Spooks vs. Pencils

[MVbluefish]

Spooks always get me the most memorable topwater explosions. Sunrise in rough water has brought me many spooky acrobat feastivals over the years. It is true there are a lot of misses but the excitement they cause is worth a miss or two.

[stripercrazy]

I've been haveing better luck with spooks this year in the prov river...big bait...spooks to 6.5 oz 9-10 inches...I think spooks have better action, but pencils more distance...both are great plugs...in the river the pogys are 1/2 dead and the blues are picking them off...there not acting like a reg popper...more sideways movement swimming in circles when the blue is on them they dart left or right and swim as fast as they can with there forehead just about breaking the surface..I've been slow swimming pencils with there nose sticking out, with good luck...but there really hitting spooks...slapping them back and forth and then slow swimming them. one place there may be up to a 100 people in a line and who ever's throwing a spook is catching 5-1 over reg poppers.....funny thing is most people don't have spooks, the people on the fourm boards do.

[stripercrazy]

heres thimber w/a 7-8 inch,2-3oz spook caught fish. with that light action rod and a spook(red ceder)with alot of pop...thimber out fished us all that day

[nightfighter]

Friday night, rain, cloud cover, a little less surf than expected, was fishing local reef beside TDF. I had a number of hits on topwater and swimming plugs. But surprisingly, when I pulled out a white Salty Big Dawg spook, it out fished eels four to zip...... weird but good for me. Haven't heard what Kevin did ater I packed it in at 11pm.
That said, pencils are the lures I have most confidence in at dawn and dusk. But always have a spook.

[Finaddict]

Excellent, excellent points above - for me it depends upon the situation. My preference is always start with a pencil popper and I too vary the retrieve throughout the retrieve and then at other times by cast ... either super thrashy kicking up a lot of water while trying to keep them in the same spot as long as possible, sometimes slightly less thrashy and a little faster or sometimes just like a spook - with long and slow zig-zagging backing and forth across the water.

I find in faster currents and around the white water, kicking up extra water raises the fishs' attention more readily than working the plug too quickly without kicking up enough water.

But there are many times when the spooks will outfish the pencils ... you have to try them both each time you are plugging if one doesn't work over the other.

Similar to Nightfighter above, I found the spooks this past weekend were far more effective along the shoreline I was fishing.