 This is the Bass Pro Shops Topwater Only Budget Fishing Challenge. Me, Tara and my boy Connor are gonna go in Bass Pro Shops and we each have to pick out three topwater baits. Once we buy all our tackle, we're gonna hop into separate cars and hit as many ponds as we can to catch the fish we need. Whoever catches a fish on each of the three topwater baits wins the challenge. All right, boys and girls, we are inside of Bass Pro Shops now, so this is how this is gonna work. I need three topwater baits. Your girl Tara needs three topwater baits. And your boy Connor needs three topwater baits. How this is gonna work is the boy Connor is gonna go first. How this is gonna work is the boy Connor is gonna go first, so Connor, your first up, you got five minutes. Three topwater baits, you think you can do it? Before we get deeper into this video, only 27% of you all watching these videos are actually subscribed, so if you could, take the time and hit the subscribe button. It really helps the channel. I'd appreciate it. What do we think about that? What do you think about this? What do we think about all this? It's looking a little spicy. Connor is Mr. Buzzbait Master. Ooh. All right, not gonna lie, never throw one of these with the holes in the blade. Not sure how that actually works, but looks like good bait, so. Bait number one for me, let's keep going. All right, you got our first bait. We need to pick out a second one. I'm thinking something like a whopper plopper, so let's check these out. Color-wise, we got too many options. I don't know where to go here, but I will say this one here is something that I've thrown a lot in the past and I've had a lot of good luck on it, so we're actually gonna take that as a second lure. Seriously, why are you feeling me, dude? What's going on? I feel like you should get something different, Connor. Something kind of out of the ordinary, though, that we really haven't fished with the channel. You know what I mean? Okay, so this head-on brand makes a lot of weird stuff, but I don't know, what do you think about something like that? Like, these just look cool. They have like really cool patterns. They do have a prop on the back. I just don't, I don't know how they fish. The only thing that I could tell you about with this brand is the spook. I mean, they make the original super spook, but I've never tried one of those. I mean, you can go with that, man. So one thing is, I would love to throw a spook, but I'm fishing forro, so that's gonna be tough. Let's take a look at some of these. Okay, these are gonna be a little easier to fish than like a spook. I feel like white is always a good go-to in the middle of the day for topwater. If it was late, I'd go for something dark, but that actually looks like a pretty good bait right there. Devil's source? You fished a nice little prop bait, yes, on the river, man. That's a little river special, so I guess we'll see. That's something I haven't used on the channel, but let me see what you got, man. All right, we're loaded up. Buzz bait, plopper, prop bait. I like it, man. Good go. We're going to the cool fun section, because I know these boys and girls behind the camera, they ain't gonna pick nothing out like this. So look at this. We got the frog wall, okay? You guys know one of my favorite baits ever is a frog, but we're gonna get a little crazy with it. So the first thing's first, is I wanna get a poppin' pickle, but I just don't know if they have it. So we got some regular KVD sexy frogs here. We got some of the Bass Pro brand, which I've used before, just regular poppin' frog. I really don't want to go with a standard frog, okay? I'm not gonna be fishing pads or any thick vegetation, so I kinda wanna go with more of the poppin' frog. So if I can find the, oh baby, look at it up there. You guys already know. Listen, we gotta go with the poppin' pickle. This is a premium bait, something we've been fishing on the channel for years, and this is probably my favorite top order bait of all time. So that's definitely bait number one, poppin' pickle. We're gonna go to the treble hook section. I'm thinking about something maybe a whopper plopper, but then again, Connor picked out one, so we might go with something a little bit different. So one thing that Connor didn't pick out, and I have no idea why, because it's a bait that just catches a lot of fish, is a regular standard popper. So we have a couple different options here. We got some of the Berkeley ones, we got some Booyah ones, we got some Rebel ones. We got the Strike King poppers. As you guys know, primarily Strike King guy. We're gonna go with, I think that one right there, it's got a little bit of chrome on the bottom. It's actually a sunny day today. I think that's gonna be the key. I'm gonna throw a curve ball on these two. I'm gonna throw a little curve ball on y'all. You guys are gonna be like, I don't even know what you're thinking. So to win this challenge, boys, we're just gonna have three different top order baits. First person to catch a fish on each of the three baits wins the challenge, and you guys are gonna be thinking I'm a fool. All y'all watching and y'all, okay? But I'm gonna kick y'all's butt on it, because we have some experience with this puppy. Hear me out, okay? Oh no. What are you doing, dude? Listen, I'm going with a rat. What do you think, bro? We gotta spice it up, guys. And I think this thing's gonna catch a monster today. You guys better be embarrassed to find a whooping y'all on the rat. And listen, we had a lot of luck with it a couple of weeks ago. So I'm gonna push the boundaries, man. We're going with the rat. So this is what we got. Life target rat. Little popper, little go-to. Pop and pickle, baby. Now that I got my baits, Connor got his baits. Tara, it's your turn. Whatever you want, three baits. Time to charge now. It's gonna be better than your baits and Connor's baits. She's lying, dude. She's lying, bro. She's already gonna go with one of these, bro. You know why? She caught her PB on. I caught my PB on. She caught her PB on. And you are right. You are right. I am going with that. This one's pretty good and this one's pretty good, too. Do I trust you? We're going against each other, really. Do you trust them? Do you trust me? Should you trust me? Depends on the day. Definitely not. Depends on more days. Wait, is this the same one? Is this the same? No. They're a little different. They're a little different. Let's go with this one. I actually like them. I like that one, too. They're herbal, actually. Okay, so that's your first bait. All right, first one's got it. Let's go. So what is another bait that you've had a lot of confidence in? This is why I didn't pick it. Let's do it. Tara's copying me. What are you doing? I already know, I already know. Definitely, I love the white. I already know what I'm going for. I already know what I wanted. That's actually a different Wopper Wopper. So Conor got it. It's like the standard size. This one's actually a small Wopper, which I've never fished with. If you guys have fished with this, let us know what luck you've had. But you could catch a big one. I'm not even thinking, I don't even need a big one today. I just need three fish to beat you. Honestly, she has a strategy. I think we're stupid, Conor. She's going with the easy mode, to catch the three fish. I went and picked out a rat, which is probably the... You said it, I didn't. Listen, I'm catching a fish on that rat today, boys. All right, my last one, I'm gonna go with the Chugbug. I actually have never fished with a Chugbug before, but it's similar to the Wopper. It's the Wopper Chugbug. This is a bait that we use to crush them on, and I think you've thrown this in the past. I still don't know if you remember. It's very similar to a Popper. It's got a longer body, different presentation. I think it's a good bait. You said to work it just around like it was like that. Yeah, very similar. It's gonna have more of an aggressive splash, though. That's one thing to think about. If you wanna look at them, these are the winning baits today, so take a good look. I don't know about that. And the winner. Are those the winning baits? Those aren't the winning baits. They're the rap. Listen to the rap, bro. All right, boys, we all got our baits. I got three baits. Tara got three baits. The boy Connor got three baits. Let's go ahead and get out to our location. We're gonna split up in three different cars and get to fishing. All right, boys and girls, we are at the spot. The challenge is about to start. Connor's gonna be in his car. Your boy Noah's gonna be in his car. Okay, runny. And Tara, we're just gonna drop her off in like summer in the spot. Yeah, she's just gonna walk to wherever. So I gotta go drop her off. But the challenge is to catch a fish on each of the three baits. The first person to catch a fish on every bait wins the challenge. And the challenge starts now. All right, boys. We gotta get, come on, girl. All right, Tara, you ready? I'm faster than you. I gotta drop Tara off, guys. She doesn't have her car, so I'm just gonna go drop her off. Connor is gone. Our first spot is we gotta drop Tara off. And then after that, I'm gonna give you guys a little rundown on where we're gonna go hit. All right, girl. I will chamele you later. See ya. Peace. Bye. Bye. See you, loser. See ya, man. All right, boys and girls, we are about to go beat Noah and Connor. So I actually changed my game plan when I was driving over here to drop Tara off. I don't wanna go too far from where I'm at now. I have a spot in mind that I can go hit. And I think we can possibly go ahead and pop off the Popperfish out of the challenge. So we're gonna drive to a spot that's pretty close to here. These are my three baits. We got the Whopper Popper, the Popper, and the Chug Bug. I'm gonna go ahead and start off with the Whopper Popper. Let's get this puppy tied up. All right, first things first, we need to look at our baits real quick. So just to kind of go over what we got, we got the Popping Pickle, we got the Rat, which these are two sick baits, which I'm excited about. Those bites are gonna be insane. So make sure you guys wait for that. But we also have this Popper. I wanna go ahead and tie this on just to knock it out because these baits might take us a minute. And we might be on a time crunch because they could possibly smoke them. First things first, we have to spool up our braid through our eyelids. Let's go ahead and do that. By the way, I'm gonna pair this up on my Kicking Their Bass TV X-Luz combo. You guys wanna check any of them out, they're available on KickingTheBass.com. I have them linked down below. I appreciate anybody and everybody who supports me and the brand. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at our first location. I am tying up in the car, which I can explain that later, but we're gonna pick a bait. I'm not really sure what to go with. I think going with the Whopper Plopper is gonna be our best option. I feel like putting this on first will kind of just give us that momentum we need to get onto the other baits there. Tie this thing up a little uni knot, cinch that thing tight, and I will catch you guys at the pond. All right, boys. Well, this is the spot that we're gonna start off with. Got this little striking popper, caught a bunch of good fish on it this year. In this pond, I haven't caught a ton of fish in, but I've had a good bit of bites. I actually caught a really good one on a topwater around springtime. So I wanted to come back here and kind of try it out. I was actually going by this place. I'm like, why not come out here and give it a shot before we go out to the other spot that we were thinking about? Looks so good on the other side, boys. It's really shady. I'm actually gonna start to work around this side. This whole side of the bank is just covered with shade. That's probably where we need to be on a hot summer day. One just hit me, dude. He just like nibbled at it. What was that? It was literally like a little nibble. Like he just came up and kissed it. Might have been like a small bluegill or something. I'll tell you that account though. Any fish that we catch on this counts. Ooh, that sucks. We got a tree. Yeah, of course, man. How are you? What's up, buddy? How are you? Can you say hey? What's your name? Shaw. Shaw. How are you? Good. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Give me that. Just a smile, buddy. Nice meeting you guys. Thank you all here. All right, boys. Well, we caught a stick. That is not what we're looking for. But that's a start, all right? We can get a stick to bite. I think we can get a fish to bite. Oh, man. Just met a couple of supporters of the channel. It's always awesome when I see you guys in public. I really appreciate all y'all that watch the videos. It means a lot to me. I wanna be where I'm at today without y'all. All right, guys. Well, you missed my first 15 minutes of my exciting adventure. I was apparently taking photos with the GoPro instead of recording, so that's awesome. But we have made it out to our first location. It's probably gonna be a little difficult for me to mark the edges how I want. But I can kind of throw it in the middle, bring it close to these edges, and maybe we'll get lucky here. Ooh, big boil. Big boil on the bank right there. Oh my gosh, I just got slammed. The second that bit hit the water, you ate it. Come on. Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? Guys, I have a stick attached to my bait and he's hitting it. Oh my gosh, he just punched the bait out of the air. Ooh, this looks nice. Look at that pretty color over there. It's not gonna be easy to catch a fish on top water today, but I wouldn't do it. My biggest thing today too is stay impatient, working it slow. I, however, love the patroller. They do not have those at Bass Pro. I wish they did. That was sad, I was looking for it. Get right in that corner, oh dude, that looks so good. There we go boys, there we go, we're on. Just a big one too, I'm pretty sure. Oh that's a nice one, come on baby. I'm just coasting them in, coasting them in, coasting them in, come on now, come on now. Oh my gosh, this is a nice one, let's go. There we go boys, first fish of the day and we got our first lure complete. We worked that thing pretty slow back in that pocket and I'll tell you, I think that was the right move. Shady pocket, it's got a couple pipes back there. We threw it up there, we weren't working it too fast. I will say once I gave it an aggressive pop, that fish just came up and ate it. A good two and a half pounder, really thick and healthy fish and that is the way to start the video, one lure down boys. All right baby, thank you for biting. Oh that's amazing guys, that is amazing. There she goes. Let's get on to the next spot and try to throw this frog. So this next spot that we're gonna go to is actually a drain pond that we fished in the past and I think I might be able to get one on that poppin' pickle. So we're gonna head out there, we got a little drive and get to fishing, maybe we can get us a dang biggin' on that frog. We had to run back to the other side of the pond, we had some golfers coming out. Definitely not fishing on a golf course and if I was, I'm doing it completely legally. We got a strategy here. I cut off the old whopper plopper and tied this on. I'm struggling, so these fish are smoking it but the only problem is, they're stacked up under this like grass and like this is the only bait that I can throw that I can even get it close to those edges. So we tied that on, we're going to leave this guy to the side and we're gonna get back in there. Get it right up to those edges. Oh this is gonna get ruined in here. I can feel it already. I got him, I got him. Get in there baby. Come on, come on, come on. There we go. Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. Okay, okay. Just chill out for me one second. Yes sir. Boom, look at that boys. That is what I'm talking about. Guess all it took was taking that one bait off and was able to get that bait right up on that bank and he smoked it. So thank you buddy. There we go. All right, so we pretty much finished the popper. We are done with that bait and we have two more baits. So we got the poppin' pickle and we got the rat. You guys better stay tuned till the end of the video because I have something crazy playing for this rat and it's probably gonna blow y'all's minds. So stay tuned for that. I'm saving that for last. I'm gonna tie on this poppin' pickle here and get the work. I'll show you guys what pond rat once we get down there. And we're gonna tie this poppin' pickle on just with a standard uni knot. All right, we are good to go. All right boys, so this is the pond that we're at. This is actually a pond that was drained a few months ago and it actually looks a lot different. The water is actually higher than it was before too. There was actually a whole sandbar right here that was out of the water. We're gonna start throwing around here. I've actually had a lot of luck in the past on frogs. I might be able to pluck one out of here, especially in this little shade line. There's a bass chasing bait. There's literally a bass chasing bait. Oh my gosh. Boys, I literally saw them right there. I literally saw them. Oh, come on now. Please hit the poppin' pickle dude. So there's a bunch of baitfish that are up here on this little tiny like sandy flat and that bass came out of nowhere and just started eating them. Dude, come on now. You don't want those little baitfish. You want a big old poppin' pickle now. Come on, sunny day. That was actually a good little fish, man. It looked like about a two and a half. Look at about the size of that last one. That was crazy, man. Dude, I thought we were gonna throw in there and he was just gonna eat it right away. That would have been insane. I guess that's a good sign though. See some activity. Fish chasing bait. That's always what you wanna see. Maybe this bass would be angry and just come out of nowhere and eat this thing. Just comparing this poppin' pickle to the bait that he's eating. Dude, it's like five times the size. All right guys, we gotta be pretty quick here. Gotta tie this other bait on before these golfers get back out and maybe we can keep this momentum moving and get onto our third bait. So I'm gonna go with this one. I actually have no idea how these things swim. I've never fished one. Now this bait does have treble hooks just like the whopper plopper. So it's definitely gonna be a little more difficult than throwing that buzz bait. But who knows, this thing could give off a completely different action than anything these fish have ever seen. So in turn, that might mean we'll get a bite pretty quick. Let's go and find out. These ponds are a bust. Nothing? Not a nibble? Nothing. Really? Okay. Nothing. Well let's take you to a different pond because I'm about to go somewhere else. I've caught one fish. Conner's probably already caught all his fish by now, but I don't know that. I still have time to beat you. All right. Well I will be your Uber driver for the day and take you to a new pond. You're almost my Uber driver. You're not wrong. All right you guys, Noah just dropped me off at another pond. You got the popper on. You know I love this popper because I caught my PB on it. Oh, he's swimming with it. He's swimming with it. Oh my gosh. These swimmers are fast. What in the world? Oh, what am I hung up? Oh, it got like stuck on a tree on the bottom. Oh my, no. Oh, that was my fish you guys. Oh, that was so weird. Oh my gosh. Across the entire pond. He just hit that. All right boys, we haven't gave the poppin' pickle too much time, but I'm at a spot where I plan on smacking a crazy fish on this rat. So we're gonna go ahead and tie it up. We'll go back to the poppin' pickle after this. But I'm telling you, if we can pull off what we're about to do, you guys are about to see some insanity. I'll tell you that right now. There's our little rat. Let's tie it on. All right guys, little update here. This bait, this bait sucks. Oh my gosh, he came off. All right, maybe the strategy is just the slow retrieve. We'll try it. Just gonna throw that thing out there, retrieve it nice and slow, and it looks horrible. Good. Boys and girls, welcome to the swamp. This is the swamp bridge that we fished in one of the recent episodes. It's got some really big mudfish in here that might wanna eat this little rat here. Or it can even have some big bass or gar or anything that really would want to eat this. I doubt a gar is gonna eat it, but a mudfish or a bass, I think would smack this rat. There's a gar right there, dudes. Watch this. Look, there's a gar right there. Did you not see it? Oh, he's turning, he's turning. Just imagine I catch a gar on this rat. Just imagine, can you guys see that? He's turning his nose, he's right on it. Oh, he's behind it, he's right under it. Oh, dude, he had it, he freaking had it, bro. Oh, we know he bit my tail off. Wait, did he? No, he didn't. Thank God, he just has a smaller tail. Okay, that was crazy, boys. I love how I'm walking up and I'm like, a gar won't eat this, and I literally see a gar right away and he tries to eat it. What was I doing? I even saw them ripple, I knew it was coming. Oh my gosh, they're exploding everywhere. Come on, fish. I don't see them, which is crazy because I'm standing on this bridge and there's kids screaming Bloody Mary in the woods back there somewhere. I don't know, I don't know if I should be concerned. Oh, there's a gar, there's a gar behind me. Oh, he's about to eat it. Come on, baby. Oh, he's right under it, boys. He's right under my freaking rat. Please eat it, baby. He's sniffing it. I know you want that little rat tail. Come on now. I'm telling you, to catch one of these gar, we're gonna have to hook set so hard. He's following it here. I'm gonna throw it right back in there. Right above his head. Come on, baby. Oh, here he comes. Oh, this is crazy. Come on. Oh, he just doesn't want it. Oh, he's behind it, he's behind it. It might, that was a little fast, in my opinion, for a gar. Oh dude, he's still tailing it. I can't see anything here. Oh, he's on it. Oh, dude. Oh, hold on. Dude, that was an insane boiler right there. Oh, I just wish he would have blew up on it. Connor, cut that out. What was that? Mother freaker. Oh my gosh, that had to have been like, no way that was a bat. Oh my gosh, that was a crazy eat. That was a crazy eat. Get up here. There we go. Oh my gosh. What a eat by that fish. Holy cow. Let's take this guy off the hook. This fish are nice and aggressive. Well, there we go. That is our second fish. That bait was really testing my patience, but I guess we kind of figured it out, just straight retrieve. But there we go. See you, dude. All the way up under the bridge, boys. I had to have been a gar. See if it was a mudfish, would have been a different story. You would have exploded on that. Well guys, I really wanted to try this, but we're just gonna have to keep on moving. I thought I could pull it off. That doesn't mean we can't catch one somewhere else on a rat though. I got one. It's deep. Oh, yes. Oh, this feels so good. I don't care what size you are. Give it to me. Give it to me. Oh my gosh. We're on the board. We're on the board. Yes, we're on the board. Oh, buddy. You might not be big, but I am so excited at all. That felt so good. Yes. Of course, the GoPro died on that release. We are at a new spot and I still have the rat on. I was wanting to throw the poppin' pickle here. I was like, I might as well just throw the rat. Because there's a pipe right here in this corner and I'm gonna try to skip this rat in here and catch one of these big old bass, man. I've thrown a poppin' pickle up in this pipe before and caught a five and a half pounder. So there's no telling what we could get to eat this rat. And that goose needs to be quiet, man. He's just barking his head off over there. Seems like a natural presentation. Old rat coming out of the sewer. Oh, we're all the way in there. I'm telling you, if we get a bite, it's gonna echo. Oh my lord. That is the most annoying goose in history, I swear. Oh, it's that bad. Oh yeah. Boys, I was hoping to get an explosion in there. It did not happen, but that is okay. I'll just keep casting around here. Some big fish in this pond. It cranked for me, baby. Looks so appetizing. If I was a fish, I'd definitely be eating this thing. It's almost a little too subtle for me, man. The presentation's so clean, but it's just a little quiet. All right, we're gonna keep moving. We are tying on this guy one more time. Just a nice little uni knot. These fish are going crazy. And that last one actually caught it, like right out in the middle. So I don't know. Maybe they'll eat this thing. Maybe not. Let's go find out. I'm feeling a little bit more confident with it just because out of all the baits I've thrown in here, I had by far the most hits on this one. So I'm thinking kind of toss this thing around. Hopefully we can get one. If not, we might have to jump to another spot, but we'll see you here in a minute. All right, boys traveling to our next spot. Look at that little boil right there. Look at how good this looks. Little shade line right there. Come on, fishy. So boys, I came out to this pond because there's usually a lot of slop on the water. And all the grass is gone, which is pretty surprising because about a month ago I came out here and there was so much grass. There was like so much film on top of the water. That was just not the case today, but I still think we could get some bites in here. I saw a fish swim off right out here. It's actually a really shallow flat, super shallow right here. These fish are hanging off the bank. I like never really go anywhere to throw a frog off the bank. But if there's a place that we'll get a bite, it's probably this one. Oh, we got a turtle chasing the frog, boys. He's chasing it. Oh my God. There we go. There we go, boys. Oh, it's a nice one too. It's a freaking nice one. Come on, boy. Come on, boy. Come on, boy. Let's go. Let's freaking go. We choked that frog. Dude, I literally had a turtle chasing my frog and I started to reel it in and he literally hammered it. And that is a nice close to two pounder right there. Choked that poppin' pickle and we are on to our third and final bait. Let's go, baby. Thank you for biting, buddy. I cannot believe that, guys. I literally had a turtle chasing it. And he came out of nowhere and just freaking slammed it. That is amazing. All right, boys. Well, we are kind of far away from the car. We got to go back and tie on this rat. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, that was an insane eat. What the heck? Get on the bait. Oh, it's a mudfish? Oh my gosh. That was a crazy eat. Look there, boys. Fish number three against a big old mudfish. Let's get this guy back into water. Thank you, buddy.