DAS UBER S C I E N T I F I C F LY ’ S A R N O L A U B S C H E R I N V E S T E D F I V E Y E A R S , A N D A VA S T A M O U N T O F T H O U G H T A N D E F F O R T, I N T O M A K I N G H I S N E W G N A R LY H E A D Z POPPER HEADS. HERE, HE TELLS US ABOUT THE PROCESS AND THE P R O B L E M S H E B E L I E V E S H E ’ S S O LV E D . THE IDEA I like fishing poppers. It’s the most exciting way to fish. You can try to make your own popper heads, but either it takes too long, you can’t get the right material, or you won’t have the right manufacturing processes. If you buy your heads, quite often you can’t find the right hook to fit the popper. This made me think. My research showed that a lot of people were complaining about poppers and, specifically, the hook-up ratio. They’d say they only get like a 40% hook-up ratio. With that in mind, I set about developing a popper that would expose the hook more. THE PROBLEM Some fish eat a popper from below or from the side. Others eat from behind depending on things like how fast you retrieve and what fish species it is. Most people don’t understand what hook exposure is about when they buy commercially manufactured popper heads and hooks. The packet may say “use a 2/0 hook for the popper head”, but is it the long shank 2/0 or the short shank 2/0? What must the gape measurement be to fit that popper? THE PROCESS Turns out I’d opened a can of worms. It started with a simple drawing and progressed to buying a 3D printer, learning the software and then drawing, taking measurements, and making notes. I didn’t realise it was going to take five years. I was still learning the 3D software when I came up with the design that I wanted. But the first one I printed was way too big. I thought, “OK, I’m going to print it for a 6/0 hook,” but it was totally oversized. I was going to have to take certain measurements on the hook and build them into the popper head.
THE SOLUTIONS The two most important measurements for the size of the popper on the hook are the hook shank length and the gape width. My entire design is based on that. I started with a 6/0 and created these shapes. If I put the shank length and gape of any hook into my spreadsheet, it will give me 26 measurements. With those measurements, you build the shape for a specific object. The shape of the popper can be any shape, as long as it’s within this area. When there’s nothing tied to a hook, that hook point is exposed to the maximum. As soon as you start to tie something onto the hook, just one wrap of thread, you affect the hook point exposure. The more material you put on the hook, the more the hook point exposure is affected. Softer material will not have as big an effect as more rigid material. There are two major performance factors with poppers. One, it must float the hook. Two, it must pop and give you the right action on the water. I needed to cut away as much as possible to get to my design and expose the hook. But, as soon as you cut too much away, you start to affect the performance of the popper. I needed to look at the volume of the actual head on the popper. To get back to this shape, I printed half-shapes and glued hooks into them to see if that would work. I then made sure the measurements from the hook eye and below the hook were right and I had to do this with a couple of sizes and brands of hooks to find a size that would fit most hook brands. Lastly, I designed the actual head by cutting away whatever I could and getting the volume right. If you have just the right volume to float, the popper is going to hover. You need to have a lot more foam on the hook so that the thing can pop. That is why, instead of round corners on the top, I built in square corners because that is not really going to affect the hook-up ratio. I also made sure it was opened at the bottom and on the sides. Also, a popper shouldn’t be convex shaped. This is a problem with the cone-shaped poppers. They should be concave, so you lose material towards the back and open that point up as much as possible. That’s why Gnarly Headz taper to the back.
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