass beds. Until one day that doesn't work
any more either. You see, the emergent vegetation is now folding
over and growing sideways across the surface, weaving through
acres of lily pads. A mat-like canopy has formed that has become
too thick for the unobtrusive soft stickbaits to attract much
attention from the bass lurking down below. You stop fishing for
a moment and realize that spring is over. It is early summer now
and you are fishing in a slop bay. You're trapped in a salad
bowl. You're a cabbage patch kid. But wait! In this progression
of topwater lures and seasons, there's still time left for one
more lure. It is older than your old Grandpa. It is time for
the weedless wonder, the Johnson Silver Minnow.
Background. The Johnson Silver
Minnow was first marketed in 1920. I truly doubt that there is
any other single brand and model of lure that has been so
unchanged and so effective for so long. Sure it comes in four new
colors nowadays, like black-backed shad, rainbow trout, black
silverplate, and a bold fire tiger pattern. But Mr. Johnson must
have had a reason for naming his design the Silver Minnow. So I
stick with the traditional silver spoons and also use the gold.
Basic Anatomy. According to the Johnson
Lures web site, "The Silver Minnow is thicker in the
middle than at the edges. This creates the patented 35-degree
wobble. No other spoon is built like this, which is why no other
lure has worked so well for so long. It rocks back and forth, but
it won’t roll and twist line. And it’s plated with pure
silver or 24-kt gold, to produce a brighter flash than chrome or
brass spoons."
The Silver Minnow comes in 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 ounce sizes.
The 1/4 ounce, 2 1/4 inch model is the best one for the bass that
I catch. They seem to like it better. Some guys also like the 1/2
ounce, 2 3/4 inch size for bass. The hook is hand-soldered to the
belly of the spoon, and the lure has a looped wire line-tie eye
to which I directly attach my fishing line. The top of the lure
has a stout metal prong that is strategically positioned right in
front of the hook point, thereby defending it against snags and
weeds. A biting fish can depress this prong easily but snags
cannot. The spoon has an aerodynamic shape and it casts well.
Always Sweeten the Deal. In days
gone by, Johnson spoons were always sweetened with pork frogs and
split tail pork rind eels. The modern design of the Strike King
Bo-Leech pork also works well. Many anglers today use soft
plastic split tail spinnerbait trailers and plastic imitation
pork chunks. Prowler Pro Pitch has a new thin-bodied, long-legged
chunk that goes great with Johnson spoons. But my absolute
favorite sweetener is a 4" Mister Twister grub. The key
point about the Mister Twister is that the curly tail is much
thicker than most other curly-tailed grubs so it creates very
strong vibrations as it wriggles frantically behind the spoon.
Equally important, the tail is thick enough to drag through heavy
cover all day without being torn off by tough weed stalks. Don't
just put the grub onto the hook so it lays straight like usual -
instead thread the grub body a little bit up onto the curvature
of the hook - and secure it to the butt of the spoon with a
little spot of super glue. It will look a bit odd this way as it
kind of points up at an angle. I use black, white, and chartreuse
grubs. You can order them online at Mister Twister's web site.
The gold spoon/black grub combo is pretty as a picture, and it is
deadly under low light conditions at dawn and dusk. Use
silver/chartreuse in turbid or muddy water.
Look at It. Test swim one of these
spoon/grubs and you won't believe the combined spoon-rolling,
tail-twisting motion. Practice in open water. You really want to
retrieve it so that the lure barely stays under the surface and
kind of bulges the water. Just reel in steady, never jig it or
let it drop. Most of all, learn how to best bring out that
flashing, side-rolling crippled minnow action inherent in the
spoon body. You have got to concentrate on looking at the lure at
all times as you retrieve it, and adjusting the retrieve speed to
maintain the desired swimming action. When you feel that you have
the hand/eye coordination down pat, then you are ready to cast
the spoon/grub far across the fish-holding weedbeds.
Splashdown. During the cast, you
need to keep the spoon's flight trajectory low - like hitting a
line drive in baseball. You need to engage your reel and begin
turning the reel handle before the spoon even hits the water.
Done properly, the spoon should splash down softly without being
jerked back at you from whiplash or anything. If you make the
splashdown correctly, then the spoon will be flashing, rolling
and swimming towards you instantly without fouling in the weeds.
You need to keep this same steady swimming pace all the way back
to the boat, just like you did during your practice casts. If you
did not engage the reel right at splashdown, or if you break the
cadence during the retrieve, the spoon will plummet into the
weeds and foul. The painful truth is that the lure is only as
weedless as you make it! But if you do everything right, YOU CAN
EXPECT TO GET BLASTED IMMEDIATELY UPON SPLASHDOWN. If there was a
fish within shouting distance, they often dash right over to
blast your spoon.
Steady as she goes. Quite
honestly, some times you will see big wakes in the grass that
bolt and flee as your lure splashes down or approaches them. But
most times, you will see something muscling its way over and
deliberately stalking your lure in the grass, only to sink under
and disappear, and then a few seconds later the grass parts like
Moses at the Red Sea. There's a gill-rattling commotion but you
don't feel any weight. DO NOT TRY TO SET THE HOOK UNTIL THE FISH
IS DONE BLASTING, AND YOU FEEL SOLID WEIGHT AS THE FISH
RUNS BACK UNDER THE WEEDS WITH YOUR SPOON CLAMPED IN A VISE-LIKE
JAW LOCK. Just don't stop steadily turning the reel handle if a
fish has blasted you but missed the hook.  If
you jerk the rod or stop reeling for an instant, you will get
fouled in the grass. Do not alter the cadence, just keep a steady
retrieve and the fish may continue to use the steady swimming
sounds of the spoon to track its path and to plot where the bass
will make another vicious attempt to annihilate your lure. If a
bass blasts just once and does not continue to track you, then
that fish is probably "on point" and just sitting right
there waiting to pounce on anything that comes near it. So put
the spoon rod down and toss a big, sassy 3/4 ounce bullet-rigged
worm back out at the opening the fish blew in the grass. I match
the same color worm as the grub color on the spoon. Let it land a
few feet behind the hole and drag it across the weed tops so that
fish knows you are coming. Slither it into the opening and expect
the same bass to blast you as you hold the worm right under the
canopy for a few seconds and jiggle it, then let it fall quickly
and thud into the bottom below. This often gets a reaction bite
on the descent or on bottom contact.
Other Topwater Spoons. Several
other manufacturers have spoons on the market that are designed
for hauling heavy bass out of surface vegetation. Just to name a
quick few that I have used are the Mepps Timber Doodle, the
Heddon Moss Boss, and the Rapala Minnow Spoon. Sure they are
good and you definitely should try them. But we are not going to
cover them in this article. Simply put, none of these spoons have
a track record of seventy-nine years of bagging big bass in thick
cover. That's what I like most about my Johnsons, and that is why
I will continue to use them until I am an old grandpa! |
