Ok, so you made or bought a dropper loop/pompano rig board, now you need to know how to actually use the damn thing. So I’ll show you how to make your pompano rig easily and consistently with the pompano rig board. Once you tie your first few dropper loops on the board, you will see how incredibly easy they are to use. To start, for making a pompano rig, you will need a few bits of terminal tackle. You want a spool of 20lb mono or fluoro line, some 2/0 circle hooks, snap clips, swivels, and rig floats.
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Before we start adding terminal tackle, we first have to tie up the pompano rig on the board first. Take your spool of 20lb line and place it on the far peg of the pompano rig board. Then pull some line off the spool and make a 6-inch surgeon’s loop with the tag end of the line. Then take the loop you just tied up and hang it off the far left cup hook as shown below. Then run the line around the pegs, starting at the bottom left peg and wrapping around all three pegs once as shown below.
Then, in between the bottom two pegs on the pompano rig board, take your doubled-up fishing line and start wrapping them around each other about 7 or 8 times. Make sure to keep a finger in the center of the loops as shown below so you don’t lose the middle of the wraps as you do this.
Then you take the line off the top peg of the board and push that line through the middle of the wraps of line on the bottom two pegs. The take that pushed through piece of line and put it back on a peg on the board. Then you want to lubricate the line with water or spit and pull the dropper loop tight.
Now, with your first dropper loop done, take that loop and go hang it off the far left hook like you did the surgeon’s knot. Now, run the line around the pegs like you did before, and tie another couple of dropper loops. Repeat the steps as you did before as you go.
When you are happy with how long your pompano rig is, cut the rig off right below the last loop you tied. Leave this one on the hook, so you can easily tie more pompano rigs as you need them.
Now it’s time to attach all the terminal tackle to your pompano rig. First, take a snap clip and attach it to the bottom loop of your rig. This will let you easily swap leads on the fly to match the surf conditions.
Next, you want to slip your rig floats onto the dropper loops, you need to do this before the hooks. Though if you don’t have any floats handy, these rigs will still catch fish without them. The floats are just a little extra visuals for the fish to find the baits.
Now it’s time to attach your circle hooks, if you are using bent eye circles like I am, here you want to push the loop of line through the hook side of the bent eye first. That way, the line will have the circle hook curling inwards, giving you a better hook-up ratio. If you aren’t using bent eyes, it doesn’t matter which side you push the loop through.
Once you have the dropper loop through the eye of the hook, open it up and push the hook through the opening. Then pull on the loop so it tightens on the eye of the circle hook.
The final step is to tie on your swivel, a simple uni knot will do, but use whatever you are comfortable with. Trim the tag end of the knot, and your pompano rig is ready. Just clip on a weight and you’re good to go.
Additionally, while not a pompano rig, this board can be used to make your own snapper rigs for fishing offshore this summer as well. Just follow the steps as I did above for tying the rig with a heavier line. You will need to get larger circle hooks and swivels to handle these larger snapper, but you don’t need snaps or floats. I recommend going with at least 4/0 circle hooks and 100 lb-rated swivels for snapper fishing. For vermillion snapper and red porgy, I like to use 40lb test line and 3 to 5 hooks per rig, depending on how well they are biting. For red snapper and grouper, I recommend using at least 60lb test and often use 80lb test. For tying these rigs you do not need to do as many wraps when making the dropper loops. I say 4 to 5 wraps should be plenty.
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