BilletHead

Ronnie a belt sander? I got to get with the program, I'm using sandpaper to finish off after carving. As far as the superglue I have the body sanded before applying then just a sand with 320 and paint. Have not seen it is hard to sand yet. Jason, I think painting different colors is overkill as I think fish look up and see a dark form when floating. Just like Ronnie said. As a fisherman we like a cool colors. Just a plain white or black popper catches. Thanks for the comments fellows, I am having a good time doing this for grins and giggles. Then catching fish reinforces the feeling. It also gives me one more element of doing it yourself, BilletHead

Thanks for the tips Wrench. I need to try the silicone legs. Ness thanks. I am kind of getting a bit In a color funk this morning trying to figure out how to paint the three balsa ones, BilletHead

First I have a question. Is there a rule of thumb for head to tail ratio when tying poppers? I know when doing flies tail is X amount long compared to hook shank length. Just what looks good? I know some I have tied look a bit goofy and the back end gets knifed off. Now some things that might help others who want to carve your own I have learned. Others might already know this but I did not until trial and error. #1 Even though I am hand carving the balsa I have been using the dremel for cupping the face. The first few I made and the store bought heads I made were flat faced but I liked the sound of cupped ones. I use a pointy carving bit to rough out the face and then change to the round ball gritty grinder to finish off. Here is a photo of three bodies that have been made. Face and side profile. A couple of 2/0 and a 4 size. #2 Cup the face and then glue in the hook before carving. Hook gives you something to hold on to when slicing off wood. Also when slotting your wood block just use an exacto or single sided razor blade. Lots of super glue and the balsa is soft enough the hook will widen the wood when you force it in. Carve to shape and this brings us to, #3 Super glue is your friend. Yes kind of expensive but you can get a big bottle at Grizzly tools reasonably priced. I use the maxi cure. After you carve and sand your body to shape coat your balsa with the glue. It will soak in and harden, besides making the balsa strong it seals the wood for painting. Sand once more before painting. You will understand after painting one before and after using the glue. #4 obvious but try to keep your epoxy out of your hook eye. What a pain in the rear to clear it afterwards. I know. #5 I like marabou for the pencil popper tails. When wet just laying in the water the marabou just quivers looking so real. Another obvious choice I know but I was just wading and had a popper just floating a foot in front of me as I was checking it out a bass attacked it and I got wet on its tail turn. More photos, a couple of my carved bodies. One tied and one not. A couple of factory flat faced bodies. Froggy and a golden shiner. Finally one that caught this morning, A final question for Gavin if you read this. I have slept since I remember this topic from somewhere but did you do a fly rod balsa prop bait? Post about it or is my vivid imagination making this up? BilletHead

Nice reports everyone and Ness, Cherry type tomatoes out the wazoo Pat has hauled more than a gallon to her work place, Bigger ones pretty good crop in spite of the fungus. Need to change dirt in some containers. Should I be spray for the fungus when plants are young to keep ahead? Some photos of maters, Black Krim and Brandywine. So many peppers too. Jalapenos, cubanells , bananas, yummy snacking, yum-yum bells and for the first time tobasco peppers. I thought what the heck a novelty if nothing else. Some pepper pictures, I have canned peppers before but to do it right to store on the shelf they have to be processed. I hate mushy peppers, they are good but mushy. This year I pickled them for refrigerator storage. Good for six months or more in the ice box plus they should stay crispy. A mix of jalapenos, bananas and tobascos. A half gallon jar. Still have another week to pickle. I am a bit excited, I find myself going out to the garden to graze more than once everyday. Some of the sweet peppers don't even get to the house. Eaten on the spot! BilletHead PS Thank you lord for todays rain

Nice flick Wise man! Fishingwrench Pat and I have met April. She is quite a nice gal, BilletHead

I doubt that very much Ronnie and thanks to all. Mic, don't sell them just tie them up and throw them to fish.PM me your address. Caught this morning on the black pencil one until the wind switched to the East. I have never seen a pond shut down like this one did today. BilletHead

Three shades of yellow, hummmmmm Got to get more paint:)

Thanks guys, Lancer the only time I am using spray now is when I want to two tone/scale/blending effect. Other than that just a brush base coat of white, other colors and then the dots. Dots made with pin heads, needles with ends filed smooth to size desired. Not my original idea. There is another fellow who does this really neat with the dots. His work is unreal. You could use spray for the base coat desired but once you smooth on the epoxy any brush marks, divots etc. disappear. As for paint I am using acrylic craft stuff you can get at walmart. Hobby lobby has more color choices. Let your imagination run wild. BilletHead

This is kind of flysmallie inspired. I wanted to start making and tying poppers. By seeing Ronnie's work it got me kick started. Started by buying kits with hard foam bodies. Glued some up and started to paint. Used a combo of brush, stippling (various dot sizes) and spray paint from cans. This gave me the results I wanted and I am getting better as I go. Tried to use a clear spray paint finish with mixed results. It did water proof the paint but not too durable. if you had a bad back cast or shot the line too far and hit a rock on the river the popper would explode and loose a chunk of foam. Trial # 2 was with epoxy. I was a bit scared with this as the only epoxy I have ever used was 5 minute. It got hot and runny. Worked fine on my epoxy minnows setting quick and I did not mind turning the vice for a couple of minutes on them. I have a epoxy motor driven driver that I had never used so here we go with 2 ton 30 minute stuff. Ok I picked a popper, mixed up a small batch, took a small disposable paint brush and give it a coat. Hey this stuff is pretty thick! Put it on the drier and let it spin. Watched the puddle of unused epoxy on my mixing paper and when it started to set up I turned the drier off. Checked out my prize, very happy with the finish. Then I started tying, making more and painting. They fish good too! I will start off with a few untied bodies. Please have patience with my photo taking:) The one that looks like a clown Mrs. BilletHead painted. Don't laugh, she will catch fish with it. More that are tied and finished Some of these are kind of ragged because they have been munched on by bass. Ok now I have been messing around with balsa and doing it all, Various stages of the process with three stages. Ok here is Pat's favorite, And one of her bass from the other day The one I was using that morning and me with a fish, I hate to say it but Saturday morning she out fished me with the pink one but Sunday morning early I got even. Ok one more of the Mrs. Her first hybrid on the fly rod, on a popper to make icing on the cake I am not sure who had the biggest smile that day her or me, POPPERS ROCK! BilletHead

You are a funny man Scott! I thought of you too. Helping some of us, you know that and not the outdoing part:) I kind of need your e-mail so I can share some of the secret outdoing stuff . BilletHead

I can count at least one I know, That guy? I think his name is Bird Watcher. Thing is he backs up what he does. Blow by blow text messages, also there are photos attached. Seen him in action once too. This same guy does it with waterfowl, rubbing it in just to get under my skin. I try and try to get one up on him. No dice! hahahahaa Have learned things from his friendship though. That is worth the harassment Expect more from me buddy I just don't know when, BilletHead

Neat photos Al. We have also fished at the campground up there a ways. One time many moons ago in 1984 me, my cousin and a friend went up bow hunting with three flat land horses. Hauled them up there in a fifth wheel trailer behind a half ton truck. Broke an axle on the truck on the way back near Ogallala Nebraska. Fun times when you are young and not so smart. Back then you could get a sportsman tag for 325 bucks. Included bear, elk, deer, small game and fishing. We parked at the end of the mill creek road and rode in a long ways scouting. We camped on a mountain top. It is amazing I am still alive from that trip. This was before I started fly fishing but I remember riding next to a pond in the timber up there where you could see trout swimming around. I also remember my cousin leaving a wool Pendleton shirt my grandpa gave me, I outgrew it and gave it to my cousin. It was hanging on a tree branch up there somewhere. We ended up hunting behind dome mountain just East of the Carbella access. Up the Joe Brown trail. Boy I love that country. Will miss it and Wyoming this August. BilletHead

oh yea, The bear jams, wolf jams, bison jams. They will get you every time. We used to rubberneck gawking in the park every trip. Love the sights there but now we just keep moving along getting to where we want to be. That would be fishing somewhere with the fly rod There will be another day Greasy B. In the meantime we will have to enjoy Al's Reports. A couple Mill Creek photos BilletHead

Sounds good Chris. We may take you up on that. Also if you have that empty seat let me know. Thanks too for the text message. I have and even half way know how to throw a cast net

Mill Creek, neat place. Been there done that. Caught a bunch. Even did well way up at the camp ground where you would think the pressure would effect the catch rate. No trip this year to Wyoming/Montana for the BilletHeads because of a job change for the Mrs. Next August though we will make the Pilgrimage again, BilletHead

Nice Chris, I wondered if you were going this weekend and was getting ready to text you. They pinched the water down more where we had been going. It is done now for sure unless we can find them deep. Thanks for the report, might have to drive up to the big lake and watch you catch, BilletHead

Neat pictures chief. We have quite a few around here. Spring storms bring them out. We called them chimney crawdads as sometimes they build quite the mound of mud upright from there holes. When the storms hit we find them crossing rural roads seeking wetter pastures to make home. I catch them and pitch into our koi pond where the channel cat and perch tear them to pieces. Baby dads try to escape and the koi suck them up like candy, BilletHead

55-200 zoom. I had it cranked up most of the time until I got so close a couple of times I had to crank it down a bit. You always hope your camera can match what your naked eye sees. How many times have we taken photos to only be disappointed to see what you really end up with? Well this time It turned out how I had hoped, BilletHead

Thanks guys, they say a blind hog finds an acorn once and a while. Thank goodness for auto settings and good light I had the camera on multiple shots and snapped 90 or so. All but one turned out. It was one where he was lose to a log and it focused on that log instead of him. These are the best I thought. I think I may even have one of him taking a great eagle crap. Digital cameras are the bomb. Just delete the junky photos and keep the cream. BilletHead

There is a place on my favorite river a friend And I fish often. There has been an eagle nest there for fifteen to twenty years. That many years back I thought it was pretty special to see it and the adults with young. Now I have been taking it for granted after seeing it there for all those years. Been there off and on for the last two weeks. Young out of the nest. Two of the young we see flying from tree to tree up an down the river. The third one not so much. HE would just stand on the bank and when the boat went by he would go up the bank into the weeds and brush and hide. One morning early he was on a brush pile in the river and looked like a wet rat of sorts. I think he is getting used to us as now he just sits there as we go by. He is flying some now. An adult is never far. Went by him this morning and he was up in a tree. On the way back I told my buddy I was going to shoot him, WITH the camera. As we came around the bend he was not to be seen. Then just up river on a gravel bar an adult took off. The little one had to be there I thought maybe with a meal. Sure enough there he was and I went to shooting. Mother or father had supplied a channel cat for breakfast. Soon he was grabbing the fish and trying to get out of our sight. He then dropped the fish and hopped up the gravel bar then stopped. He than gave us the look of leave me alone so we bid him a goodbye. I will try not to take this place for granted any more. May that nest fledge many more birds in the future, BilletHead

Lee I was doing a little of both. If they flushed I could just wait and they would land again, BilletHead

Emjay, I have a Nikon D3100. Just using the lens it came with for close photos. It is a 18-55 mm . Just shooting on auto for now as I have not tinkered with other manual settings, BilletHead

So what do I have? I know, smaller greener gooseberries............ I need to find or start some more pixwell. They are hard to beat. BilletHead

On the mystery berries they stay a dark green, do not get as large as the pixwell also. You know how the pixwell kind of gets a translucent light green/almost a yellow green? The mystery ones stay a dark opaque green like a wild berry but larger. Make sense? BilletHead

oh yea Ness I am liking the produce porn. Getting peppers out the wazoo right now and a few more cherry tomatoes. Squash too of course. Like the gooseberries too. We had a rather large pixwell bush that was like 20 years old. Pat would get up to four gallons of berries when it was in it's prime. We pick them before they start to turn purple. We lost that bush a couple of years back. I planted five to take it's place. They were all supposed to be pixwell but this year all five produced and only one was pixwell. Not sure what the others were but not extra big berries like pixwell. Pat got a gallon this season. We mainly do jam (grandmas recipe) It is good and makes a lot of people happy in the neighborhood. BilletHead