Bluegill Poper: Foam Cylinder size

[Sylvaneous]

If I'm tying on sz. 10 and 12 hooks, what diameter crosslinked foam cylinder size should I get? I don't have anything to reference. The catalog has the diameters, of course, but I don't know what size I should use.

I was bass fishing yesterday and ran across a lot of BIG horse-sized gills.
I make small Gartside Gurglers, but I want to make actual poppers.
It's one of those things: I can do fine on a bead head wet fly, but I WANT to catch them on a popper.

Syl

 

[duckfoot]

Save yourself a bunch of money and get a bag of the smallest corks you can find at your craft store.

Poke a hole through the cork with a needle so you can pass the hook through by the eye.

Insta-popper for a fraction of the price.

EDIT: If you feel ambitious, grab a sheet of the foam ($0.49), cut it into decent size pieces, and glue them together into a multi-decker sandwich with the hook in between them.

EDIT EDIT: It's also my experience that the cool stuff to tie onto the back end usually gets in the way of a 'gill's tiny mouth. Less is more for accessories, and give a clear path for them to suck in the hook when they go after the popper's legs.

 

[RLeep2]

Making bluegill poppers is pretty labor intensive, once you factor in gluing, painting or otherwise coloring and putting in hackle, flash or rubber legs, etc. It violates my rule about never putting so much time into a fly that I get emotionally attached to it and feel that much worse if I lose it...

So, what I do to get my topwater/popper jollies with bluegills is fish simple rubber spiders made out of a strip of 2mm foam about 3/8" wide and an inch or a bit more long. I round the corners and just lash it to the hook (usually a standard #10 dry fly hook) a bit behind the eye with about a quarter of the body ahead of the tie in point. Then, I take a pair of rubber legs about a 1.5" long and figure-8 them in crossways at the tie-in point. Dot of super glue on the wrap and away we go. Black with white legs is good. But then again, so is any color with any color. It's bluegills, after all...

Last thought: If you upsize them to a #6 and adjust the materials accordingly, they will not only hook the bigger 'gills, they're also pretty wicked for smallies.

 

[nfrechet]

that one pops

4 materials thread, hook, foam and rubber legs

catches a shitload of bluegills

 

[NJTroutbum]

If you want a bluegill bug that brings the slabs topside....check out the FoamButt Caddis.

http://www.ralphsflybox.com/2016/05/wading-lilies.html?m=1

 

[Dave_W]

duckfoot wrote:
EDIT: If you feel ambitious, grab a sheet of the foam ($0.49), cut it into decent size pieces, and glue them together into a multi-decker sandwich with the hook in between them.

This ^

 

[Sylvaneous]

nfrechet wrote:

that one pops

4 materials thread, hook, foam and rubber legs

catches a shitload of bluegills

I like that . Similar to my Gurgler. I was thinking yesterday of abandoning the ostrich plume tail (instead of marabou) for rubber legs. I use white and yellow in my panfish gurgler. I use a chartreuse span-flex for the legs (arms/wings) because I got some on sale and it works so WTF, right? Maybe it won't wrap the hook as much as the plume.

Thanks

syl

 

[JerryC]

When I use foam cylinders for pan fish poppers, I don't use anything smaller than 3/8" diameter. I have maybe a dozen size 10 poppers in my box, mainly because I brought some soft foam popper bodies that needed a size 10 hook. The rest of my pan fish top waters are tied on size 6 and 8 hooks. I often think most folks underestimate the popper size sunfish can take, especially larger ones. You can do a lot, as already mentioned, with a sheet of craft foam. The first fly is made using a heart shape piece punched out of a 2 mm sheet. The second is a "spider" body cut from a 3 or 4 mm piece of foam. Tied on either a size 6 or 8 hook.