Shallow Popping

Tactics and strategies for surface fishing in the coastal shallows.

They are heavy and wind resistant. They are hard to cast. And when you hook a fish, there is a better chance the hook will pull free than on most any other flies. So why in the world would you want to use a popper on the saltwater flats? Well, probably for the same reason you love using a dry fly. The strike. It can be spectacular—and nerve-racking. Just watch a skiff in which the angler is using a popper, and everyone on that skiff, the other angler, the guide…all have their eyes glued to the popper. No one wants to miss the moment of the strike.

I remember casting a yellow popper against a small mangrove island in the middle of a flat; the heavily overgrown mangrove branches reached several feet over the water. On the first pop, a baby tarpon crashed the popper and before I could set the hook he was in the air with a high jump. Then another jump, and then another. He made a backward summersault and landed over one of the highest mangrove branches and came crashing down through several other branches until finally hitting the water. The tarpon managed to dislodge the hook and leave the popper fastened to the lowest branch. It took me a few minutes to reach over the thick branches to rescue my popper, and I could still hear my fishing pal laughing as he leaned on the pushpole. The leader, all scratched up, had to be replaced. And you know what? I remember that little tarpon more than many others I’ve landed.

A popper floats mostly on top of the water as it is retrieved—while at rest, its back is getting a sun tan—so any predator is going to expose part of its body as he attempts to take it. And in doing so, he will also show his style.

A big shark will often lift his upper jaw out of the water and crash down on the popper. A snook will make one of the loudest “smacks” you’ve ever heard. A tarpon will often roll as he slurps the popper from the surface, showing lots of his silver side—and the bigger he is, the slower the whole “silver roll” will be. A big seatrout will hit the popper several times, before he just opens that big yellow mouth and inhales it. A big jack will often rush it with the blunt of his forehead pushing a wake and…well, you get the picture.

The lure of using a popper on the saltwater flats? It’s having your cake and eating it too. You have all the excitement of sight-casting and seeing fish come to the fly, but then he has to come out of the water to inhale it, often making for a spectacular hit. I don’t want it any better!

Anatomy of a Popper
A popper is nothing more than a very simply tied streamer with a head made out of a material that will float, such as hollow plastic, cork, balsa wood and the like. Plastic has always been too heavy for my taste, so all of my poppers today are either cork or balsa wood. (With cork grade getting worse every year, I tend to prefer balsa wood.)

The front of the popper is either flat or concave, so that when retrieved it will make a pop-gurgle that can often attract fish from quite a distance Read More » Read more – offline – from the current issue; subscribe to FRR.