Problems with poppers.

I've just recently started fly fishing in warm water, my only other experience with fly fishing was for trout up in Colorado. My dry flys will float with no issue, in still water or current, but my small bass and panfish poppers just cant seem to stay floating for long and I cant get any good action with them. Do I need to be using a monofilament only leader for poppers and other warm water topwater lures?

Thank you in advance!

Best to use mono and not flouro. What poppers are you using. Cork and high density foam should be no problem if assembled correctly. Dear hair will begin to sink if not treated.

FWIW, I am using flouro, but just on the tippit.

Currently, my leaders are hand tied consisting of a 5ft 25lb mono and 2ft 20lb mono leader. On the end of the 20lb mono, I am tying a 2ft 14lb flouro leader. I am not having any problems with poppers in this 8wt setup. But your poppers could be lighter than mine as well.

Duane

They are from a Betts assortment kit, the larger poppers float fine but the smaller ones cant seem to stay afloat. Do you have any recommendation of brands for mono leaders?

You need to put floatant on them and you can put some on your line. Need to use mono, espically on smaller dries

Something else is at play here, because a flouro vs. mono leader shouldn't be doing this. I use flouro tippet all the time on my poppers and even the smallest panfish bugs have no trouble floating. Is your whole leader flouro?

As far as mono leaders, it's cheapest to simply tie your own. For bass bugs I've used 6ft of straight mono with great success before.

If you want to tie a warm water tapered leader, start with equal three foot sections of 25-30 lb. mono for the butt, then 15-20, and a tippet of 10-12. You can then go finer if the fish are spooky or if water conditions necessitate it.

MassAction, yes my whole leader is flouro. My dry flies for trout fishing arent having this problem, only the small poppers. Who knows, maybe im fishing them wrong!

If your whole leader is fluro, unless your using floatant, no way your dries for trout are staying on top. They are fished the same

Can you post a picture of the small poppers that do not float?

I have a couple of crappy little bluegill bugs that sink after a few casts. They just get waterlogged. The fluoro doesn’t help, but that’s not the real problem. I think mine are also the betts ones.

Try adding some floatant paste, or fish them as streamers. It works just as well, sometimes better

Thanks for the responses everyone! I changed to a tapered mono leader, added floatant and the smaller poppers work better now.

Smurfs, the dry flies with floatant had no problem staying afloat with my fluro leaders. I think the problem was the action of popping the poppers with fluro, they couldn't resurface after being puled slightly under during the "popping" action.

Fingerless, thanks for the post!!


I learned a couple fo tricks off this one!!!


Duane