TAKEOFF
TECHNIQUES
BIG CORK POPPIN’
a saltWateR technique that has Been adapted to Bass fishinG
By Joe Sills
Pro Brandon Perkins says the popping cork rig has big
potential for “well-educated” summertime schoolers.
22
here was a moment where i could have won it,”
Brandon perkins remembers. “as weird and crazy as
it sounds, i could have won the forrest Wood cup
with a popping cork if the bite had kept up.”
Brandon perkins isn’t crazy. during the 2016 forrest
Wood cup at Wheeler lake, he’d fired up a monster school of
shallow bass using a tackle setup that’s most often used for
inshore saltwater fishing – the popping cork. tethered 3 feet
behind a cork bobber, a tiny, featherweight jig was getting
hammered by the schooling alabama bass.
“that place [Wheeler] has giant smallmouths in it,” adds
perkins, who wound up 35th. “i really felt like someone could
catch a 20-pound bag of smallmouths over there if they had
some random luck. that’s kind of why i started throwing the
popping cork.”
across the lake, at almost the same time, the Bass
federation qualifier Joseph Webster was deploying the same
technique with similar success for a 10th-place finish. Both
were gambling on the little-used strategy to produce results
on a lake that, by august, had been hammered with a full sea-
son of tournaments.
“at the cup, they got used to everyone throwing topwaters
at them,” adds Webster. “You could still go down and catch
“ T
them with a carolina rig, but i figured i could throw something
crazy over the top and get them to come up after it.”
“no doubt, in the fall, it works,” agrees perkins. “it’s some-
thing they’ve never seen before. You can throw a storm chug
Bug or a Rebel pop-R or a strike King sexy dawg, but they’ve
never seen this.”
The Background
for perkins, the strategy was learned not far from
Wheeler lake, in the waters below pickwick dam, where he
and his brother, dustin, would watch schooling hybrid
stripers, or “wipers,” that were chasing tiny “pin” minnows.
figuring that the fish were more likely to eat a bait that
matched the size of their prey, the perkins brothers went
down to the local tackle store and snagged some corks and
the smallest flies they could find. then they started chunking
at big hybrids.
“We’d haul in a ton of them,” Brandon remembers.
“fifteen- or 18-inch hybrids. after that, we figured if we could
catch hybrids on them we should be able to catch big bass
on them, too.”
about 50 miles away is where a young Joseph Webster
honed his popping cork technique with his grandfather.
FLWFISHING.COM I AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2017