Popping Tailor

[anthony f]

Well people I am going to have a go at writing a piece on one of the forms of fishing I get great enjoyment from. I hope you can get something out of it and maybe try this form of fishing. The form is throwing poppers off the rocks for tailor. In saying that tailor will not be the only customer you will run into, but considering I am not in the north of our great land the species will be more standard.

The gear doesn’t have to be all that fancy and almost any general purpose rock/beach or spin stick will do the job. Personally I use a ten or twelve foot rod with a thread-line but plenty of better fisher people than me will swear by the good old Alvey. If you intend to do a bit of this style or any other spinning from the rocks remember a lot of casting with heavier un-balanced gear will wear you out far quicker and might even throw a few dollars your local physios way. Line is best kept as light as is practical and I would say around 25lb mono would be a good start. If you go too heavy on the line it will drastically affect your casting distance. If you go to light sooner or later you will have one of those casts that goes wrong with the line catching and you can watch your lure sail off into the distance line not attached. It always makes me wonder when this happens “ hey, I didn’t think I could cast that far !! “.

Another reason not to fish too light is that it is not going to be any assistance to you in landing fish or stopping large fish going to where they want to go. Braid is also a great option and I do use this myself with a leader but braid is expensive and top shotting your reel with the 150yard spools just doesn’t work. I have tried E-bay stuff to try and cut cost and quality can be an issue. The choice is purely your own and what fits into your budget.

Note the fish head coughed up and how the rear treble has broke free in cheek

The lures I prefer to use will have some size and some weight about them for the reason being casting distance may well be needed to get to those areas a little further out and you obviously get to work a larger area. I am generally chasing that larger fish. How they are worked could be open to much debate, and this is only a view of what I like to do. Funny enough I like to use them more like a slightly up-beat bass style of fishing with a bit of a skitter across the surface then a pause or even the whiting style with a mid-paced bloop across the surface, but very rarely do I use the race back method. In the end - I will try anything to get a result.

In casting you should think about each cast and not blindly cast a lure off to the horizon. Have an area in mind and cast so your lure can spend the most time in the water without a wave taking it out of your control. To do this set your target and when a wave/wash is about to go through the area, cast over the top of it. This will give you the most amount of time to work the area before the next wave comes. Poppers are a really fisher friendly lure that can go where most things cannot, but besides the cast snap off way, the best way to lose them is to let a wave catch them and have them in the waves control, not yours!

The tailor go well with jumping and throwing hooks the go. To a bait fish, a tailor must be a scary proposition. They do not seem to like dirty water and do hunt through the wash. They can be very single minded and only take a slice that looks like a small white-bait if that is what they are eating. A change of tactic could make all the difference.

As with all rock fishing, IT IS DANGEROUS so correct wear and wits are necessary. In all it is a great feeling to be popping along, see this great explosion.

[Hodgey]

A thoroughly enjoyable and informative read, mate. Fishing with surface lures is visually spectacular, for both angler and observer alike. It is also tremendously addictive

Cheers

Hodgey

[gibodfisho]

Good read TDH.

What time of day, tides and season do you like up on the north coast?

What other species of fish do you catch on the poppers?

Cheers Dave

[caranx]

For fish like tailor and salmon which try to throw the hooks, changing the rear hooks to singles such as decoy jig singles with the inline eye makes a big difference.

Braid for me works best giving longer casts and a more direct feel of the popper. On eggbeaters, a rod length of mono on the end gives the line a bit a stretch for shock absorption. On overheads stick with more mono and use the braid as backing for species which pull a lot of line. Poppering is great fun !

[stinger]

that was a worthwhile read

thanks cameron

[anthony f]

Thanks for the interest and yep popping is fun way to fish if your in fresh or salt water and bass popping is probably my favourite of all. Caranx, good extra,s there and I run a single hook off the back of metal spinners and it does put a stop to hooks being thrown.Dave as with most tailor spinning dusk and dawn are the go and as for tide, this only relates to which rocks I am fishing and some rocks are only suitable at various stages of the tide. As for what else I caught there is salmon, northern blue fin, the trav group and the one I haven,t caught but I am putting in an effort at catching the jewfish! In condition that I think are right I will slow the whole think down maybe up size the lure and target them. So far I have hooked 2 and seen about 6 just miss the popper, this alone nearly makes you wet yourself. One of the two I hook was a beast probably 25kgs plus, I thought I had it as it was heading in a safe direction until it turn around swam slowly across the front of me, then put its foot down and headed at a cunji reef at about 3000 miles per hour and that was the end of that. I have heard of a bloke further up the coast that fisher jew on popper with results and I have been told to run a ball sinker in front of it to keep the nose under water. I just know from what I have seen, I will keep going after that personal goal. Hey they don,t seem to mind boofing mullet off the surface!!!

[A.dawg]

Well read

Around how big and heavy are the poppers u use for tailor?