Retired

The first time I tied on a Whopper Plopper in Mexico, my longtime guide gave me the side eye and then laughed. Five minutes later, he wasn’t laughing. The fish had clearly never seen anything like it, because the strikes were beyond violent. They rivaled what I’ve seen with Amazonian peacock bass and Panamanian tuna in their ferocity, and the average size of the fish was well over 5 pounds.

The Plopper bite at El Salto has cooled a little since that first experience nearly a decade ago, and while I’ve added more of them to my permanent tackle stash down there, that original Powder-colored 130 remained my go-to.

Until it started sinking.

It happened on the last day of my most recent trip, a morning when I’d already caught several fish on it. Water was getting inside and it just couldn’t stay up any longer. The lure was worthless (I’m sure someone who reads this will introduce a subsurface Plopper – sort of a spy bait on crack – at next year’s ICAST show, and thereby potentially prove me wrong).

I couldn’t just throw it out. The lure had produced many of my most memorable topwater strikes, so it came home with me and now sits on my desk. Eventually, it’ll move to the bookcase with some other dead soldiers – Rat-L-Traps that produced giants and then lost all of their chrome and lures given to me by people like the late Aaron Martens. 

An indoor lure graveyard is a sign, I suppose, of a life well fished.

I’ve already ordered a new Powder 130 to take south of the border. I’m sure it’ll work just as well, if not better, than the beat-to-pieces version, but you never forget your first.