popper advice?

[fishinwrench]

I'm glad you brought that up because I've had a question for a long time concerning that tying style.

I experimented with some Intruder style streamers and spey style wetflys, my thinking was that it would nail those short strikers. But my experience with them was that anytime you tie a hook off of a shank with wire, mono, braid, (just a hook with nothing tied on it to push any water) that it totally kills the action of the fly just like you hooked a piece of moss on it.     So what is the intended purpose of flys tied like that?   Why did they start tying spey flys like that to begin with?   It's ignorant, I hate it!

The fly acts way more enticing without it.

[kjackson]

My understanding is that the fly with a hanging hook is lighter than one tied with a long shank. Also, when you have fish that spend a lot of their fight in the air and the rest of it twisting and somersaulting around, the shorter hook on the trailer doesn't give the fish the leverage to twist off the hook.  I can't testify to the latter. For the trailers I've tied, I use a short-shank octopus style, so it is lighter than a long shank hook.  

On tube flies, you simply replace the hook at will...a good thing when fishing in rocky streams where hooks take a beating.  A set of tube flies are very easy to store as you can dump them all in a little box, and the hooks in another box.  There are no tangles like you would see with regular flies treated in that matter.  I've only played with tube flies a bit before we moved to Arkansas, so my "experience" with them is primarily online.  

[tjm]

Do you think a fly simply on the swing 60-70' away from the angler has a lot of action/wiggle going on? I always figured the water disturbance and profile were the important factors, but then I've never been Spey fishing. And I always guessed the trailing hooks were snag devices to be used when the river was piled full of non-feeding fish on the way to spawn, but again I never was in the places where those are used.

[fishinwrench]

1 hour ago, tjm said:

Do you think a fly simply on the swing 60-70' away from the angler has a lot of action/wiggle going on?

I don't know about 60-70ft.   But 30-50....yeah.   I impart some action that seems to help alot.   I never dead swing anything.

[kjackson]

There's an old series of double-hook steelhead flies--Ant maybe?-- that are supposed to wobble on the swing. I tied a version of Haig-Brown's Steelhead Bee that had great movement on the swing after the idea of the old flies. I used deer hair wings and cemented the base so that they would stay straight up. Cast down and across and swung, the fly would wobble on the surface.  Caught my largest season on it the first day of using it.  

[fishinwrench]

When it comes to swinging flys for Trout, White bass, and Smallies......which is all we have to swing for around here..... I've yet to find/try anything that outperforms a Leech, Woolly bugger, or a Muddler.   

[tjm]

I think of Spey being for Big Rivers and for long casts like the Spey River where it was invented or the salmon streams of the PNW, casting two hand rods casting at over 60', reaching across most of the stream and beyond much manipulation, other than an initial mend. I wouldn't expect flies suitable for that style to be of much use to me. But of course I may be wrong because I have never seen Spey fishing except in books and a long ago movie. What  I have read on line indicates the left coast advocates of Spey fishing adhere have rules governing each part of the cast and swing, with names for every position of the rod.

I swing wets but I'd never want to Spey.

[fishinwrench]

17 minutes ago, tjm said:

I think of Spey being for Big Rivers and for long casts like the Spey River where it was invented or the salmon streams of the PNW, casting two hand rods casting at over 60', reaching across most of the stream and beyond much manipulation, other than an initial mend. I wouldn't expect flies suitable for that style to be of much use to me. But of course I may be wrong because I have never seen Spey fishing except in books and a long ago movie. What  I have read on line indicates the left coast advocates of Spey fishing adhere have rules governing each part of the cast and swing, with names for every position of the rod.

I swing wets but I'd never want to Spey.

Well Trout Spey is a real thing, works great for quickly covering that 1/8-1/4 mile of river between "good spots", and spey style casting is useful even with a 8ft. stream rod.   

I was just questioning the design of specific "Spey style" flys.....which to me don't appear to offer any benefit, other than like someone else said about keeping an airborne fish stuck good.....which I don't have a problem with ordinarily, or at least not often enough to justify building flys with that as my main concern.

[kjackson]

Back to poppers, or at least crease flies.  The only sheet foam I've found--besides the quarter-inch stuff-- is two millimeters thick. Is this thick enough? I am thinking of taking two sheets and then gluing the buggers together before cutting the pattern. Will that work?

 

[fishinwrench]

5 hours ago, kjackson said:

Back to poppers, or at least crease flies.  The only sheet foam I've found--besides the quarter-inch stuff-- is two millimeters thick. Is this thick enough? I am thinking of taking two sheets and then gluing the buggers together before cutting the pattern. Will that work?

 

Yeah that works fine.   3M super 77 spray adhesive is what I use to laminate the popper heads.    For Crease flys I just use the craft foam sheets from Walmart, probably about 3/32" thick.  

Don't forget that they get a light coating of epoxy over them.