Casting poppers

[Cris]

Been practicing casting poppers on size 2/0 and 4/0 hooks with #9 sage salt and sage one
When I watch the fly on the back cast I can see when it’s loading but when focusing on target casting to I struggle to feel the loading to know when to forward cast and often results in the popper dropping creating almost a figure of eight flight path for the fly
I did achieve better results with the one than the salt and obviously practice implies this isn’t my normal type of fly I cast
Any pointers to speed up the improvement welcome, I would post a vid but I’m worried people might hurt themselves laugh that hard

[Paul Arden]

Hi Cris,

fishing and casting poppers is what I use and teach day in day out. Watching the backcast is obviously out. Firstly I would look at two things.1 make sure that you lift the line all the way to the popper before you start your backcast stroke. If the line/leader is a little bit sunk it will pull the fly under otherwise and destroy your backcast (I actually grease the leader). 2 make sure that you send the backcast high and straight and not low or round the side or with an open loop. When making the lift you should be thinking about drawing straight back towards an imaginary bell hanging above and behind you.

4/0 and a 9WT outfit is really pushing things. What is the popper design? What is the leader design? And what fly line are you throwing?

A great topic!

Cheers, Paul

[Cris]

Rio permit line, it’s what I had on the reel
Variety of heads on the flys double barrel, howitser and the design Martin did a vid of recently
The line slack makes sense as I was practicing on grass so no line tension from water viscosity, and being a breezy day I was side casting often not high lifts
I like practicing with wind as it’s rarely a still day on the water

[Paul Arden]

And leader? That’s important too.

[Cris]

Think it’s a 20lb saltwater leader prob about 8ft now with 18inch of 19lb Fluro tippet

[nicholasfmoore]

Hi Cris,

Great topic! Paul is the man when it comes to poppers, as he's using them everyday his advice is always world class.

Honestly, do not worry about posting a video of yourself, it is a wonderful idea and quite a few people have done it already. The last chap we helped showed a night and day improvement within a week. I can guarantee that NOBODY will laugh/make fun of you on here. A video of yourself will speed up your improvement 10 fold.

Take a look at his excellent video on the PUALD cast



I too think you are asking too much from your #9 outfit

Without seeing a video, Cris, i suspect your back cast loop is wide, I've seen this quite a lot when i change people from open to closed stance (at first) it just gets a bit of getting used to, i too use Pauls excellent bell analogy. Ring the bell with the fly!

It may also help to think that on the 'back cast' you are thinking of casting the loop straight up into the air.

It might help you to think of it as an 'up cast', don't think straight back.

Leader might still be too thin for the fly. What do you think Paul?

Hope this helps?

Nick

[Cris]

Thanks, soon as I can get out and practice again will try these ideas and let you know how it goes and try to get a vid
Appreciate the input

[nicholasfmoore]

No problem, Cris. Hope it goes well!

[Paul Arden]

Hi Cris,

I don’t know about the 20lb leader. Certainly sounds about right. I wouldn’t put fluoro tippet on the end however because that’s always going to sink and you are going to need to be careful to always lift completely to the fly. If that is sunk (and it wants to sink) when you start your backcast casting stroke the fly gets pulled under and then pops out. Big problem. As I say I grease (currently Loon Payette Paste) all the way to the fly. This makes the pick up easier and a floating tippet doesn’t spook fish with a popper like it does with a dry fly But you always must lift to the fly.

Butt section diameter of your leader I don’t know. I’ve always built my own leaders. For a while I was using 80lb butt stepped down to 40lb (there are sharp snags here!). If you took 20lb and did a twisted leader that I make in the 20.000 days fishing video you will have 80lb/40lb/20lb. That should be an awesome leader. I would personally look at 30lb and don’t use pre stretched leader material that wants to be thin but fat leader material. It’s the diameter that you want not the imaginary breaking strain printed on the spool. I’m using “50lb” 0.60mm for my twisted snakehead leaders. That’s definitely on the thick side and you don’t need this for the salt; it’s more for pulling Snakehead out of snags of which we have many!

So I would think most of the problems would be related to either too thin a leader, starting the casting stroke with leader under or on the water (causing a bloop during the stroke) and then possibly too wide an arc on the backcast sending the popper down instead of up. This last one is very common and an easy fix is to turn the hand slightly to a ball throwing position - there is a thread on that recently.

A 4/0 hook particularly with pre-manufactured heads - I reckon that’s 12WT territory. I use a ten weight for most of my fishing. 1, 1/0 and 2/0. When I use an 8WT I use 1 and 1/0. So you might be asking a bit much from a 9WT line (which in this case I believe is a 10WT line according to AFFTA).

X I find a little too soft in the butt (for me). I had a guest here with this rod last week and a Flats Pro. I lost accuracy and speed with that compared to HT, even at short range which is the fishing here. Salt is very stiff in the butt, but with a 9 line that is really a 10, I would rather fish that combination. But that’s just me personally.

In this video I’m casting a popper, it’s a 1/0 Vince Loudmouth like Martyn ties in his video.
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And in this video about half way through I tie Qwek’s twisted leader...
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Shoot some video man. I’ve seen it all. Hell I’ve even done it myself too looking for advice
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(That was me trying to learn to distance cast )

Cheers, Paul

[Morsie]

I use a very long overhead stroke (lots of translation) with reasonably wide loops. The pause time is where most go wrong with poppers, loss of tension means starting again or lots of false casting to regain the correct timing.

Morsie