One of my thumper customers shared this report of our trip in August. He is very detailed in explaining each part of our trip that morning.

I wanted to share some thumper experiences with my Bobo’s Thumper. Jeff fished with me recently and we had a good trip. Since then I perfected the technique further and am convinced the Bobo’s Thumper is causing the schools of Stripers and Hybrids to follow the boat. Here are the conditions ... the lake has a thermocline at 22 feet so the fish will be on top of it looking up. This time of year the water clarity is good. The boat is moving at 0.8 mph thanks to the Minn Kita Terrova with iPilot. The rod setup is 10 pound Suffix Seige mono. This is extremely important because of bait presentation. The line is weighted down with a 1/4 oz. worm sinker held in place by a bobber stopper that keeps the sinker 3 feet above the hook. The hook is a number 2 Eagle Claw plain shank hook. The hook goes in one nostril and out the other. All these factors contribute to the natural presentation of the Shad as it swims above the fish. Multiple rods are fanned out from the rear of the boat. The distance behind the boat is a natural cast with a spinning rod. We also run two down rods under the boat with two ounces of weight and 25 pound fluorocarbon leaders so we can lift the fish into the boat. Same hooks as the back rods. One other detail, we tie the hooks on with a knot on the shank. This seems to prevent gut hooking the fish. If you do gut hook, cut the lines. The hooks we use will rust away, NEVER use stainless hooks. So the boat is slow trolling at 0.8 mph and the baits (4” to 6” Shad) appears to be swimming along naturally above the fish (13 to 14 feet deep). The competition are small baits swimming in schools, no wonder the fish prefer our baits. We turn the Bobo’s Thumper on as soon as the rods are set out. I have the frequency set fo 90 thumps per minute (as per Jeff’s recommendation). Once we encounter a school of fish, they seem to follow the boat. At first, I thought this was a coincidence, then I realized a school of fish could not be a mile long, that is when I realized they were following behind the boat because of the thumper. When you pass over a new school, they hit the down rods ... I know this because I watch one of the down rods with my Garmin Livescope. It is up to you to be responsible for the fishery, Stripers are not as hearty as Hybrids so catch your limit and go home. If you are catching Hybrids it is not so critical. With caught bait, the catch ratio should be about 50%, so if you want to catch 10 fish, take 20 baits. You will have better catch ratios with good bought bait, as high as two-thirds. When I take important people fishing (like Jeff Bobo) I always buy bait from Big Fish Outfitters. If your baits are dying as soon as you set them out, you might as well get in line with the pontoon boat guys trolling their Umbrella Rigs and Long A Bombers (and complaining about fishing being slow while we can’t keep our rods baited). I am convinced Stripers and Hybrids want to eat your Shad!

Nice report! I will try that this weekend!

Awesome post and fish. Thanks for sharing.

Great report!

One thing that wasn’t mentioned was the amount of time he spent untangling and re-tieing lines and leaders. He spent most of the trip up front rigging lines while I got to reel in most of the fish. Be sure to have a person on board willing to rig lines most of the time while others are having fun catching.
Using the 10 lb mono requires a lighter drag setting and long fight times with each fish. While a lot of fun it took more recovery time to get the fish to go back to deeper water. I was afraid the mortality rate would be higher with the water temperature in the mid 80’s. I never saw any floating fish as we continued to fish that one area all morning but possibly could have been later that day or the next. If I remember correctly a daily limit is 2 or 3 fish per person but I didn’t want to try to keep them edible for the 4 days I spent traveling around Tennessee and Arkansas.
I had an enjoyable time with him on a new to me lake with beautiful scenic views and a bunch of very nice fish.