The author discoverd excellent topwater action where a shallow cut transitioned to a 20-foot dropoff.

A glimmer of light silhouetted arid foothills as we motored through flooded timber and around a few small islands into the main arm of the big lake. Our guide, Carlos, headed straight toward our topwater hole, a 200-yard stretch of pastureland bank broken by two wide, shallow cuts.

A sharp dropoff into 20 feet of water made the edge ideal for topwater, and an overcast sky and a moderate wind promised an extended bite. Dave Burkhardt of Clermont and I were sampling Lake El Salto in northwestern Mexico. Both of us love topwater fishing, and we’d had maybe an hour of surface activity on the first two days of our trip, primarily right at this same spot.

Largemouth bass were breaking the surface as we pulled up and dropped the trolling motor. Dave tossed to one splash while I shot my bait at another one. It was not our first double or even our tenth, but our confidence boost was maxed out. The two fish, weighing somewhere between three and four pounds, were quickly brought to the boat and released.

Dave again tossed the edge of the drop in front of the thin-water cut and was walking his cigar-type minnow back along the surface when a big fish tore into it and headed for the depths. He set back on the rod and hung on. Fortunately, the bass headed away from the only visible submerged tree in that area.

“Keep it coming up,” Carlos instructed. “There are some trees below the surface too.”

“How big is it?” I asked, straining to catch a glimpse of the fish.

“Don’t know,” Dave replied, as he ran forward to the bow and held his rod high as I ducked under it. The fish circled the boat and wallowed on the surface about 20 feet out.

Submerged timber comprises a great deal of habitat on El Salito.

“That’s a butterball,” I said as our guide slipped the net under the fish.

“Or a watermelon,” my excited partner quipped. “It should go 10 pounds!”

The fish had a small head and fat body on a relatively short frame. The proportions made guessing difficult for us Florida boys. Both Dave and Carlos had sworn the first day that one of my big fish was a 10-pounder. It weighed a little over 9 on our scale.

Dave’s fish was shorter, but a lot fatter. It looked huge to me. We had it on the scale soon and they were right on this one: Almost 10 11/2 pounds.

Fish continued to feed on or near the surface in the dim light. My biggest of the day was maybe three inches longer than Dave’s but was much leaner. Compared to the typical bass we catch in Florida, it was on the plump side for sure.

My hopes for a double-digit fish were dashed when the scale showed only 9 31/4 pounds. Still, that’s a nice fish anywhere and I was happy.

We headed to the Anglers Inn for lunch and a siesta at 11 a.m. We had landed 100 largemouths of varying sizes and some 80 of them on topwater plugs. Most were 3 to 5 pounds and plenty were 6 or 7.

We added another 60 bass to our day’s tally after lunch on Texas- and Carolina-rigged worms and crankbaits. It was a big day for us, but the first two hadn’t been too shabby, either. Dave and I had caught and released 100 on day one up to 9 pounds and 80 on day two.

Lake El Salto, at the base of the Sierra Madre Mountains, only 90 minutes from the coastal resort city of Mazatlan, is not just a numbers lake. These waters today have Mexico’s biggest largemouth bass, according to Burkhardt. This was his tenth visit to a lake where he has averaged two 10-plus pounders on each of his previous ventures. His biggest was a whopper 15-pound, 2-ounce largemouth, and on that day, his five largest bass totaled a little over 52 pounds!