I should probably add that I am VERY new so my casting is certainly in question. I can swing a single haul but the timing of a double haul eludes me more often than not. With a lighter fly like unweighted bendbacks and the spider I seem to have a range of about 30' with a decent presentation - a tad longer and it goes pretty wild...

When I was doing this there was a very slight wind in my face but well under 3-5 knots. Had the spider not worked I would have happily (ok, not really) chalked it up to a bad casting day. It was quite amazing how differently the 2 cast. I did not change leaders or anything so the tippet was a bit heavy and caused a heavy presentation with the spider but at least it got out there. Half of my casts with the popper were barely coming out of the backcast and I was happy to have my hat on because I beamed myself a few times with it. The ones that went forward for a short false cast hit the water or landed in a pile.

As for my line, I am assuming it is a WF9F because that's what the package said on the outfit but it could be off I suppose because it came assembled. This is a Cortland 8/9 bass outfit. It does look like it has a fairly long taper on the front that I tied into a loop with nail knots. I generally do one false cast to help get some line out and then shoot. My guess is that I have 15' of line out plus leader as I begin my first false cast and I do a single haul and shoot some line on the second cast but I did try the popper with no false casts, hauls, or shooting to rule those out.