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Spittin' the Splash
By Jerry Puckett

May/June 1997

This could have been titled "Me and the Spitter" but as I recall, Gaylord Perry already wrote that book. If you've been around the whole gamut of Japanese topwater baits that started ten years ago with the Michaels, then the Rico and finally the best of the bunch, the Sugoi Splash, you may flip to the next page and give yourself an "A" on your report card. If not, read on.

Let's first get one thing straight. The Splash is not a Pop-R. General body shape aside, there are no similarities. The Splash is not designed to pop, gurgle or chug although it can do any of those things. At its fish catching best in the right hands, the Splash spits, pure and simple. In doing so, the Splash is a near perfect representation of a threadfin shad on the surface.

The shad, unlike bass but like lake trout, has a ducted swim bladder which allows them to make the necessary buoyancy adjustments to permit major depth changes at will, all the while maintaining a perfectly adjusted swim bladder. A correctly adjusted swim bladder yields neutral buoyancy, just like a scuba diver's buoyancy compensator vest. When preparing for and during a major ascent in the water column the shad burps off or bleeds pressure through the duct. You may have witnessed this phenomena without being aware of what you were seeing. When organic material is entrained in the silt layer of a feeder creek bottom, it decomposes over time, generating methane gas in the process. Most of the bubbles you see breaking the surface are just that, escaping methane gas. But an area shimmering with bubbles may also be evidence of a large school of shad "on the rise." Check your electronics. The bubbles may be the first hint of a major feeding period in the making.

In the inverse, in preparation for a descent after "grazing" on the surface pastures of algae, the threadfin shad need to "air up" their bladders so that as they swim deeper into the water column and the pressure increases, compressing their swim bladders in the process, they will maintain their desired neutral buoyancy. Whew! Having said all that to say this, when the shad air up their bladders they do so by gulping air at the surface. You can watch them do it. They break the surface, almost silently, and in the process they generate a little splash, a few droplets of water are forced forward to return and dimple the surface.

Now the Sugoi Splash enters, spitting its way toward center stage. With a maddening cadence the little bait goes "spit, spit, spit, spit." Not chug, not gurgle, just spit - spit - spit. Have you got the feel for this? It's just a slightly exaggerated version of what the shad does. Just like all good advertising, it's slightly exaggerated. Don't let the bait yell at the fish, just entice them. There are a jillion effective ways to work the Splash but day in and day out it's the maddening steady cadence that has worked best for us.

"Big Al" Robinson and I proved it to our complete satisfaction one day on Lake Mead. We were goofing around while pre-fishing and setup an impromptu field test. For the next four hours we did something you would never do under ordinary circumstances. We cast to the same spot for four hours. Not to the same piece of cover but rather we cast our baits side by side, landing within a foot or so of each other. (Dumb, huh?)

We chose two baits of the same color and size, same line, same everything. His was the control bait, one of his favorite POP-Rs. I threw a Sugoi Splash. The results surprised us both, four to one in favor of the Splash. Four hours, same color bait, same fish with the fish choosing the winner four to one. Those 20 or so fish made believers out of us both.

So, we know what we want the bait to do, how do we make it happen? Easy. Make the Splash go nowhere fast or, I should say, quickly. This isn't as dumb as it sounds, you want the bait to move quickly forward but not go anywhere, over and over and over. The key here is controlled slack line. With rod tip held just above the water and pointed toward the bait, (you've already made your typically perfect cast) your first move is to raise the rod tip about 30° to 45°, just below horizontal. As you raise the tip, reel in a tiny amount of line, just an inch or so. Now sharply return the rod tip to the starting point. If you stop the rod tip at exactly the starting point and you reel in two inches of slack line as you raise the rod, the bait will sharply move forward two inches and, in the process, spit a small bit of water forward. Are you getting it?

You repeat this procedure about once each second or a little more often and your Splash will just merrily spit its way along without going much of anywhere. Just the medicine for driving those bass insane, they just can't stand it. And it's a good thing that the bass respond by eating it up or else you would go nuts, after the first minute or so of this presentation your eyes begin to cross and buttons start popping off your shirt. But you'll get over it and soon will be able to generate the perfect "spit" without even thinking about it. One word of caution. When learning this technique it's easy to become so engrossed in making the Splash do its thing that you can really be startled when the bass explode on the surface. It can be a nerve rattler but like all other topwaters the correct procedure is to remain steady at the strike. When the fish takes the bait under you can sweepset and get on the program. If the fish happens to miss the bait on the first pass a good tactic is to deadstick it for a few seconds although I prefer to just maintain the cadence. We've also had good luck "skittering" the bait across the surface after a miss, mimicking a shad in full panic flight.

While spitting isn't socially acceptable you might want to give it a try next time the bass are on the shad or parked on shallow cover.

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