Sheet foam poppers

[Fisherboy0301 0]

To me redneck, it looks like the foam dragon from flyfishfood

[tidewaterfly 0]

I'm guessing the cost of the ready made bodies is the issue? I don't mind the price as I can make the poppers faster. I'll buy them whenever I can get them cheaper & stock pile them so I have them, but that doesn't work for everyone. I've bought some of the soft foam, ready made cylinders too & made various type of topwater flies with them, but again they're generally not cheap to buy. The primary positive with the ready made bodies is the time involved in using them to make your flies.

 

There's several alternatives as the others have indicated. You'll spend more time with some of the other options, but that may be cheaper if you don't mind putting in the time. I too like the cork bottle stoppers, and don't spend much time with them other than painting them & keep that simple.

 

I've purchased balsa wood blocks in the past too & cut cylinders using a section of sharpened copper tubing and made pencil poppers with them. I didn't even taper the body, or paint them. Just epoxied them to the hook after a thread base was wrapped on the hook & wrapped the balsa with holographic stick on tape. Then tied a tail on a heavy needle, removed the needle, drilled a hole on the back side of the cylinder & glued the tail in place in the hole. Of course long shank hooks are needed. I also added stick on eyes, painted the front face red & epoxied the whole thing just to improve the durability, but that's a fairly quick way to make them & they work.

 

There was a guy many years ago, late 80's to early 90's, that made & sold a similar fly (The Farnsworth Fly) and he used heat shrink tubing to cover the balsa body. He even had the name imprinted on the shrink tubing. That's another possible way to make a body fairly quickly & durably. It leaves the ends exposed, but painting the ends is not a big deal.

 

You can do a lot with the sheet foam as you've found. Cool fly BTW!

 

Depending on your source for the foam, it's made in various thicknesses too. 2 or 3 mm seems to be most popular with tiers, but I have some that's 6 mm, and works great for bigger flies. It doesn't bend as easily as the thinner foam however.

 

Here's a fly I made with 3 mm sheet foam for bass I got at a local craft store. It's on a size 2/0 straight shank plastic worm hook. It's about 4" long. The wing on it is a gray packing foam & bucktail from the back side of a tail.

[FlyTyer15 0]

I tie this popper with sheet foam. Its super easy to tie also

[FlaFly 0]

I have tied and fished with poppers since way back in the late 1950s. I bought little premade cork popper heads back then. I use the premade heads today... not really foam, but synthetic whatever. I don't make that many so buying a few heads isn't a big issue. I have used little bottle corks before, but you still have to buy them so I can't really see the benefit, and I'm not really thrilled with their look. I tie other things using foam... like hoppers, foam spiders, etc. There are infinite possibilities.

The one Flytyer just posted looks like the Sneaky Duckling that was recently posted on the ultralightflyfishing web site. There's a good youtube SBS of it. I'm planning on tying some for myself. I've posted this before, but the simplest foam fly that I've found is the Confederate General, and it's a real good floating bluegill getter (but still not a popper). Real simple: chenille body, choice of hair or marabou tail, foam disk, and rubber legs of choice. I cut a short length of copper pipe and sharpened one end to use as a punch for the foam disks.

[flytire 0]

not ALL poppers need a concave surface to "POP"

 

even this will "pop"

 

[ditz2 0]

I tie a simple bug that I call a spider. Nothing but hook, thread, foam, and rubber legs. It does not have a cupped face and it will also pop with proper manipulation. So will the flat faced foam popper in the pic. I have had better success with the spider on sunfish than the popper and the popper is quite good. The spider is also very quick and EZ to tie. They are also very durable.

 

 

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

Funny thing - in my world (with 'gators, crocs, sharks of every kind....mixed right in next to the fish we're hunting....) we're targetting snook, reds, trout, tarpon, and even mangrove snapper with poppers -but only at dawn, dusk, or on days with little to no wind.... Instead of popping them, I tell my anglers to keep the bug moving slowly while making the slightest sound each time they snap the bug along. I suspect the fish go after them as small minnows that have been crippled. Most times the first strike is a miss, but if you keep the bug moving they rarely miss on the second pass.

 

Almost every freshwater fly angler misses every strike since they're used to striking with the rod - those that can manage to strip strike get rewarded... Every species but one seem to hit only when the bug is moving - the exception are speckled trout of every size that will hit a bug that's absolutely stationary (and if you're close enough you get to see the fish suspended just under the bug looking at it before the take....

 

Out in open water when jacks, macks, ladyfish, or bluefish are around is the only time we actually use the SpeedBug as a popper. Under those circumstances, fast and as noisy as possible gets the job done. As a kid I used to fish bugs for bass and bream, the back country of the Everglades is a different world entirely...

[ditz2 0]

I don't generally pop my bugs either. Just a little surface disturbance is mostly all that is needed. It is quite true that us fresh water anglers have a tough time strip striking. After years and years of the old rod set trick strip strike does not come natural. I have been working on it for a couple of years and it still seems awkward.

[matuka222 0]

Grabham's Gurgler is a pattern from Australian fly tier Andrew Grabham. It employs sheet foam and can be tied in your choice of size and colour to suit the species of fish you are targeting. For an article by Andrew showing a step-by-step and discussing fishing the fly for Aussie Bass see:

 

http://www.flyangler.com.au/pdfs/grabhams_gurgler.pdf

 

The Grabham's is my go-to popper for Bass. Another of our Australian native species, the Saratoga is also rather partial to them. See photo.

 

[FlaFly 0]

I'm with Ditz.... I don't strip set but I don't rod set either... I just raise my rod tip and that's generally all it takes to set the hook.

[agn54 0]

Every species but one seem to hit only when the bug is moving - the exception are speckled trout of every size that will hit a bug that's absolutely stationary (and if you're close enough you get to see the fish suspended just under the bug looking at it before the take....

 

 

Do you find this is only the case for flies? I often fish topwater plugs for snook and regularly get hits as the plug sits still. I have missed many big snook when looking down to bump the trolling motor while the plug just floats there. I swear they can see me and are just waiting for me to not pay attention to mess with me. Of course with plugs, they resemble finger mullet and not the injured glass minnows or rain bait that a small fly can look like, so maybe that makes a difference?

[mikechell 0]

My fishing yesterday was mostly with a popper.

The fish would investigate the fly, but if I didn't pop it, they'd just swim away. I posted in the "fish pictures" thread about the fish.

It's not always that way, small little pops are usually all that's needed to draw attention. But yesterday, they wanted noise.

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

When we're plug fishing (a sin I know...) we've found the same thing -that trout will hit a motionless plug time after time. Where we fish snook and tarpon seem to want things moving a bit (but I must admit that if any snook are around we're rarely letting a plug sit- except for a few seconds after it first lands to give a curious fish time to swim over and see what's going on....). Fly fishing with either poppers or suspending flies seems to have the same result.

[nick2011 0]

i like to glue sheet foam and then punch out and sand to desired shape using a dremel like a small hand held lathe

[Philly 0]

Thinking it over, which can be a dangerous thing for me. I get a majority of my strikes when fishing poppers and gurglers for panfish and bass when I pause the retrieve. It's a steady retrieve. Chain pickerel and pike seem to prefer a moving target though they'll hit still fly particularly if they've been following it.