Tuesday, 7 July 2009

Poppers

There is no other form of fly-fishing for pike that gets my blood pumping than when I'm using poppers. My box is full of them at this time of the year and I don't even bother with other patterns, that is the addiction surface lure fishing has on me. If you want to catch bigger pike with poppers, you need bigger poppers and most of these are over 160mm long. You also need to have a lot of perseverance and expect plenty of frustration with mist hook ups, but nothing prepares you for the moment when that fish slams your popper from below and goes airborne. I'm literally drained by the time I get home in the evening after a full day of popping.

All these poppers though are off to Thailand in a few weeks to be used on Snakeheads. A species I haven't had the chance to target yet, even though I have fished for other species around the coast there.

I have used plenty of Eumer Raccoon & Fox fur on these as well as an array of different coloured Grizzly variant neck hackles with some Slinky and SF fibers thrown in as well.

I very rarely use eyes on my flies but as this is an order, All these poppers you will see over the next few days have rattle eyes epoxy'd on. It will be interesting to see how they fare against the Snakeheads.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

James from U.S.,
Simon- I tie alot of tube fly popper for pike. I use a 4 inch peice of wire at the end of the leader. The wire hangs further back and help to eleviate short strikes.

All about the grab said...

Interesting James,have never used that method before.will give it a try.