If Ya Wanna Know Anything About a "Whopper," Just Ask an Angler

Mention "whopper plopper" around a group of today's anglers, and most of 'em likely will know exactly what you're talking about. In case you're one who's not yet familiar, however, the whopper plopper is a fishing lure designed by legendary angler and TV personality, Larry Dahlberg.

The River2Sea whopper plopper delivers a sputtering topwater disruption that just begs to be crushed. Well-known for its ability to catch fish, as evidenced by this photo of an 11-and-a-half-pound bass caught by a kayaker, Dahlberg and the folks at River2Sea originally created the whopper plopper for musky, but once largemouth and smallmouth started crushing it, the bait was altered to meet the needs of bass anglers.

Whether you crawl it super slow, so you can't even hear the tail, just the tiny glass beads sizzling inside its body, or you speed it up so it throws water like a swamp buggy, with the same deep, hollow, whopper-plopping, fish-catching sound as the original, the whopper plopper gets bit. It casts a mile, and its ability to work at the widest possible range of speeds makes it a great tool for homing in on the most productive speeds and rhythms for that particular day. Available in a variety of colors, the River2Sea whopper plopper's tail is also perfectly tuned right out of the box, so it stays flexible and works properly forever.

Similarly, if you mention Whopper Stopper to a group of anglers, you'll probably have at least a few remember that was the name of an old lure company, based in Sherman, TX. They manufactured such antique classics as the hellcat, hellraiser, hellbender, bayou boogie, whirlybird, and dirtybird.

And finally, we've all heard our share of whopper fish stories over the years. How many, though, remember the one about the late-A. J. (Junior) Samples of Cumming, GA?

As Joel Vance, retired veteran writer with the Missouri Conservation Department, once wrote (in the 1990s), "Junior couldn't read cue cards, looked like 40 miles of bad road, and couldn't sing. But he did one thing better than anyone else ever has, and it made him famous. He told history's greatest fish lie. Junior became a star on the syndicated country television variety show 'Hee Haw' because of a taped interview he made in 1967 with Jim Morrison, then-chief of information for the Georgia Game and Fish Department.

"Junior (pictured left) claimed he had caught a world-record largemouth bass from Georgia's Lake Lanier, a sprawling impoundment just across the road from Cumming. The fish allegedly weighed 22 pounds, 9 ounces. Every schoolboy knows the world record is 22 pounds, 4 ounces, caught in 1932 by George Perry from Montgomery Lake, Georgia. It is the outdoors equivalent of Joe DiMaggio's streak of hitting in 56 straight games... .

"Junior claimed he ate the world-record bass. 'Ah's lookin' fer sumpin tuh eat!' he declared. That, of course, would have invalidated his claim, even if it had been true. But he told Morrison the fish had been weighed in several places around the lake. He just couldn't remember where. 'Ah don't know. Ah was dronk,' he drawled. Morrison remembered driving him all around the lake, looking for who had weighed it and even found someone who said he'd seen the fish.

"Junior said he was fishing about a mile below Bald Ridge Marina, on a 'smerged' (submerged) island. 'Ah dropped mah anchor rock there on the island,' he said, 'and ah peetched my li'l Zebco 33 outfit out. Ah had some heavy equipment there in the boat, and ah wuz gonna put uh big lizard on them an' git ready for uh big bass, an' ah just got one hooked, an' ah looked over there an' seed my line a-stretchin' out, an' I reached down and caught 'im. When ah jerked 'im, ah thinks ah'm hung, fer it dint go nowhere when ah jerked.'

"The fight, though, was unspectacular. Junior knew better than to embellish a good lie so much it sounded like a lie. 'After he come up and stood on that tail and shuck that head three or four times, he jist turnt over on his side, and ah just drug 'im right on in,' Junior said.

"He showed Morrison the head of the fish, and the size of it astounded him. Only a world-record bass could have such a head...assuming the decomposing remains were those of a bass. By the time Morrison saw the head, it was several days old and stinking. 'It was light-colored for a bass, but I figured a largemouth bass after three or four days of rotting might get a little lighter colored,' Morrison remarked.

"When Morrison returned to Atlanta, he woke up a fisheries biologist and showed him the fish head by the light of a flashlight...and the biologist said, 'Jim, this is the finest bass that's ever lived in the world.'

"That was verification enough for Morrison. The next morning, he ran into Aubrey Morris, a reporter for Atlanta radio station WSB and told him the story. Morris aired the story almost instantly.

"'The cat was out of the bag,' Morrison said. However, then a biologist who'd worked in saltwater got a look at the head and said, 'Hell, Jim, that ain't no bass; that's a red grouper.'

"Hoax or not, the tape was country funny, and Morrison played it on a Game and Fish Department radio show twice--once right after it was made and again about six months later. Each time, he was flooded with calls from people who were tickled by it... ."

Chart Records eventually obtained the tape, added some background music, and released it as a single entitled "World's Biggest Whopper" (see right).

If there's a bottom line to all these examples, I reckon it would have to be that anglers may be your best authoritative source when it comes to explaining nearly anything about a "whopper." However, ya need to be careful about just how much to believe of what they tell you. In other words, don't swallow it hook, line and sinker.