In mid-November, I spent five days fishing with my buddy Peter Yung Hsiuah who had flown to the U.S. from Taiwan, his home country. He treated me so well when I was in Taiwan, I wanted to return the favor.
While I was in his country, we caught Chinese sea bass, African catfish and snakeheads. While he was here, we fished from daylight until dark for largemouth, smallmouth, stripers, rainbow trout, lake trout and tuna.
We caught most of our fish on a single lure, Berkley’s new Chop Block PowerBait Soft Glide Bait. It comes in 6-, 8- and 10-inch sizes and fell into my lap right on time for my fishing trip with Peter.
All the species we fished for were in a fall feeding mode. They were all keyed in on bigger baitfish because they sensed winter is near. That motivated me to have a rod rigged with a Chop Block everywhere we fished.
The Chop Block duped largemouth that were eating bluegill and perch in shallow, weedy water. They chomped on the 8-inch size in a bluegill pattern.
We also launched my bass boat at a deep, clear reservoir and caught rainbow trout and lake trout on a 6-inch Chop Bock in the California Hitch pattern. It perfectly mimicked the alewife the trout were feeding on.
This was a “forward-facing” day. We saw the trout on screen and watched them chasing the Chop Block before they nabbed it. To get the baits deeper, we shoved nail weights into them.
We fished the upper Susquehanna River from a jet boat and caught smallmouth bass from eddies that formed below rock shoals and gravel bars. We caught several smallies on Ned rigs that weighed 1 to 2 pounds.
Then we switched to 6-inch, Sexy Gizzard color Chop Blocks to match the big shad that run up from the lower river. That prompted bites from 3- and 4-pounders. We both caught a smallmouth that weighed over 4 pounds.
We cast 8- and 10-inch Chop Block glide baits from a small saltwater boat in brackish water for striped bass. They were feeding on bunker, a baitfish that looks a lot like a freshwater gizzard shad. We could see the stripers terrorizing baitfish on the surface.
We also used the same Chop Block to battle 50- to 100-pound tuna that were blowing bunker out of the water when we fished from a 38-foot rig seven miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.
Fishing the Chop Block
The single-jointed, soft plastic Chop Block has a wider ‘S-ing’ motion on a steady retrieve than most hard glidebaits. This is due to the back half of the Chop Block being slightly wider than the front half.
When I give the Chop Block a ‘twitch-twitch, pause’ cadence, it walks the dog underwater like a topwater stickbait. That chopping motion drives fish crazy.
On every cast with the Chop Block, at some point I would give the bait a hard twitch and immediately bow forward to allow slack in the line. That made the bait turn a 180-degree about face. No matter where I fished, about 75% of my bites came after I did this trick.
Many fish prefer to attack baitfish headfirst. A largemouth, for example, wants to swallow a bluegill headfirst to avoid the bluegill’s needle-sharp back fin. When a predatory fish follows or is drawn to a glidebait but doesn’t attack, they annihilate the bait when you do the 180.
It helps that the Chop Block has big, oversized eyes. There’s something about it turning around and looking at its potential attacker that stirs an instinctive kill, kill, kill shot.
Because the Chop Block collapses when a fish strikes, I get better hookups with it than with hard glidebaits.
Besides the large treble hook in the Chop Block’s belly, it also has a stinger treble in the tail section. A magnet in the bait keeps the stinger tight to the body. The stinger helped me land fish that swiped at the bait or gave it a head shot.
Unlike hard glidebaits that can set you back from $100 to more than $500, the Chop Block cost $16 to $30 depending on which size you buy. And because they are lighter than hard glidebaits of the same size, you don’t need specialty tackle. Just use your regular bass casting rods.
However, when Peter and I were battling the 50- to 100-pound tuna, we switched to heavy-duty Penn rods, big reels and big line.
You can learn more about how I fish the Chop Block and other baits at www.mikeiaconelli.com or www.youtube.com/c/goingike.
