Tradtional Cork Poppers

[Guest]

I am by no means a pro tier, however, I do like to think I have some potential to be just that one day. Lately, I have been experimenting with a personal fav of mine- cork poppers. I have been experimenting with different body shapes, constructing different mouths for different actions and sounds and have been amazed at the creativity that you can unlock when sanding a cork. Loving it....may have to have Smallie put a few pics up when I get them done...Anyone else love the old stand-bys?

[Guest]

BDH, I will always be a fan of cork poppers. I use a lot of the preformed hard foam heads since they're easy to work with, but still prefer cork. I make some bottle stopper type cork poppers, and the only thing I do to them is cup the face sometimes. I don't spend a lot of time shaping them. I also make the reversed head type of slider with the bottle stoppers, which don't look as nice as the Sneaky Pete's but still catch plenty of fish.

 

I used to buy the preshaped cork by the thousands, but good cork is so hard to find these days. I don't mind the work involved when dealing with cork, as long as I'm making them for my personal use, but not for the poppers I sell. To do it right is just too time consuming.

 

The fact is they can be simple designs for catching fish, but are hard to sell like that!

 

When you get some pictures, I would like to see them!

[Guest]

yep - all the old guys weighing in again! I have three or four bags of corks downstairs - some wine, some tapered stoppers; the very small tapered stoppers make great bream floaters.

[MIKE*A 0]

I've always got a supply of cork poppers on hand............one evening back in September I unexpectedly found about two hours of free time so I grabbed my rod and hit a farm pond i have access to nearby. I tied on a popper, put on an 18"dropper w/ a nymph and had a ball!!........In about 90 min.s, I caught 6 bass between 1-3 #'s on the popper, on the nymph, I caught countless bluegills, a 2-3# channel cat, and a 5-7 # grass carp!...........I also broke off what i am guessing was another big(ger) cat. Good time..........

[Guest]

love to use Dremel accessories to shape the mouths....quick and easy...nice cupped mouths and it allows you to change the depth of the mouth....have perfected sanding a medium cork to the shape of a frog's profile ( except the legs)...love it...have tied poppers for years, and have always shaped my own...just seem obsessed with them right now for some odd reason...Ready for April already!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

I like cork poppers as well...but of late have been making more balsa poppers. Still has the same possibilities of making different shapes. The balsa is lighter than the cork, which means I can put a thin ocat of epoxy on for an almost indestructabled finish and still have the popper float fairly high. My experiments with cork trying to do the same thing don't float nearly as well with the epoxy finish (some actually are a bit underwater...)

 

Mark Delaney

[Guest]

forgot to say, as a chemistry professor, I have access to all sizes of corks..from very tiny to too big to use...

[Guest]

have experimented with balsa, have found that it does indeed tend to float higher. Sometimes I prefer a half or almost completely submerged popper. I like the crippled frog action a low riding popper produces...to each his own, I suppose.

 

 

BTW, where you teaching, Prof?

 

 

 

Ps...will try to get some pics on sometime this weekend

[Guest]

BDH, now it's getting scary!

 

One of the reasons I also prefer cork is that low floating quality. I'm convinced that the high riders are less productive simply because it's harder for a fish to get into it's mouth, and natural prey does not float or swim high. In my opinion, topwater flies, no matter what material is used, should ride in the surface film, not up on it.

 

I'm not saying that high floaters won't catch fish, just that my experience has shown me that I catch more with the low floaters.

 

The poppers I make commercially using the hard foam bodies are coated with epoxy, and I oversize the hook to make them float lower. I've also played with balsa wood, and still use some. It's also great stuff that any panfish or bass fly tyer should experiment with. But again, it floats too high for me, so when I use it for bass or panfish poppers, I oversize the hooks & coat it with epoxy to get it to float low in the surface film.

 

Nothing wrong with any of these materials, and I'm sure everyone will agree that surface flies are more fun to use than subsurface! But like you said, to each his own!

 

What hook models do you prefer for your poppers?

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

For #6 or smaller, I prefer a 2x Teimco nymph hook. (sized accordingly, of course)....it pulls the cork low in the water, but doesn't have the wide gap of a stinger so I get more hook ups and miss fewer smaller species that sometimes can't get to the fly because of a big gaped stinger (gills, shellcrackers, etc) For larger poppers, especially for bass, I like a standard stinger, usually in an 8 or ten, sometimes larger....even use trailer hooks sometimes if the fly has a long tail like a lot of long flash or marabou....helps to eliminate short strikes.....for poppers i like when the crappie are active, I like a size ten light wire stinger....how 'bout you?

 

 

 

(can you tell I like poppers?)

 

 

see, told you we are like minded...now, how about that daughter of yours........lol

[Guest]

BD, I've used all kinds of hooks for poppers, even large dry fly hooks. I used a Mustad 3366 for a long time, then switched to a kink shank popper hook, Mustad 33903. It's a decent hook, and I still use it, but have recently become very fond of the new Mustad Signature Series popper hooks CK52S. The newer hook is what I'm using on the poppers & sliders that I sell.

 

I also like poppers a lot, and topwater is my favorite way to fish!

 

I fish with different size poppers, but more so with the larger sizes, at least a size 4 or larger most of the time, unless I'm targeting panfish. Even when I fish for panfish I rarely go smaller then a size 8. When I fish for just bass I use big stuff, at least size 2, and most often 1/0. I will sometimes even go up to a 2/0 size.

I still catch some panfish, and they're usually bigger fish, just not as many as I might with the smaller flies, but that's OK with me! Heck the biggest Crappie I ever caught took a 2/0 size popper while fishing for bass, it was 18 inches long!

 

I've never tried adding a stinger hook to a popper. I don't have that much problem with short strikes on poppers.

 

Oh, and my daughter is doing fine........without you! lol

 

[Guest]

I am also experimenting with Balsa wood... I have no experience with using it in saltwater but have done some sand eels and like how it stays up on the surface. the sand eels also have a thin coating of epoxy then a seal of hard as Hull. This winter I would like to do several of the old stand by spinning plugs in miniture for the fly rod...Paint and epoxy, etc.... here is a sand eel I have done with balsa wood and I really liked the realistic appearance and shape.

[Guest]

I teach at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. We are a medium sized state supported university of 8,000 to 8,500 students (depends upon the year). Our most famous graduate is porbably Joe Dumars, who played basketball for the Detroit Pistons.

 

A lot of the poppers I make from balsa, I finish with a fish scale type of finish, which includes warpping the body with either a metal foil or a clear mylar. since this adds another layer and more weight, these balsa poppers float lower than ones just painted and then coated with epoxy. My experiments with cork and doing this have led to poppers that didn't pop because they'd be at least 6" under the water. The instructions for making the fish scale finished poppers are on my website (see sig). Look in either the bass and panfish section or the saltwater section.

 

I do like very tiny cork poppers for bluegill, as I previously said, tied on long shank hooks. I don't like poppers where the gap between the body adn the hook point is too small,

 

Mark Delaney

[Guest]

Mark, I just took a look at your site, very nice! You certainly have some excellent looking flies!

 

I see you tie a black/purple Seaducer, unusual color, but also one of my favorites. I've caught a bunch of LM bass & Stripers on that fly! It's a shame that more people don't tie that fly in dark colors, it's a darn good one!

 

I also don't like poppers with hooks that are too small, which unfortunately many commercially produced poppers have. That's another reason I oversize the hooks on mine!

 

If you don't mind, I would like to add your site to the links page on my website!

 

striblue, the only saltwater flies I currently make with balsa are pencil poppers. It's a great material to work with, and is easy to shape. I tried making some small crankbaits from balsa several years ago. They looked great, but I had to experiment a lot to get them to run true. Balsa certainly has the potential to do about anything you want with it.

[Guest]

Jim,

 

The more links the better. By the way, what is the URL for your site (I think i have it bookmarked on my computer at work, but I'm at home at the moment, so it is not on this computer). I didn't tie that paricular seaducer, Bill Andrus, Jr. did. It his however, very effective around here.

 

Some of the best flies on my site are in the various flyswaps. Currently I'm hosting a swap of Tom Nixon bass & panfish patterns (Tom wrote the book "Fly Tying and Fly Fishing for Bass and Panfish," (I believe in the late 60s or early seventies) and has three editions out. tom lived in Lake Charles and unfortunately passed away this past May from cancer. I'll post the forum whne i get all the flies in and up on the website (they were supposed to all be here by a week ago, but anyone who's hosted a swap knows how that goes).

 

Back to grading a way tooo large stack of papers.

 

Mark Delaney