The idea of utilizing professional anglers to design and develop baits has been around for eons. Spro has added some intricacies to that formula and has come up with a winner.

With the leadership of national sales head Tim Norman, a dedicated lure-design team headed by Syd Rives and the wherewithal to make it happen, Spro took that simple idea and refined it, and now the company is an industry leader in big-fish-catching baits.

“We tell all of our pros that we will build it and sell it if it is better than anything else on the market, and we've spent countless dollars and (research and development time) accomplishing this goal," said Norman. "We don’t want to be a me-too company, but rather one that gives the public the exact lure as designed."

The marketplace has been the beneficiary of their hard work. Fishing legend Roland Martin first came out with the Aruku Shad, a vibrating shad bait that can be fished at all depths.

Swimbait expert Bill Siemantel next came out with the BBZ, one of the hottest swimbaits ever designed. Then there was the Bronzeye Frog from topwater and frog expert Dean Rojas, the Lil' John crankbait from John Crews, the K-Finesse jig from Gary Klein and the Superstar spinnerbait from O.T. Fears (great for fishing dirty water with special blade colors and combinations). All of the newer baits should be arriving in stores in the next few weeks.

The Spro Advantage

Recently, Tim Norman and I had the opportunity to test Spro's entire arsenal at a 650-acre lake in lower Alabama. We caught bass on all of the baits, but I spent a majority of my time with a new Dean Rojas creation called the Hydro-Pop popper.

When a topwater bite is on, it’s very hard to put it down. It's balanced well, sits in the water horizontally with the tail down a bit ,and can be cast a country mile. The Hydro-Pop is another big-bass bait that is not like any other popper I have thrown.

Painstaking detail to colors, scale patterns, gill design and those killer eyes are all on this bait, but the differentiator is the size 5 Gamakatsu hooks. You can’t just add size 5s to other poppers and have them work correctly. This bait was specifically designed for those hooks.

“Most poppers come with size 6 trebles, and I have always felt that a size 5 would allow for more hookups and less missed fish,” said Rojas.

Our Tests

The proof of success with any lure in our eyes is if it catches bass, and I can tell you the Spro Hydro-Pop blew us away. Tim and I fished 2 separate days with the popper and caught over 25 fish in the 4- to 5-pound range, and had a big fish of 10 pounds! That’s right – a 10-pounder during a product test.

The amazing part of this story is that the big fish was caught at 11:30 a.m. on a sunny, hot day under a bluebird sky. This is without a doubt the best test I have ever done here at BassFan.

We fished the Hydro-Pop on a 7-foot-2 BCR G.Loomis Senko rod with a very soft tip, which worked extraordinarily well with this bait. It was teamed with a Quantum PT Series 5.11 reel and an unnamed 12-pound monofilament line. A Palomar knot was used to tie on the bait – for the best action, it has to be tied directly to the line tie.

We fished it on schooling bass over humps and ridges in 12 to 20 feet of water, around vegetation in the 3- to 9-foot range and over points in open water. Depths on the points ranged from 1 to 10 feet.

The techniques used were both a quick skipping pop with no pauses and a chugging presentation with long pauses. All fish came on super long casts. Both presentations worked equally well. Over the points we fished it fast, and over open water and around schoolers, the pauses seemed to work best.

The Bait

The Spro Hydro-Pop is a 2-inch bait that has rattles a centered vertical line-tie and an oval mouth opening. The color I fished was a frog pattern called "easy money." I particularly liked that the bait was opaque and changed color depending on the angle of vision.

We tweaked the bait by moving the knot upwards for skipping, horizontal for both spitting and chugging and downward for chugging and diving. All worked equally well, but with neutral fish we found that pushing the knot down produced the best chugging.

The bass couldn’t stand it. They murdered the bait, and many times it could not be seen in the fish’s mouth – only the line was visible.

Fall is a great time to use a popper and we recommend the Spro Hydro-Pop. It'll definitely help you put more bass in the boat.

Notable

> The Hydro-Pop comes in 6 colors and retails for $7.99. Our favorite colors included easy money and golden shiner.

> To visit Spro's website, click here.