Blockhead Bass - September 2, 2014

The Fall White Bass fishing extravaganza is going on here, so I've been focusing on them lately.  It had been 3 full weeks since I'd tried flyfishing for bass on the local ponds.  Last night I had a short timeframe for fishing...not enough time to chase the White Bass, so I hit a local pond with a fly rod and a Blockhead Popper.

I was happy to discover the fish are still very willing to strike topwaters.  I flyfished for just over an hour, and caught 7 Largemouth Bass, 3 Bluegills, 1 Crappie, and 1 Hybrid Sunfish.  The biggest bass measured 18", and was the biggest one I've landed from this pond so far:

Blockhead Popper Conclusion

Nope...its definitely NOT the last time I will be using these.  They are fun to make and they CATCH FISH.  I just don't know how much more I can really say about them after this post.  So...the "Conclusion" part of the title just means I won't belabor the issue further.  Do expect future mentions of them and picture of them in fish's mouths, though.

I tied up some more blockhead poppers.  I tied 2 larger ones on Umpqua/Tiemco 8089 #6 hooks...those bass-style ones that are ginormous for their stated size.  I also tied up a couple more on the #10 size hooks of the same style.

Last night I visited 3 new-to-me ponds in my town.  Yes, and there really are even MORE that I still haven't visited in the past 13 years of living in this town!  :)  Can you believe it??  Life is good.

I fished all night with the larger size blockhead popper.  Since I recently broke my favorite 6wt rod, I was using a fast-action 7 wt rod to cast/fish these.

The first pond had a VERY WIDE and solid ring of floating algae around the edge of the pond.  I probably made 5 casts total, caught a bluegill on that larger popper.

Next pond, resulted in one 11" bass caught, and I missed a pair of great strikes from something I feel was larger.  Disappointing result from that pond.

The third pond gave up at least 5 nice bass in the 14"-16" range (guesstimate...I didn't really measure any of them).  They hit very aggressively, and fought well.  That was FUN!

A couple of the bass even struck, got off without being hooked, and then struck another time or two on follow-up casts back to the same spots before getting caught!  You can't always count on the fish being THAT aggressive!

Those #6 poppers were noticeable more difficult to cast than the #10's.  I think I will go back to using the #10's for the immediate future, but I will keep some of the bigger ones with me at all times, in case they want the bigger mouthful.

Blockhead Popper Field Test #2

Quick field test during lunch today.  Algae mat conditions had not improved on the pond I selected.  I fished it anyway.
I caught an 18.25" Largemouth Bass (which may be the largest I have landed there), a 10" Crappie, and a decent Bluegill on the blockhead popper.

Dale S. let me use the following images of the jig he built for cutting the foam:

Flyrod Bass Poppers-2

My friend Dale S. gave me a tool/jig he built to aid in cutting foam "flip-flops" into shape for blockhead-style poppers.  He even gave me some flip-flop pieces in all the good colors!

Well, I'd been very interested to try making some of these poppers and trying them on the local fish, so I had to sit down and cut some up right away.

Wow, it worked great!  I quickly cut @ a dozen heads in just a couple minutes!  The tops and bottoms are angled....I can see I may need to also angle the sided, but there was some cool texture on one side that I kind of wanted to keep.  I can trim some more in different ways later.

Here's the first one I tied up:

I think it should work really well.  Yesterday I went fishing during lunch, and hadn't packed this new popper into my flybox/sling pack yet.  I resorted to using one of the poppers I mentioned in my previous blog entry.  Conditions were extremely tough at the public pond I fished, with a 25' wide solid band of floating algae mat on the surface around the entire pond perimeter!  I found a couple openings in it, and saw some decent bass around one of them.  First cast with the popper...I could see a bass come up to look it over...it slowly moved forward, I just let the popper sit...and the bass sucked it in, turned and dove.  Fish ON!  :)

It was a nice 17" bass!

Anyway, I hope to try the blockhead popper soon.  Another huge THANK YOU to Dale for the awesome foam cutting jig!!