Favorite Classic Poppers?

[Gandolf]

Hi all,

The subject of poppers has come up some, and I like to fish poppers. Casting a tiny popper with a fly rod, seeing it on the water, and watching a bluegill blast it is a hoot! Especially very small bluegill poppers.

My first fish was nearly 50 years ago, a bluegill, on a tiny popper that was my cousins. I would guess red and white, and probably a #12 or #14. The body was probalby 1/8" or 3/16" in diameter, and about that long. The front and back of the body were cut on the slant, they were not at right angles to the length of the body.

Questions are: 1. what are your favorite colors and sizes of poppers, and 2. what were the most popular colors and sizes of poppers long ago?

My favorite popper is a #12, and in chartreuse. I think the classic poppers were most common in: red and white, yellow, and black.

The little bitty ones, like my cousins were very neat, and I haven't seen ones like them in years and years.

Regards,

Gandolf

[Greg Hunsicker]

I like the classic Bluegill Popper in all yellow or yellow and black. Fished along the banks around sunset the Bluegills and Bass can't leave them alone. Cork or Hard Foam Heads

[djo]

Gandolf:

Tiny (size 14 usually) yellow foam body, hackle, and marabou tail, and a couple of rubber legs. There is something about those legs that the gills can not resist.

David

[William Fitzgerald]

Jim Hatch's-- Little frog color HULA POPPER

[Eight Thumbs]

Hi Gandolf,

I use to make all my own bluegill poppers back in the late fifties and sixties. Commercial poppers were just too expensive for a young teenager's wallet and were not durable enough to make them worthwhile. Watching the cork come loose from a $1.29 popper on your third or fourth fish was like watching the Dow plunge 200 points in a single day. Besides, for the cost of three or four commercial poppers, you could buy the materials you needed to make over a hundred home-made poppers. Cork was amazingly cheap back then and Herter's sold a long, thin cork which could be divided in two or three good sections to make bluegill poppers. I used size #12 hooks almost exclusively. Finding small feathers for the tail and the hackle skirt was sometimes difficult but I always used feathers for my popper tails. I also always added rubber legs to my poppers. Herter's sold them only in white and black but they did come in fine and medium. My favorite colors were all yellow, red head/white body, all white and all black. I made the poppers a dozen at a time and I seem to recall that the operation took about a week from start to finish. There were many steps including cutting and shaping the cork, cutting the slot, gluing the hook, filling the slot and holes in the cork with plastic wood, sanding, sealing, sanding, painting, sanding, painting, painting, painting, tying on the skirt. Back then I had lots more time! I haven't made cork poppers in years. Now I use foam and make size #12 gurgle pops for all my bluegill fishing. 8T

[bowfin47]

Down in this part of the country, a number of friends and I fish a lot of foam poppers for bream. Primarily, we like small beetles made of flip flop foam with white rubber legs and with estaz or marabou on the belly. These are tailess. I prefer to tye them on debarbed Mustad 3906b #10. This 1X heavy hook and denser flip flop foam makes this bug "splat down" into the water for solid takes.

In the mid eightys, I was shown these bugs at the Southern Council FFF Conclave in Mt. Home by the late Doug Christan of Florissant, MO. http://ozarkflyfishers.org/pages/flies/ ... ndex1.html

Check out some of his patterns at: http://www.ozarkflyfishers.org/pages/aw ... award.html

Doug told me to fish them in all yellow or all black. Over the years, we also added an all white with pearl estaz on the belly variation originated by the late Marvin Pinsel of Memphis, TN.


Typically, we start with yellow, then switch to black, and then to white. If these three colors do not work, then we go subsurface.

[Buddy Sanders]

Fvorite 'classic' bluegill popper?

There was one made in Huntsville Alabama by the Hickman Lure Company (it could have been 'Hickham' it's been quite a while). I think they called it the 'whirly bug'. This was their only product.

It was a painted cork cylinder with two angled clear plastic wings and had feather/hackle tails. The plastic 'wings' were angled like fan blades.

You fished this on a 3 foot length of 8 pound mono leader. As you backcast the fly, the wings would cause it to 'twist' the leader. Once the fly hit the water, the leader would untwist, causing the fly to roll over and over on the water.

Often, this was all you needed to call in the fish. The face was flat, so you could give it an occasional 'pop' if needed.

You went through a few pieces of 8 pound leader material in a days fishing, but it was a unique and very effective idea.

I bought all I could find in 1977, my last trip back there. They were long out of production, and I ended up hunting down the owner of the company (he had a very successful printing business at that time) and he sold me the remaining stock.

Unfortunitely, they had undergone a resurgence in popularity AFTER he stopped making them, and I was only able to get about 4 dozen of them. The last one fell apart in the early 90s.

Caught LOTS of fish on them, though.

I should have bought his manufacturing equipment, he was trying to sell it. I just asumed that soon someone ele would begin making and selling them again. Anothe opportunity missed...

Good Luck!

Buddy

[weehooker]

If I could fish only one top water color it would be Yellow. This color has consistantly produced more topwater bass and panfish for me under more conditions than all other colors combined. A close second color would be frog. For edge of night fishing, black /Red is the hot color. Chartuce is one of those few other colors I never am without but there are days where ti rules and days where it won't buy a strike.

[gadabout]

I like to use the poppers made by the Gaines company in Pennsylvania. The colors I tend to use most are yellow, black, and orange.

[white43]

My first fly fishing experience ever was with a classic fly rod Hula Popper. Still have one though rarely use it since I can duplicate it with Hatch's Dremel'ed flipflops that weigh about a fourth of the original. This was back in the 1950s and I have no doubt whatsoever that my fascination with fly fishing started with those largemouth bass explosions on those Hula Poppers. I also remember those little bluegill poppers others are writing about. Nowadays the Gurgle Pops are about all I use for topwater gills. And the foam or deerhair flies are just as fun as the poppers. I love Wiggle Bugs, Zoo Cougars and Dalhberg Divers. While I grew up thinking black was the only legitimate color for topwater bass fishing, recent experience has opened my eyes to yellow, especially when you can see. With night popper fishing for largemouth bass I'll use black every time. JGW