Poppers with Droppers- Is This a Thing?

I have been kicking around an idea for a couple of years now and only recently started to delve into the possibilities of making it come to fruition.  However, before we get to the idea, please indulge me in reverse engineering how this thought was assembled.

If you have been around fly fishing for awhile, you have probably seen rigs that incorporate two flies.  If you are new to fly fishing- yep, things just got even more complicated!  Regardless of your level of expertise, a hopper and dropper rig has been around quite a while and is used by many fly fishermen.  The idea is that a small nymph is tied below a hopper fly.  The hope is that a trout will either be interested in the hopper or the fly dropping below it which is referred to as the dropper.  IT makes total sense to cover two different feeding patterns and two different parts of the water column.  Personally, I've never fished a rig like this but then again, I don't get to fish many trout streams where the hopper bite is on but I'm not opposed to giving it a try under the right conditions.  Next, is another rig that I HAVE tried and had success on.

The line in this picture is exaggerated to show detail...I hope.

I have written a few times about tandem streamer rigs and have had some good success with this in the past.  I actually first saw this technique employed on an episode of The New Fly Fishermen.  On the show, a guy was throwing a double streamer rig for smallmouth bass and doing pretty well.  This got me thinking about using a double wooly bugger set-up in a farm pond.  To my surprise, I caught some nice bluegill and bigger bass than I expected on bluegill sized woolies.  I even missed out on catching two farm pond bass at the same time on my last outing.  I was inches away from completing this but the second bass missed the front fly.

So then I started thinking about a third type of rig.  Since I do more fly fishing for bass than trout (because I live closer to bass than trout), I started thinking about combining the best of both worlds.  For about two years now, I have thought about fishing a popper for bass with a small jig or nymph suspended below.  The popper would act as a strike indicator if the jig or nymph gets hit and if the popper get hit, well that's pretty obvious.  I'm not sure why I never deployed this set up, but it might have been the fact that casting two flies seems bulkier and more problematic than it really is.  If you can't tell, I'm a little averse to new techniques and strategies.  Maybe it is a sign of getting older where the old strategies that have worked in the past are just fine and there is no need to tinker with something that isn't broken.

On the other hand, I don't want to get into a rut or have a limited range of skills and experiences.  With that in mind, I am wanting to try some sort of  tandem rig with a popper up front.  I was pretty married to the idea of having a jig as the back fly until I talked to a thoughtful and inventive gentleman at Rainbow Fly Shop recently.  When I asked a group of fishermen about whether or not they had ever heard of a popper and dropper combo, one fella piped up "Oh yeah.  Sometimes I even throw and unweighted streamer behind a popper."

WAIT!  WHAT DID HE SAY?  My entire premise seemed to have been turned upside down.  This was something that I had never even considered but it made total sense.  It would probably look like a baitfish trying to chase down whatever is in distress on the surface (the popper).  If a bass didn't want to eat an injured frog or dragonfly, then maybe it would be interested in a preoccupied baitfish.  And that's when the wheels really got turning.

My next thought turned to a double popper rig.  A large on in the front to get attention and a small one in the back that would be less threatening.  Then I had the idea of  a double gurgler rig with one fly being black and the other one white.  That way, it would appeal to a feeding fish by using two different colors.  THEN, I thought about mouse fly with a streamer trailing behind it.  The streamer could be weighted to cover a deeper part of the water column or unweighted to look like it was swimming in the wake the mouse.  That's when my brainstorming reached a saturation point.

Popper, dropper, dropper set ups raced through my mind.  Popper, popper, dropper combos seemed to make sense.   Popper, popper, dropper, dropper rigs seemed extreme but even made sense at the time.  That's when the idea of a popper, dropper, popper, dropper came to the front of my cerebral cortex and I know that I had gone too far.  I realized that I needed to reign this puppy back in because I had allowed myself to go to an unsafe place.  I snapped back to reality.

I still liked the popper with a jig dropper, but the streamer dropper had me intrigued because of its merit.  So here I sit, waiting for an oil change to get done and thinking about the next time I am going to get to a farm pond and deploy my new ordinance.  Just like the creature tail post, I am cautiously optimistic about my project that has been sitting in the Show Me Fly Guy Research and Development Department.  The time to unleash this idea upon the freshwater ecosystem is drawing near.  Regardless of the outcome, at least I will see my idea come to fruition and try something new. This old dog could use a couple more tricks up his sleeve.  I will be sure to post an update when I have a success or failure to report.