Bob Popovic's always said fly tying is done to solve a fishing problem. Sometimes the problem is striped bass just love pencil poppers. I've seen it. I get it. A straight line popper just doesn't do it. I had tied up some "Snake Changers" awhile back and have had some swirls on them but they just don't hit it
with the reckless abandoned they do like a topwater pencil popper. So.....
I went to the vice and tried something, we'll see how it performs in the air and water. But here are my thoughts. It has a five inch long foam body. I got this piece from Jim Matson as he used to used these to punch out popper heads. So it should float. It's got a big Ahrex hook with plenty of a gap to
to not miss those head strikes. Now out the back it where things got interesting, or laughable. The fly is wired through, like a plug, and has the following. A tungsten cone head buried in the arse, three tungsten beads in between two more tungsten cone heads. There's a bucktail flag off the back just to give it some action and extend the length of the "fly".
For additional weight I did something I learned from Steve Farrar. I mixed tungsten powder with some acrylic and created a mound of weight to hopefully pull the flies ass end down a little bit. While there's weight, overall it feels like it could be castable with my 11 wt with an intermediate line. I'm using 30 pound fluoro as a leader.
I'll have to vary the retrieves to see if I can get that "walk the dog" action like a pencil or a Spook. Those Snake Changers undulate nicely but they are more swimming than they are annoying. Hopefully all that metal in the back will create a little noise.
Prototype #1. Field test to come.