It's a great thrill, catching pikes on surface lures and especialy with a flyrod! Spring is coming and that means popper season for pikes!
We have been selling the handmade and airbrushed poppers for quite some time now, and also the airbrushed popper heads.
We had many questions how we make these poppers on a shank, and we hope with this blog you see how we do it :-)
First thing we have to do, is give the popper some eyes sockets. With this tool (or any other) we cut out the outline for a 12 mm eye, and take it out with a sharp hobby knife. (be careful)
Next step is to give the popper some color. We use an airbrush for this, but any spray can or copic pen will do the trick. Just keep a good distance while spraying to get a smooth overal effect.
This is the effect we are looking for.
After we sprayed the heads with the basic colors its time to add "dots" or stripes...any decoration will do. 
Next we finish the "head" with a transparent layer of protection, as show on the photo.
Then after we've given the popper head the protection finish, we can glue the eyes on and we have a "ready to tie" popper head. 
We use a 50 mm bigstreamer shank and a little piece of fluo tube, to keep the hook in a good solid position behind the popper head.
On the hook we tie in some bucktail, nayat and some long saddles. (in that order)
Second step is a little bit tricky, you have to "lock" the shank with the fluo tube in your vice...we did it with many different vices and it always works.
If you got it locked, just repeat the bucktail, nayat and saddles steps. (you can also use flash or/and strung rooster saddles or any other material). Last step is to give your popper a collar, we use Monster Dubbing or Predator Dubbing for this. Make sure you tie it all in as far as possible at the end of the shank, so keep enough space for fitting your popper head.
Final step is putting a thin layer of thread over the shank and add some glue...now you can push the popper head over the shank all the way back to the material and you have a ready to go pike popper!
