Pencil popper

What the shape does

The body is a long cone: a blunt head, a thick shoulder, then a steady taper down to a narrow tail where the ballast is set. Because almost all of the mass sits behind the middle, the plug leaves the rod tail first and flies with very little tumble. That is where its reputation for distance comes from, and it is a matter of geometry rather than of any particular maker.

The same weight distribution decides how it sits in the water. A pencil popper floats with the head out and the tail hanging almost straight down, which means a pull on the line pivots the head sideways instead of dragging the whole body forward. That pivot, repeated fast, is the entire action.

Worked correctly the plug does not swim anywhere. It stands nose up and slaps left, right, left across the top, spitting water forward and leaving a broken trail behind it. Nothing else in a surf bag produces that particular shape of disturbance, which is why it holds its place even though it is the most tiring plug to fish.

Working it

Point the rod tip down toward the water, reel at a steady moderate speed, and shake the tip in short fast strokes of a few inches. The movement comes from the wrist and the tip, not from the arm and not from the shoulder. Big sweeps pull the plug out of position; small fast ones keep it standing and slapping.

The rhythm has to be continuous, because the plug only stays upright while there is tension on the line. Two failures follow from that:

• Too slow, or a break in the rhythm, and the plug lies over on its side and drags like a stick.
• Too fast, and it skips clear of the surface and comes back with the tail hook wrapped around the leader.

Unlike a cup face popper, the pause is not part of the retrieve here. Stopping dead now and then lets the plug settle nose up and can draw a fish that has been following, but the work is done while it is moving.

Where it earns its keep

This is a daylight plug for open water. It belongs on a beach or a bar in a lively swell, when fish are working bait near the surface and the fish that matter are past the first bar. It is also the plug that gets you distance in a headwind, when a light popper is simply blown back at you.

• Bait pushed up in daylight: peanut bunker, mullet, silversides, anything herded to the top.
• Fish showing beyond casting range of the rest of the bag.
• Wind in your face on an open beach.
• Bluefish, which take a fast moving surface target readily and will follow one a long way.

It is a poor choice on a flat calm night in clear shallow water. That is the situation a surface slider or a metal lip swimmer was made for, and the pencil is simply too loud for it.

Tackle and rigging

The rod matters more with this plug than with any other in the register. You need a tip fast enough to transmit a small shake to the plug and enough backbone underneath it to cast the weight; a soft tip absorbs the motion and the plug never stands up at all. Low stretch braided line helps for the same reason, because a short tip movement reaches the plug instead of being swallowed by the line.

Most pencils are hung with a belly hook and a tail hook, and the tail hook is usually dressed with bucktail or feather. The dressing is not decoration: it slows the plug slightly, gives it something to swing on, and puts a target at the back, which is where surface strikes tend to land. Swapping the belly treble for a single inline hook costs very little action, cuts damage to fish, and makes a thrashing plug much less dangerous to unhook.

Common mistakes

Working it with the arm

Anglers who move the whole rod instead of the tip get tired in five minutes and never find the beat. Lock the elbow in, shake the tip.

Reeling to keep up

If the plug is skipping, the reel is the problem, not the rod. Slow the handle and keep the tip working.

Putting it away wet

A salty, wet bucktail closed in a bag rots and stains the paint under the hook hanger. Rinse it, shake it out, hang it. The general case is covered on wood and finish.