Bass fishing involves many retrieves—burning, ripping, hopping, crawling, shaking, stitching, twitching, jerking, swimming, dragging, and more. There’s no lack of options once a lure hits the water. Some are easy to master, like burning a big tandem spinnerbait. Others require uncanny patience, such as Bill Murphy’s stitching technique, so slow it’s almost a non-retrieve.

With the exception of stitching, where one hand recovers and temporarily stores the line, anglers use one of two tools to draw a lure past the quarry—rod and reel. No standard retrieve demands as much coordination of rod and reel manipulation as the topwater technique known as ‘walking-the-dog’, where cadence and timing are essential to achieve optimal action.

Walking-the-dog seems to have originated with Heddon’s cigar-shaped topwater, the Zara Spook. For some, this technique is generically known as Spook fishing. There’s something about the way a Spook dips, cuts, and lunges from the water like a desperate baitfish that’s entrenched it as a bait for the ages.

Recent designs have been influenced by intricate Japanese models with realistic silhouettes and finishes. Some manufacturers claim that the curved shape of Heddon’s new SwayBack Spook, Yo-Zuri’s Banana Boat, and the Lucky Craft Sammy makes walking-the-dog easier. In truth, both the new renditions and traditional baits share much in common: They drive big bass nuts.

The Importance of Slack

As a kid, I borrowed an old Zara Spook from my uncle’s tackle box and began casting it out and reeling it in steadily. Scooting forward in a straight line, the lure exhibited none of the magic, side-to-side sashaying that makes it deadly. After a few casts, it was relegated to the bottom rack.

It was five years later while watching an episode of “Fishing with Orlando Wilson” that the proverbial light bulb came on. The host was working a Spook along a lily-pad edge and catching lots of bass. But I was most interested in the way he worked the plug. By rhythmically twitching his rod tip downward and slightly to the side, he made that Spook dance across the surface. The key, he explained, was to flick the rod tip back toward the lure after each twitch, putting slack in the line and giving the lure freedom to glide to each side without resistance.

Experimenting with the lure again, I learned that walking-the-dog involves measured recovery of slack line with the reel. Too much or too little reeling stalls the lure’s attractive walk. Practice improved my coordination and timing. To take up slack as the lure approaches, experienced anglers make quarter- to half-turns of the reel handle between rhythmic taps of the rod.

They maintain visual contact with the lure to make sure it’s walking properly and to spot following fish. This sounds more complicated than it is. Once you know what to do, walking-the-dog is quite simple and rhythmically therapeutic. The day I mastered the technique, I caught a 20-inch smallie on my tenth cast.

Topwater Walking

Walking-the-dog with a topwater can be effective from spring (water temperatures broaching about 55°F) through early fall, with only the time around the spawn less than ideal. And if you limit your dog-walking to low-light periods of dawn, dusk, and cloudy days, you’re missing action.

Speed can be a trigger but dawdling retrieves can also work well. As a search tool, these lures can be cast far and snapped along at a frantic clip to draw strikes from aggressive, roaming smallmouth. They also work when twitched intermittently along vegetation and timber edges, often drawing cover-oriented largemouths from their fortified homes.

Cadence can be critical for walking-the-dog, so it’s best to experiment open-mindedly before stowing these baits. Try short, quick rod twitches, changing to longer sweeps, focusing on what draws the most attention. Nothing builds excitement like seeing a big fish stalk and strike a lure at the surface, and if you can repeat that tempo, you may have a pattern that works in similar areas around the lake.

Big stickbaits have a well deserved reputation for fooling big bass. Pro angler Ish Monroe of Hughson, California, chooses a 5-inch Reaction Innovations Vixen under a variety of conditions from Prespawn through fall, coast to coast. His philosophy is that big baits attract big bass. “I’m a big bait, big fish guy,” Monroe says. “I like the Vixen’s size and wild action. In tournaments, it’s the one bait I have ready for all occasions.”

Monroe used a shad-color Vixen in his victory at the Bassmaster Elite Series event on Lake Amistad last March. By combining sight-fishing and twitching a Vixen over ditches where bass were migrating into spawning areas, he boated 20 fish weighing an incredible 1041⁄2 pounds, including a 9-pound 5-ounce sow that ate the Vixen.

With big fish on the agenda, Monroe employs heavy gear. He uses a 7-foot heavy-action fiberglass Daiwa rod, paired with a Daiwa Fuego reel spooled with 50-pound-test Power Pro braided line. He ties directly to his Vixen using a double Palomar knot, feeling that the disturbance of the lure’s action, light refraction, and glare mask the opaque line. “Fifty-pound braid means you never break them off,” he explains.

Tweaking Baits

One modification is to replace a plain rear treble hook with one dressed in chicken feathers. That’s been so popular that the new Heddon SwayBack Spook comes so adorned. Feathers pulsate and breathe in motion and at rest, sometimes turning the tide when the bite slows. A red treble at the throat, imitating a bleeding gill, at times seems to increase bites.

Some baits, including the original Zara Spook, come with large trebles hung directly on hook hangers. Sometimes, a hooked bass can gain leverage and twist free. Split-rings eliminate that leverage. I remove the screws and stock hooks and add split-rings (short-shank trebles mean less chance of hooks tangling) before reassembly. A drop of Superglue sets them securely. Some new models come with split-rings. I’ve found the rattleless action of the original Spook often outproduces rattling topwaters when the sun is high or bass are heavily fished, so it’s worth the extra work.

Drown-the-Dog

An interesting evolution of Spook fishing occurred when anglers began applying a snapping, slack-line retrieve to other types of baits. In 1988, In-Fisherman published Rich Zaleski’s “Rippin’ Spring Smallmouths,” which outlined techniques for triggering pre-spawn bass with floating minnowbaits like Bagley’s Diving Bang-O-Lure and Magnum Rapalas. By sweeping the bait down to its working depth and then imparting a series of aggressive twitches, Zaleski found the lures would “shift angles underwater the way a Zara Spook does on top.” Thus, drowning-the-dog was born.

Today, several baits have been designed to drown-the-dog with ease, like Rapala’s X-Rap and the Lucky Craft Pointer series. They feature slightly longer diving bills than traditional jerkbaits, set toward the bait’s nose rather than at the throat. While Zaleski worked floating baits aggressively to keep them down, suspending baits now allow for extended pauses that are deadly in water below 50°F.

Pauses of more than half a minute contradict the term”walk,” but can lure lethargic largemouth and smallmouth bass under those conditions. Deeper-diving models like the Lucky Craft Stay See, Rapala Minnow Rap, the Goodie Minnow from Dave’s KA-BOOM! Baits, and the new Smithwick Deep Rogue Jr., make this task easier to perform.

My experience in clear northern lakes where smallies rely on pelagic forage shows that drowning-the-dog with midsized jerkbaits remains productive throughout summer and into fall. I modify throat-lipped baits like Rapala Husky Jerks by shortening and squaring the bill with wire cutters and a small file, and weighting the rear treble with lead fly-tying tape.

This imparts an action that bass haven’t seen. If they won’t come up for a topwater, or when winds churn the surface and make walking-the-dog impossible, I instead drown-the-dog using a fast snapping retrieve and my customized Husky Jerk.

Small to midsized jerkbaits cast farther with fast, 7-foot medium-action spinning outfits than on casting gear, which can be critical in ultraclear water. Larger baits require heavier-action rods, but I still prefer a stout spinning outfit that handles thinner lines better. Large spinning-reel spools take up line quickly, enabling fast retrieves. Spinning spools impart less friction on the line, meaning longer casts. I use fused or braided superlines like Berkley FireLine or Spiderwire Stealth in 10- to 20-pound test for sensitivity and solid hook-sets.

Slop Walkin’

As Orlando Wilson showed me way back when, Spooks can be deadly when worked along vegetation edges. Where cover is too thick for treble-hooked baits, other dog-walking options exist.

Hollow slop frogs like the SPRO Bronzeye Frog, Reaction Innovations’ Swamp Donkey, or Snag Proof Bobby’s Perfect Frog pivot from side to side when retrieved with a slack-line, walk-the-frog technique. Their slimmer, rear-weighted bodies improve this action. Pro angler Dean Rojas created a stir on the tournament scene last year by catching big largemouths throughout the 9-month season, on and off weedmats, using the SPRO Bronzeye Frog he helped design.

Snag-Proof Lures makes an array of weedless baits including Bobby’s Frog and the new Bleeding Frog Series. But ask Terry White, Snag-Proof’s Pro Staff Director, about his favorite bait and he’ll describe the Weed Demon. “The Demon shares the shape, weight, and line-tie placement of spook-style baits,” he says, “but in a hollow lure with an upturned double-hook for weedlessness.” White says the 3/4-ounce weight in the tail causes it to sit deeper in dense mats than most frogs, presenting a better target to bass below.

“I fish it over mats, along grasslines, even by riprap walls,” White says. “Here on the California Delta, I can cast a Water Demon way into a patch of tulies and snake it back through the thick stalks without hanging. Yet in open water, the Weed Demon typically matches my tournament partner’s catch on a Zara Spook.”

White customizes Weed Demons by melting holes on either side of the tail just ahead of the weight, and feeding a rubber skirt secured with surgical tubing through the holes. He calls it the Hula Demon. “Once you try them,” he says, “you won’t want to fish anything else.”

Go for a Walk

Physicians preach that walking improves your health. Bring along a “dog” and it can be good for your bank account, as well. At the 2003 Bassmaster Tour event on Lake Hamilton, Arkansas, all six finalists including winner Ron Shuffield counted Zara Spooks, Super Spook Jrs., or Lucky Craft Sammys among their key presentations. Peter Thliveros, who finished one place out of the final round, took home the $1,000 big bass prize with a 7-pound 9-ounce fish that fell for—you guessed it—a Zara Spook. n

*Matt Symons is an avid bass angler and freelance writer based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.