Chuggers

Chugger - a type of topwater lure.

Chuggers are a captivating topwater lure for gamefish such as smallmouth bass, largemouth pass, stripers, even trout. Chuggers are known for their explosive topwater action. Chuggers, or poppers as otherwise known, is a type of topwater lure that has a concaved or cupped face. This gives the lure a popping sound while throwing water during its retrieve. Chuggers mimmick a kicking frog, so its no surprise that this lure also works for large and small mouth bass.

There are a few varieties of chuggers. Small chuggers are over grown fly-rod poppers and are excellent lures for white bass. Larger ones are can sometimes take a pike or muskie, although stickbaits and propbaits do better. Some chuggers get up to a foot in length. These are highly effective with stripers ripping through schools of shad on the surface. Chuggers work well for all varieties of bass and even some trout.

You retrieve a chugger by doing a series of nonstop twitches with twiches followed by two or three second pauses. Make your cast, then start twitching your rod while holding it at 45 degrees. This will help keep your line from sinking. Then as the lure approaches the boat, keep twitching while slowly lowering your rod, just enough to keep the lure throwing water. If your rod is too high, your popper will stop throwing water.

Nonstop twiches allow you to cover a lot of water fast while still making the retrieve attractive to your gamefish. They can be fished "dead-stick" with long pauses. Dead-stick fishing is perfect when fishing pockets in the weeds. When in these pockets, give the chugger a sharp twitch and wait for the ripples to die down before twitching again. This may take 10 or 20 seconds. This will keep the game fish in the strike zone or allows the spooked fish time to return and investigate. The splashing popping sound will call out the gamefish from a distance, especially in murky or choppy water.

Popular chuggers include the Storm Rattling Chug-bug, Rebel Pop-R chugger, Rapala Skitter Pop, and Cordell Pencicl Popper. A tip for fishing with chuggers is to tie a loop knot instead of the usual clinch knot. This will give you slack to the line allowing for more action in the lure.