Have any of you ever used a dropper rig for bass? If so, what did you use for the floating fly? Poppers only? How long would you recommend to tie your dropper fly? 1-3 ft? What are you favorite dropper flies? leeches, buggers, or something smaller. I'll be throwing a 8 wt. so any recommendations for fly size is welcome.

I have some home made pencil poppers and may tie a bead head bugger to it. I also have some smaller bonefish flies (in tan) which may be good crawdad simulators. Just wondering how much of a pain it will be to cast the darn thing. I'm hoping for a double (striper/smallie) at the same time. Is that too greedy?

I typically fish with casts of 3 flys, and match them to the line, sinking line/wet flies, floating line floating flies - though occasionally a sinking nyph as the last one on the floating line.
I do this to quickly find what's biting - though its not uncommon that everything is being consumed by some form of fish.
I wouldn't keep your hopes up of getting more than one fish on at any one time. I'm sure it has happened in the past, but when a fly is taken it kinda messes up your retrieve/presentation of the other flies
I rarely have issues casting 3 fly casts, but then again I've been doing it on & off going on 20 years now.
The way I measure out the line is take one arms and chest length, cut line, and tie a blood knot to the next stretch - only cutting the excess line off the next leader/dropper stretch so you have the leading one connected to each fly.
You can vary the weight of each piece of line to get better presentation too.
I've heard of people putting casts of up to 5 flys together using this technique.

Interesting! The pencil popper is pretty bulky by itself. Maybe I should lighten the load a bit using a gurlger (that fly casts a mile) and size down on the dropper. I was kind of kidding with the double. But how many times have we brought in fish and seen another one tailing behind it?

Boilermaker

Open loops of course, and a hat and sunglasses. But I would think that the size of flies and the length of dropper tippet would depend upon the casting ability of the angler and the equipment being used. Another important consideration is, all else being equal, what is the angler willing to put with in throwing fat loops, ducking and dealing with the potential hassle of the dropper rig?

I fish a #10 Gurgle-Pop with about 18-24" of tippet and a PT nymph or some similar wet/nymph/streamer pattern that is at least #10 or smaller. So far this has been completely workable on my three weight by casting sloooow and ooooopen.

Gearing up like you are talking about, I'd say head out to the lake and take along plenty of variations to experiment with. I am sure that you'll find a happy combo to work with.

Tight Lines

Dude I'm mad. I just realized that I haven't caught a fish on my fly rod since April! I better catch something soon or else I have to go back to my old spinning combo!

To avoid casting headakes and having to untangle a mess every other cast, make sure your dropper line is no longer than two feet. I use 5 lb. mono @ 18" length. Use floating leader and short tippet for better presentation and target. Avoid heavy flies. A wet, very slow sinker works best. A heavy fly will try to wrapp arount the popper at each rod position and will become a frustrating mess and never will hit your target. If you are just having fun perch jerking, it is not uncommon to have fish on both at once. The first fish will usually hit the dropper and take off with the popper close behind. This sends the other fish into an automatic feeding frenzy attacking the first fish and anything close by. Two fish on the same line is like fighting a large bass. You will see other fish follow them in trying to snatch the fly out of your hooked fish. It helps to remove the popper fish first then the dropper. The dropper fish keeps weight on the line and you will less likely get tangled up or stung by one of your on hooks.
Good luck!