Sunday I drove across the state to return to this little shallow weedy river mouth lake known for Bowfin. The north shore was sheltered from the wind which was also pushing me in the upstream direction. Lots of Bluegill beads and Bass were near by or in open pockets in the weeds. They hit a 2/0 Black Popping Wedge.
Upstream and along the south shore I got nothing. I moved to a weedy bay downstream. There Bowfin were occasionally coming up for air or leaving faint disturbances while moving just under the surface, First cast to one of these, I marched the popper across an open pocket to leave it resting against the near edge, it got hit with a hard sucking strike. A cast back, retrieve and rest also got a hard suck hit and miss. Next shot at a moving Bowfin just under the surface got him to turn and track the popper then hit and get hooked.
Caught several bass using the same tactics and got the second Bowfin near dark
Paddling back across these weeds I ran over a very big fish laying very shallow that exploded the water under the nose of my kayak. Carp size, but Bowfin get that big.
I've used this "Popping Wedge" for a long time, the head can be made less slanted to pop louder or more slanted to dive better. This wide gap downward hanging hook does a lot of damage to fish's gills. I learned to break of the barbs on this and similar patterns. In various colors it is a good pattern to throw in sizes 1/0 to 5/0 for Largemouth, Pike, Bowfin, Snook, Tarpon and Musky.
- Popping Wedge
- Head: Foam Cylinder diameter about hook gap, cut to 2/3 shank length then cut on a diagonal so round front face slants about 60 degrees to flat cut bottom of head.
- Hook: Short shank straight eye Eagle Claw 253N here or similar Mustad 32606N predator hook
- Thread: UV Fire Orange 210 denier
- Tail: Generous Marabou about 3X shank length, Black, Chartreuse, White, Purple etc.
- Collar, Wrapped Schlappen to match tail color or big Ice Dub Clump of similar color
- Flash: Black Pearl, or mix of pearl, metallic or holographic folded to each side of tail assembly, extra long past the marabou.
- Rubber "Legs" Red, 3 or 4 strands folded to each side of collar & tail, these should only be about shank length, more like external gills than legs.