Dark side

Poppers are a bit harder to cast than a normal fly because of the wind resistance but if you slow your cast down a little I’m sure you’ll soon get the hang of it. Once you do you have another tool in your arsenal which is useful in three diverse situations:

• When pelagic fish are actively pushing bait fish to the surface and whacking them a popper of the same basic length and colour is almost irresistible.
• When you have to get right into shallow water or mangroves to pull a fish out of a narrow gutter or nearby structure fish will often respond aggressively to a noisy popper.
• As a teaser a popper will often excite pelagics such as trevally and queenies and give you the chance to present a more conventional fly.

These articulated poppers are as simple as it gets. Thread your tippet through the hole in the simple closed cell popper head and tie on any unweighted streamer or a dedicated popper tail and your in business.

Process

A	Make a closed cell foam blank like by pushing a mandrill e.g. copper tube sharpened along the leading edge and then drilling a dole through the middle. You can do as I do and buy them pre formed and pre drilled from a number of suppliers including Tiewell.

B	Push the blank onto a kebab stick and rotate it along a sanding disk or grinding wheel to form a cone shape. Whilst traditional poppers have a concave face on the front I have found that to be unnecessary on these articulated popper heads. Having said that you can easily make the head concave with a suitable size drill bit.

C	The popper head described below is teamed here with an unweighted deceiver.

D	The popper head described below is teamed here with an unweighed pink thing but almost any unweighted  fly will do.

E	The popper head described below is teamed here with a simple purpose built tail.