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My favourite surf fishing rig


Volitan

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Firstly, my apologies if this is commonplace or has been seen here before.

Anyway, this is my new favourite surf fishing rig. A berley cage and two surf poppers. I put 2 or 3 pilchards in the berley cage, close it up with a couple of cable ties, and throw it out as is. Then I spike the rod and leave it.

Does it work? Yes indeed. Not as well as baited hooks or soft plastics of course, but it’s set and forget so its valuable in other ways. You can use this in bait picker territory without needing to continually rebait- in fact you don’t need to rebait or wind it in till you catch something or its time to go home. You won’t be catching undersize fish either, which is good for the fish stocks. If you like to use two rods, you can set this one up and focus on keeping the other rod in your hand.
 

Anyone whose seen my videos will have noticed that fish aren’t always very accurate at identifying the bait. When there is scent in the water they rush in pecking at everything - swivels, bait floats, bare hooks, sinkers even. Unsurprisingly the eyecatching motion of the surf popper often makes it a stronger initial target then a baited hook. You may also have noticed how vigorously the water flows back and forth even in low surf conditions giving the popper a ceaseless darting motion.

The berley bag is made from mice and snake wire - available in the garden section at Bunnings. It’s 6mm mesh means even leatherjackets cant get the berley out.

And I’ve tied this with 80lb braid to make it visible in the photo. Normally I’d use mono and make better choices of swivels etc.

Wire trace to the berley cage stops sharks and rays pinching the whole thing.

cheers

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The berley cage is a great idea.

In my opinion surf poppers are highly underrated and often out fish a double paternoster with a popper on one dropper and a pilly on the other.

I've had good results as well by swapping out the popper for a 4 inch curly tailed plastic. The plastic good really good when there's a few flatties around. As you said, the wave action is enough to get the tail wriggling well.

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1 hour ago, Green Hornet said:

The berley cage is a great idea.

In my opinion surf poppers are highly underrated and often out fish a double paternoster with a popper on one dropper and a pilly on the other.

I've had good results as well by swapping out the popper for a 4 inch curly tailed plastic. The plastic good really good when there's a few flatties around. As you said, the wave action is enough to get the tail wriggling well.

Agree they are underrated. They seem to be out of fashion now  - a shop doesn’t even stock them anymore.

I have never had any success using the popper on its own. It seems they need a baited hook or a source of real bait somewhere nearby to get the fish over the hump. 

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I love learning about a thinking angler's methods, which is why I always enjoy your posts @Volitan. This might work well as my go-to set rig as I begin to spend more time supervising kids fishing (which I see as a nice problem to have).

I note you are using a three way swivel for the upper dropper but not the bottom one. Is this intentional, or just a matter of what you have on hand?

EDIT: OK I get you, I missed the wire trace part...of course a store-bought wire trace is going to have a normal swivel on there.

Edited by Little_Flatty
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13 minutes ago, Little_Flatty said:

I love learning about a thinking angler's methods, which is why I always enjoy your posts @Volitan. This might work well as my go-to set rig as I begin to spend more time supervising kids fishing (which I see as a nice problem to have).

I note you are using a three way swivel for the upper dropper but not the bottom one. Is this intentional, or just a matter of what you have on hand?

Unintentional. 

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