topwater fishing
YouTube: Mossy Oak

How to Set Yourself Up Right for Topwater Fishing

If you want to slay some summer bass, you need to have your topwater setup ready to go.

Anyone who does a lot of bass fishing knows the topwater approach is easily the most exciting way to catch big bass. If you want consistency, you can always catch fish with a plastic worm or live bait. But when topwater tackle is working, you won't be opening your tackle box any time soon.

Where people often go wrong with fishing topwater baits, however, is in their setup. If you aren't using the right gear, you aren't going to create that irresistible presentation that makes bass lose their minds.

Fortunately for us, professional bass fisherman Matt Lee decided to share his topwater frog setup with everyone.

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Lee is a very accomplished bass fisherman, having appeared in 61 total tournaments, two of which were Bassmaster Classics. So, when he's willing to share one of his strategies, it's best to stop whatever you're doing.

To be specific, he's using a 7-foot, 4-inch Quantum Smoke rod, a 65-pound Smackdown Seaguar braid, a high-speed reel and a Strike King KVD Sexy Frog with trimmed tails.

Now, that is a solid setup, but you can vary your gear quite a bit. What you really want in a topwater setup is a stiffer fishing rod for a nice, fast action—medium or medium-heavy is just fine—and braided line.

Braided line is so important because it floats. If you're fishing with monofilament or fluorocarbon line, you're not going to get the right kind of action out of your topwater lure because you're pulling down on it once that line starts to sink.

You can also go with just about any frog, but anything KVD is legit, so that's not a bad route to go.

And finally, while you can fish topwater with spinning tackle, I think topwater fishing feels a little more natural with a baitcaster like Lee has here.

NEXT: YOU CAN FISH FOR FREE ON PUBLIC TEXAS WATERS ON JUNE 1

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