homemade whopper plopper, jr.?

[BigSam]

hey there, larry. glad i found this site and forum. i'm a warmwater river fisherman from GA who absolutely loves fishing topwater for black bass. BIG topwater. my go-to lure is the luhr-jehnsen "peacock special." i've seen you fabricate a bigger version for peacocks. while i would love to make a box full of those, my real interest is the whopper plopper. for me, though, the application of most musky lures to river bass fishing isn't practical. hucking a 2.5 oz. lure AND paddling all day is pretty hard. for this reason, i've never really checked out musky lures exhaustively. when i saw your videos, the design of the whopper plopper intrigued me.

my intent is to make a 5" or 5.5" whopper plopper that weighs about 1 oz., maybe less. largemouth bass and shoal bass (native to appalachicola river basin) would absolutely eat this thing up. while i am planning on using alumilite stuff and fabricating a few of these, are there any plans for river2sea to release a jr. version of this molded marvel?

many thanks,
sam

[box]

BigSam -
I think you're really on to something good. I was just out with a musky buddy the other night and we were talking about how many big smallmouths we've caught on musky baits. Specifically the TopRaider. I'm not a huge fan of them but they're sort of a staple in a lot of musky boxes. We were discussing how to make a more reasonable bass size. I don't have the skill or material to pour my own so we discussed chopping up a Zara Spook - I know a pretty crude way to do it but I've caught fish on similar bastardized baits. Good luck on a small plopper and maybe someday a person with the ability to mass produce them (hint hint Larry) will get them on the market for the rest of us.
Good luck - Erik

[YakMan]

I tried to make a few but the tail still isn't right - it spins but intermittently and can get hung up on the rear treble. I am also having a hard time finding .031 straight steel that is 12" long which would make them a ton easier to finish than the 8" i currently have.. For the body mold I used the butt end of a 5A drumstick - use Larry's method on the makelure site to make it. One thing I would recommend is making the mold a but longer than you will need so you can experiment with various body to tail length ratios. I kinda put this project aside for now as I am fishing mainly in salt this time of year. This could also be a killer for stripers.

[dahlberg]

hi guys,
Both the largest smallmouth and largemouth I've had in my boat this year were caught on the musky sized whopper plopper! I was fishing bass on purpose when the largemouth got caught, and we thought the 24" smallie was a musky!
We do plan on introducing a smaller version next season.
best
L

[magpie]

You can get 36" wire at most welding supply (stainless tig wire)

[BigSam]

thanks, guys, and thanks, larry. that doesn't surprise me that you caught your best SM and LM on the whopper plopper!