Poppers are exciting flies to fish, but most fly fishers don’t tie their own, partly because few have the specialized hump-shanked hooks used to keep the hook from twisting in the body. However, jig hooks are all the rage these days, and most fly tyers have experimented with them, so I had the idea to turn a jig hook upside down and use the angled shank like a hump. Hook sizes in the poppers in the photo to the right range from 2 to 10. The smallest popper is not just for panfish — try one for trout at dusk!
These poppers pop beautifully because of the lowered hook eye. You can add any sort of conventional or unconventional dressing — even a propeller, for days when the fish don’t like loud pops, but respond to constant motion with a whirring vibration. Other variations include an articulated version with the trailing hook positioned point up to be somewhat weedless, allowing the popper to hop over floating sticks and branches.
I use a hacksaw to make a slot in the body of medium/large commercially available popper bodies and a scalpel or mat knife for small ones. For smaller poppers (size 6 to 12), the hook can be glued in the slot with superglue; larger ones do better with filler-type glue. You can use epoxy, but since epoxy is a nuisance to mix, I prefer Gorilla Glue, which cures by being activated by moisture. Make a substantial thread wrap on the shank and moisten the wrap with water before adding the glue to the slot, then firmly insert the hook so that the hook eye is at the lower lip of the popper body. The Gorilla Glue will foam up in a few minutes on contact with the moisture in the thread and in the air to make a light, sturdy bond. After the glue has set, I often add a small amount of UV-cure adhesive where the hook exits the body.
Popper Customizations
Conventional dressings can be applied after the hook is bonded to the body, but add variations such as propellers to the hook before it’s inserted in the body. Small propellers found in catalogs have rough edges that will cut through mono, so I use 7-strand 27-pound-test coated wire to make a flexible shaft for the propeller. Tie a very firm knot in the wire and cut off the tag end. Cut the wire shaft at about twice the length of the body and slip on a small plastic or brass bead, then the propeller, then lash and glue the wire shaft to the shank of the hook. The idea is to position the prop about two-thirds of the body length behind the body so water flow will turn it and to avoid interference with any dressing on the body. The propeller end is under high strain when the fly is lifted from the water in a back cast, and it is infuriating if the knot opens or the bead slips over the knot. Use pliers to make a firm knot, then add a little glue, and make sure that the hole in the bead is small enough to sit on the knot.
Lightweight surface flies are often pushed away from a fish’s mouth by the bow wave created by an aggressive strike. Hookups can be increased by slightly opening up the gap of the hook, but using a trailing hook also addresses this problem. The articulated point-up versions can be made with commercial jig shanks, as shown in the photo, or you can make your own shank using a jig hook with the bend cut off. The trailer hook is attached to the shank of the truncated jig hook with strong mono or braid, as is done with articulated streamer flies such as Intruders.
Some anglers have made their own jig hooks by bending the shank of a 3X-long streamer hook, but modern hooks are so well tempered that they will snap before the bend is complete, so the hook must be heated at the bend location, bent, and then retempered in cold water. It is not easy to make consistent shapes this way, so I recommend commercial products unless you want to create an interesting oddball in which the eye section is bent away from the point to make a popper with a stationary hook that rides point up. Irrespective of how you might customize your poppers, the important point is this: jig hooks remove much of the hassle in building poppers. Give them a try this year.
