In the surface film, that sacred juncture between air and water, sits a chunk of wood, half in this world with hooks dangling into the other. Or it could be a bobber. Or a Zell’s Pop. Mouse. Frog. Whatever. If it looks remotely like food and it drifts on the interface between worlds over a river smallmouth, it could be violently assaulted.

Or not. Fishing pressure alters things a bit on many waterways, yet topwaters remain highly effective for river smallmouths and probably always will. Innovative responses, like soft plastic topwater “surrogates,” drive even the most pressure hardened smallmouths through the roof, so to speak. River fish often supplement their diets with things that swim by on top, like mice or frogs, when normal foraging becomes difficult or surface food abounds. Those times are predictable.

When water levels are low, river smallmouths tend to eat themselves out of house and home because current strength is diminished and their movement is almost unrestricted. Foraging actually becomes too easy in low water, and chubs can’t replicate fast enough. In high water, visibility is cut and current is high, making normal foraging difficult. In these two extremes, anything struggling and splashing away on top receives extra attention.

Not to say that smallmouths won’t go through the roof during normal flows, because they will. High and low water extremes are no guarantee, either. Topwater bites can be mysterious things, coming out of nowhere, arriving unexpectedly, or failing to occur when conditions seem perfect. But nothing, as so many have said so many times, beats a few heart-stopping explosions on top. On rivers, a topwater rod is strapped to my deck at all times during the open-water season, and it gets used every day.

Low Water Tricks

Up here where the river is mostly wild, we could have forded the mighty Mississippi on foot in many places a couple of summers back. Current was barely perceptible. Seams, pushes, eddies, and all the classic spots where current normally concentrates active fish became meaningless. The river morphed into a pond. The conveyor shut down. Bass could no longer wait for food to drift past. They had to give chase and hunt it down, like lake dwellers. (Oh, the ignominy.)

Emerging rocks and weeds even held the jet boats at bay in many stretches. So three of us shoved off in Rick Hammer’s Swamp Donkey (a small McKenzie-style drift boat). We caught bass on a variety of things, but topwaters beat the rest combined. My normal technique with a popper (letting the rings settle, giving it one good pop, then allowing it to drift 5 feet) was working fine until Jeff Samsel (formerly with PRADCO) rifled an XCalibur Zell’s Pop out and began walking-the-dog. Bass exploded on it at some point during every other retrieve. Pretty soon everybody had rod tips down, snapping away, walking poppers and triggering explosive strikes. (The key to walking a popper is using a loop knot about 1/2 inch in diameter, which helps the bait swing side to side.)

When people are catching fish all around you, it’s a great time to experiment. Time to see if an even hotter bite is possible, and to learn valuable things about the extra baggage in that tackle box. With a Heddon Baby Torpedo, I like to bend the blades forward slightly and rip it through the surface film about 2 feet at a time, leaving a distinct bubble trail. It was engulfed during the first pause, and for an hour or so the little prop bait outscored the popper brigade. And we probably could have found an even hotter item, but our drift was coming to an end.

Topwater styles and techniques were not, however, the most interesting things about the trip. Most intriguing was the fact that the best fishing occurred in stretches of water we ignored in the past. Nothing water. Three feet deep with slow-tapering banks on both sides, no rocks, occasional small weeds, and no other cover of any kind. Location became almost unpredictable, a byproduct of the severely reduced current. With no strong flow ushering them into predictable spots, smallmouths were everywhere. Rather than targeting cover, current breaks, and seams, we were casting everywhere, in all directions.

In subsequent trips I had to pay the piper. When smallmouths become pressured in low, clear water, it’s time to scale back on aggressiveness. Subtle sticks worked better than poppers the next time around, baits like the Carolina Fish & Fur Viva Pencil and the Yo-Zuri Wack-O. With no big popping surface on the face, and no propellers, these subtle baits twitch smallmouths up with realistic profiles and realistic motion. Sometimes pressured smallmouths nip these baits off the top, without so much as a boil, let alone an explosion. The Viva Pencil sits at a 70-degree angle. Watch it like a bobber, because it can go under with no other visual cues in low water. I throw poppers and subtle sticks with a 7-foot medium-light spinning rod, 10-pound FireLine, and a 3- to 5-foot 10-pound Ande Premium monofilament leader. (The hard surface on Ande Premium absorbs water slowly, keeping it on top longer.)

But the trend toward tougher bites wasn’t over yet. Things got tougher as summer wore on. Some bass remained interested in downsized buzzbaits, like the Persuader Mini Buzzer. And an old standby technique produced a brace of 4-pounders one day, bulging a size #4 Mepps Black Fury just under the surface film. After that, the bottom dropped out of the topwater bite. In the past I’ve written about stuffing tubes with pieces of Styrofoam and fishing them Texas-style, which works well in low, clear water. During the months in question, a floating wacky rig outscored tubes on top.

Berkley and other plastics manufacturers have floating worms in their lineup. To get them out there with no weight on the line, I opted for an 8-foot 6-inch medium-light Fenwick spinning rod. With that long rod and 5-pound Maxima Ultragreen, casting for distance was not a problem. But 8-pound Berkley FireLine worked better, because it floats, it’s stronger, and it’s thinner, allowing longer casts with a light load. In bright conditions, twitching a wacky-rigged Gulp! 5-inch Dover Crawler on top produced amazing results. Similar things happened with a nose-hooked Berkley Floating Jumbo Leech. When it was cloudy, windy, or spitting rain, hard body poppers and prop baits regained center stage, but smallmouths continued to mill around in unusual areas in all conditions, until water levels began to rise again.

Gene Larew produces all kinds of floating critters, including the Floating Fat Tail Tube, which requires no insert to stay on top. The Floating Hoodaddy is another great topwater option. Any style of plastic with a tail or tentacle that twitches and quivers in the surface film has the potential to catch smallmouths on top. Most plastics can be nose-hooked with a wide gap wacky-style hook, but some floating plastics can stay afloat when Texas-rigged with offset hooks, too.

In low water, all fish become skittish. Fish feel more secure in normal to high flows because they have deeper water to retreat to and find it easier to stay out of sight when ospreys, otters, and other predators pass by. In low flows, the water itself provides less cover, creating an environment ripe for soft and subtle innovations. Plastics hit the water softly, and make less disturbance when worked. Don’t worry about a smallmouth finding it in low water. They can see a plastic something drifting on the surface at a distance of 10 feet or more in clear water.

Measure the distance yourself when the next big bulge appears, pushing water on an intercept course with your floating wacky rig.

High-Flow Top and Go

When the water rises even a bit above normal, current levels increase and begin forcing smallmouths into more predictable locations. The higher the water, the closer most fish will be to the banks. Current obstructions along the bank (logs, docks, fallen trees, rock bars) become increasingly important as the water rises. As mentioned, foraging becomes more difficult with higher current and decreased visibility in high flows. For smallmouths, each calorie of food costs more in terms of energy spent for every inch the water level rises.

Those conditions can be perfect for topwaters. Or not. Depends on how much food is in the river and how energetic smallmouths feel they need to be. The very uncertainty of it demands walking-the-dog or ripping a pencil prop for at least a few casts in every area you fish. Extreme high (and low) water tends to scatter fish, so it’s run-and-gun time, hitting every eddy and slow water slick behind every shoreline obstruction.

One topwater option that seldom seems to fail me in rising water is a buzzbait. Buzzbaits are another river roof wrecker. Full size single buzzers in the 1/4- to 3/8-ounce sizes tend to work best in high water. One nice thing about a buzzbait is the ability to cast it into brush and bring it back out. A single protected hook can find underwater wood at times, but far less often than those trebles dangling below most topwater baits. When it comes to casting through fallen branches, the buzzbait wins hands down.

When buzzers won’t bring any up, don’t stop trying. Walking baits are next on the list in high water. The two classic walkers on the market are the Rapala Skitter Walk and the Heddon Zara Spook, and I like to throw them with a 7-foot fast, medium-heavy rod (preferably casting, but spinning gear works, too) and 10- to 12-pound monofilament. Working these baits with the same repetitive, downward snap of the rod tip with monofilament for 30 years tends to make me prejudiced toward mono, but the stretch in mono tames the walk down, I think. The key is a nice, smooth turn and glide. It’s not a jogging bait, after all—it’s a walking bait, but I work them pretty fast and aggressively in high water. Hit a spot with 4 or 5 casts and move on.

When the water is high, smallmouths are pushed into current seams. They like to find a service drive of slower current right next to the freeway. Seams exist everywhere along both banks, but the best ones are below a bend on the inside, where current is reduced, or behind a shoreline obstruction or point. Positioning the boat close to the bank and casting upstream, into the faster water, working the bait into and through the seam is the odds-on approach.

Any hard-body topwater bait being properly worked can drive smallies through the roof in high water, especially as the season wears on and forage species like chubs begin to thin out. From late September to early November, depending on where you live, frogs migrate at night, heading for traditional wintering areas where they burrow and hibernate. Most people miss it because it happens at night. But the smallmouths never miss it, and their enthusiasm for topwaters can continue right through the day.

So putting away the topwater box is not an option when the water gets cold. Smallmouths can be roof wreckers even when the water dips into the high 40°F zone. When everybody else is hunting ducks this fall, tie on a frog pattern popper and head for the nearest big river. Work just below confluence areas where little smallmouth rivers join the big one. Migrating smallmouths look like a wrecking ball coming through the roof.