Fished PnP 2 days ago and forgot to post a report...
fished from 515-830 or so... had 8 fish come up to my popper. 3 hooked fish and landed one. Lots of fish caught on the beach by fly guys as well as a few by gear guys. pink was the color of choice for most.
good luck out there and try the surface flies if you like the visual action. I love it!

Anyone getting pinks yet?

honestly... who cares??? pinks suck, especially when the silvers are around.


but yes.. there are a few around

i do...pink are funn on a fly rod...

what were the size on the silvers????

D3,
I've had ZERO luck on the poppers, so maybe you coule give me some help.
1. I tied my own, and the foam seems a bit dense. The popper rides low in the water, kind of semi-submerged. Do your flies ride high or are they low-riders too??
2. At PnP, did you scate them in the natural current (like river fishing), or were you stripping them in.

pinks are a pain in the ass... with this many silvers around dont wait for the pinks to arrive to get out and fish. the beaches were loaded with silvers yesterday...

ned-
re 1 - They should ride pretty low in the water... a nice V wake is what you want on the retrieve.
re 2 - I always strip flies in the salt... never let them swing. These fish like to chase down bait fish and it seems to me that a quick retrieve is best. i like a steady V wake behind my popper so i either use a 2handed retrieve or one hand but use my rod tip to keep the fly moving.

The Miyawaki Beach Popper (for example) tends to ride low in the water, the idea is not to cause a huge commotion but simply to to create a v-wake on the retrieve that suggests a wounded baitfish. In fact, the MBP is technically not actually a popper, but a slider, that is, the popper component is positioned with the pointed end forward. The usual technique is to make a quartering cast down-current then retrieve, varying the speed until you find something that appeals to the fish.

Sea-run cutthroat are often found feeding much closer to the beach than coho and it is an excellent idea to wade no more than knee-deep while casting at a very shallow angle to (or even parallel to) the beach. While coho can sometimes be found chasing bait into the shallows they usually tend to stay a bit further out.

I've been fishing the poppers on my local beach just about every day and sometimes twice a day. I miss a helluva lot of fish but some of the strikes are intense. You'll forget about humpies in a hurry when a silver comes charging at the popper from 10 feet away while sticking half way out of the water. Ain't never seen no humpy do that!

Ok, perfect tide this morning and the wind is calm. The seagulls have been squaking as I type this so I'm getting my waders on and walking down there now. Report when I get back.

Killer morning. Flat calm with back to back inshore tide rips. As the sun was coming up, about 5ish, I had one of those killer follows that gives your heart a jump start. About half way thorugh the retrieve a big silver came charging behind the fly so fast and so hard that I could actually hear the water going SWOOOOSH. When I felt the fish, I set hard and he went apesh!t. Being the dumb ass that I am I tried to play the fish completely from the reel and so he was lost. No more follows for half an hour until I hit one "trolling" which is what I call it when I roll cast and walk roll cast and walk. Landed this one and it was a beautiful little cutty about 12". Found a pocket of silvers and had some killer follows including one fish that came back for the fly again and again even after I set the hook and missed him. He was suicidal, but I still couldn't hook the bastard. Missed a coulple more in the vicinity until the tide went slack and I couldn't get through all the seaweed. I've never screamed at fish so much in my life as I have with these damn poppers. I'm always by myself on the beach yelling "Come on, come on, come back for it, yeah yeah, NO sonofabeech, ohhhhh, yeaaahhhh, NOOOOOOOO!"

Pink and white popper, heavy on the UV underbody, layered to achieve that perfect baitfish shape.

thats what is so damn fun about it
we have been fishing pink and white a lot lately. about 1:1 with the natural popper, although we will find areas where they prefer one over the other.
gotta love the visual strikes and agressive fish.

D3 & Kid,
What would you guys say your take to fish landed ratio is while fishing popper? I've found I get lots of follows and grabs, but the percentage of fish actually brought to hand is poor. I'm with everyone else in that seeing the take can be as fun as landing them.
I've just found I land alot more fish while fishing clousers, etc on the "Dark Side" as Leland refers to it. The bonking has been good and coho are what's for dinner.
Brian

if i hook a fish on the popper i land about 90% of them... but for every 6 fish i see, i might hook 1... some days better than others though for sure...
if you want to just hook and land fish, a pink clouser is tough to beat

Nice report Kid. I'm getting my gear together by tomorrow. We'll have to invade the beach to see if we can't pop up some hos soon.

So I tied these pink wogs for coho fishing in the rivers that never came about last year. They do not look anything like a baitfish, just a pink attractor that makes a lot of surface disturbance. Think that would be good in the salt also?

Sg

it would be worth a shot... much of the stuff i throw doesnt look like anything

ive had enough bait fishing for one summer, how do you beach ho around here? I live in seattle and am soon to be boatless, any non zipper but non zoo areas you boys would recommend? i assume the points with rips are best or just any close in rip in general? Cheers

Summerun,

I really like points, because bait gets pushed around a point by either tide, so (if fish are present) the feeding coho will just follow the bait to the other side of the point. Makes it easy to keep on the fish when you find them.

Good Luck

Salmo, you're talking about pink wogs for river and tidewater/estuary mature coho and I have zero experience fishing with them, but you can bet I'll tie up some sick ones for this fall. Surface fishing rocks. We had 15 follows, a few hooked a few lost and Brian popped his popper cherry with 7 follows and a lot of screaming like a little girl. I got some super heavy slashes way out and some killer boil n' eats right in front of us. Brian had a slab crush it at the rod tip and he broke it off on the hookset. I tried a funny looking pink popper with green head that I called the sockeye salmon and it worked very well. Now I have to get to tying because you know where I'll be tomorrow morning. Cell phone got wet again so Parker leave a message and be ready at 5am tomorrow or you are a sorry sack o saddle haclke. You WILL get follows or I will screw the barnyard animal of your choice. It's THAT good down there right now and the fish are super aggressive. I will film you and Brian tomorrow morning and just play guide. Hope you can double haul and I hope you are going to pack some Sage because I do even though I am somwhat of a poser and still can only cast about 80 feet with the outbound. I have poppers and believe me when I say that I tie some sick ones, Brian ain't complaining and now he is hooked on the surface silver fishing too.

One more thing, I had packs of candlefish swimming around me today wading waist deep. Calm water and sun which you would think keeps fish way out, but they were in very close because the bait was in close. You've got to look for little patches of nervous water where the baitfish are just below the surface. We got to see a real injured baitfish struggling on the surface and it only took 30 seconds before he was inhaled. If you see baitfish jumping and skittering on the surface, then cast there and the popper will get munched every time. I fish every single day with the poppers and I have learned quite a bit, but I bet D3 would smoke my ass if we fished side by side. Been reading his posts for a while and that guy knows his stuff. Lates

KS,

Sounds too cool! Yeah, I'm thinking the pink wogs that I tried in Alaska last summer. Subsurface fishing might have been more productive, but we never found out. As soon as we realized we could get action with the wogs, we never bothered with the streamers. We didn't hook up with every fish, but the action was pretty non-stop, with silvers showing the "shark fin" and following each strip, keeping me guessing whether they would follow it to my feet, inhale it, or smash the bejeezus out of it. We caught enough fish for the cooler, but it's the action we got that made it so much fun. If you're getting that Alaska style action on the beach, I might have to drive up. Just as with chinook, by the time the silvers reach south sound, they are notorius for lock jaw. Some get caught, but it's a pathetic few when there are literally thousands of them swimming around the terminal areas. Perfect for gillnetting but sucks for sport fishing.

Sg