Koppers Hollow Body Field Mouse

[WatterBoy]

Hey Joe (Jrob), have you had a chance to try out the Koppers Hollow Body Field Mouse yet? I know you wrote about wanting to try it this season. Or has anyone else tried it yet?

I am in Iowa fishing with my dad this weekend, and he warned me before I got here that the lake he fishes most often is almost exclusively a top-water lure lake now because of all the thick weeds/green slime/mats that are everywhere. So on the drive down yesterday I decided I would try my field mouse first and see how that went.

I have two of the 3/4 oz (3.5") version, one brown/white and one gray/white that I picked up at Cabela's this past winter. I tied the brown/white one on my 20 lb Power Pro Braided line, which was spooled on a Shimano Symetre spinning reel on a 7" H Cabela's Fish Eagle II rod. There were 25-35 mph winds, so I started out by casting with the wind. It wasn't long and I was hauling in a nice 17.5", 3lb 4oz LM. Before the night was over (just under 2 hours of fishing), I had landed 5 LM total, with a 3lb 12oz being the best and three others under two pounds. My dad caught only one -- a 2lb 12oz LM on his poppin' frog. I missed the hookset on one, had another nice one on for quite awhile and then lost him in some thick slop/weeds. I had a few other swirls, but ended up hooking 6 of the 7 that I attempted hooksets on, so that was encouraging.

I was out at the lake by 5:30 this morning, caught a small one on my second cast and another small one shortly after that. Within two hours I had caught 5 total, with a 3lb 4oz being the best. It was at least as windy as last night, if not even worse, so I was pleased that this lure would get their attention and entice them to hit it in such rough waters. I missed one hookset, so am now up to 11 of 13 for hookset percentage. And the other thing I should mention is that this thing casts a mile...even dead into a huge wind!

Later in the morning we headed to some gravel pits to see what was going on there. In less than 90 minutes there, I had landed 4 more on the mouse. Two of there were hawgs...for down here anyway...4lb 5oz, 18.0" and 4lb 2oz, 18.5". No missed hooksets...now sitting at 15 of 17, which is way better than I would do with a frog. I'm not sure whether to attribute that to the lure or to overly aggressive fish.

At this point I'm planning to pick up at least one more mouse before we head up to our cabin for the week next Friday afteroon!

If anyone has any questions, let me know and I'll try to answer them. I'll post pics after I get back home to MN tomorrow.

Dean