I want to tell you how I use a popper when I am float tubing. About an hour and a half before sunset, I like to cast a popper to the shore close to a wall or structure until nightfall.
A year ago, I was fishing along a rock wall with my buddy, Ed, and he caught a nice largemouth black bass about 10 feet out from the wall. When he was releasing it, the bass vomited a blue belly (fence lizard). It most likely caught the lizard near the rock wall. The lizard probably was jumping from rock to rock and made an error and landed in the water to its doom. That could have been why my bargain bin green lizards from Wal-Mart were working throughout the day. With this theory in our subconscious we kept fishing the wall till late. I noticed 2 or 3 bass surface feeding near the wall and I switched to a popper. I began to catch bass much faster, and Ed finally said “Uncle” and switched to a popper too. We were both catching more and more fish until darkness ended the fishing. When we compared notes, we found that both of us had caught 90% of our fish when our poppers landed within 12 inches of the water’s edge or bounced off the rocks into the water. Landing two feet away from shore would rarely catch a fish. We would catch fish up to 10 feet from shore as we popped towards our float tubes, but the landing spot had to be close to the shoreline.
That is how I fish by a wall in the evening now. I float tube parallel to the wall about 40 feet out. The ideal situation is when a light breeze is blowing parallel to shore also and will just slowly take me with it and I don’t have to kick my flippers except to face the wall for the cast or when playing a fish. I try to keep from kicking a lot when I cast. That seemed to be a natural thing to do when casting. When I caught myself doing it, I got rid of that inclination in order to stay more stealthy. I cast every 3 to 5 feet to spots along the shoreline. Sometimes I’ll cast near the same spot three times with some different variations before going after the new place 5 feet away. I land the popper within 12 inches of the edge of the shore or less for best results and pop it towards me for 5 or 10 feet before casting again. Often I target the rocks near the water’s edge and have the popper bounce off and land in the water. That’s if I use a popper that can handle the impact. I have directions for making a Popper out of a Wacky Noodle on the web which is what I use. For fun, try waiting a full 30 seconds after it lands before you even twitch the popper. Let the bass see the popper barely moving like a relaxed frog. They can’t stand it. It just looks too appetizing.
I once was using one of my first homemade poppers with a small size hook that couldn’t hang on to fish very well. In a circular clearing inside a huge area choked with water plants I had the same bass hit this popper four times and I kept missing him. I cast again to see if I could trick him a fifth time. The popper landed and I waited and waited. I had time to think, “I bet I can out-wait him. After all his brain is supposed to be littler than mine”. I didn’t move the popper at all after the cast. After an honest minute and a half, he took the popper with a huge explosion. He got off again, but that taught me a lot about bass and poppers. Now that I’m writing about it, I wonder if I should have gone for six, but at the time I wanted to leave him with some dignity intact.
If you try this, wish you as much success as I have had.
