From the Feather Craft Archives · Pattern 788

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Ed Story's Baitfish Surface Popper

Pattern Sheet 788: hand-punched balsa, a marabou tail and one beautifully simple way to build a surface fly from raw material

Pattern 788 is more than an old popper recipe. It is a complete manufacturing method. Ed Story documented how to punch the bodies from balsa, cut the hook groove, shape the head, epoxy the hook in place, paint the body and finish the fly for saltwater or freshwater use.

Some old fly patterns survive because the materials are still fashionable. Others survive because the design solves a problem so cleanly that the method remains useful long after the catalog page turns yellow.

Ed Story's Baitfish Surface Popper belongs in the second group.

In Feather Craft Pattern Sheet 788, Ed described the surface popper he used more than half the time while fly rodding in saltwater, including surf fishing and the bays along Florida's Panhandle. He also used the same basic popper concept for largemouth, smallmouth and other freshwater gamefish.

The fly itself is sparse. The construction method is the story.

The first page of Ed Story's original Pattern 788. The recipe, hook references and balsa-punch method are all preserved in the original sheet.

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The Original Recipe

Ed's recipe is unusually useful because he documented both the fly and the tooling required to make the body.

The Mustad hook numbers are useful historical references, not requirements for reproducing the pattern today. Current popper and saltwater hooks use different model systems. What matters is preserving Ed's geometry: enough shank to carry the balsa body, enough gape to remain clear below it, and enough wire for the fish being targeted.

Feather Craft's current Fly Tying Hooks selection includes modern bass, saltwater and popper hooks that can fill the same mechanical role.

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The Clever Part: Making the Body Cutter

The most interesting part of Pattern 788 is that Ed did not start with a purchased foam popper blank.

He made the tool that made the body.

For the larger popper, Ed specified a six-inch length of 7/16-inch K&S brass tubing. One outside edge of the tube is sharpened with a file. A hardwood dowel, slightly smaller than the tube's inside diameter, becomes the ejector.

The sharpened tubing is then driven through balsa with a hammer. The resulting cylindrical balsa blank stays inside the brass tube until the dowel pushes it back out.

For smaller bodies, Ed noted that 3/8-inch or 5/16-inch tubing could be used the same way.

That method is still reproducible. K&S Precision Metals currently lists round brass tubing in both 3/8-inch and 7/16-inch outside diameters, along with a broad range of other sizes.

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Why Balsa Works

Balsa gives a popper builder three useful properties at once: low mass, buoyancy and easy shaping.

A cylindrical blank can become several different surface flies depending on what happens after punching. Ed showed two principal shapes on the original sheet:

• Popper head: taper the rear and leave the front broad enough to push water.
• Bullet head: round and taper the front for a cleaner, quieter surface presentation.

The blank is therefore only the starting geometry.

Sandpaper determines how aggressively the fly disturbs the surface. A broad vertical face pushes more water. A tapered face slips more easily through it. Even before tail length, color or flash enter the design, the balsa shape has already changed the fly's behavior.

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The Six-Step Body Method

1. Cut the balsa block

Ed started from balsa stock large enough to accept the tube cutter. He cut a block approximately as long as the hook shank being used, while deliberately leaving room at the rear for the marabou tail.

2. Punch with the grain

The sharpened brass tube is driven through the balsa with the grain. The hardwood dowel then pushes the blank out of the tubing.

Working with the grain matters because balsa is structurally directional. A clean punch produces a stronger cylinder and a better surface for later sanding.

3. Cut the hook groove

A fine hacksaw blade cuts a groove the full length of the underside of the body. Ed instructed fly tyers to make the slot no wider than necessary to accept the hook.

That matters mechanically. The more wood removed, the less body remains around the shank. A narrow, clean groove gives the adhesive more controlled surfaces and keeps the body centered.

4. Sand the final shape

Fine sandpaper creates the finished popper or bullet profile.

Ed suggested tapering the body toward the rear for a conventional popper. For the bullet-head version, the front is rounded instead of left as a broad popping face.

5. Epoxy the hook into the body

Ed specified 30-minute epoxy in the groove. The hook shank is pressed into place, aligned with the body, and excess epoxy is removed while the groove is filled around the shank.

Alignment is worth slowing down for. Once cured, a crooked body cannot be corrected without destroying the blank.

6. Prime, paint, clear-coat and add the tail

The original sheet allowed the assembly to cure before priming and painting the balsa. Ed then applied a final clear epoxy coat for durability, cleaned the rear of the hook shank and tied in marabou mixed with Krystal Flash.

Page two shows Ed's punch, groove, popper-head and bullet-head construction, along with the finished-body sequence.

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The Tail: Movement Without Complexity

Ed's tail is almost aggressively simple: white or light-grey marabou blended with flash.

That simplicity is appropriate for a surface popper.

The body already provides the noise, displacement and hard silhouette. The tail only needs to continue moving after the body stops. Marabou is excellent at that job because its fine fibers respond to small amounts of water movement and collapse into a narrow profile during the cast.

The flash adds a second visual signal without creating a second structural element.

This is a good example of material discipline. A large surface fly does not need six tail materials simply because there is room for them.

Browse modern Fly Tying Feathers and Fly Tying Flash by the same principle: movement first, color second.

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Saltwater and Freshwater Were the Same Platform

One of the best details in Pattern 788 is that Ed did not treat saltwater and freshwater poppers as completely separate fly categories.

The body architecture stayed essentially the same.

For saltwater, he preferred a white belly with a grey-blue back. For freshwater, he described a perch treatment with a light-yellow belly and olive back.

The structure stayed constant while the visual signal changed.

That tells us something about how Ed approached pattern design. He was not building a new fly every time the target species changed. He was carrying a proven surface mechanism into another fishery and adjusting the hook, size and finish.

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Popper Head vs. Bullet Head

The original drawings make this distinction explicit.

A popper head leaves a larger forward surface to displace water. Strip it and the face resists forward motion, creating sound, spray and a pressure disturbance.

A bullet head is more tapered and streamlined. It pushes less water and produces a quieter, more direct motion.

That means head shape should follow fishing conditions.

• Broad popper face: when you want audible surface disturbance and visible displacement.
• Bullet profile: when you want a quieter baitfish motion or need the fly to move with less resistance.

The same tail and paint scheme can therefore create two meaningfully different presentations simply by changing the sanding step.

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A Modern Bench Can Preserve the Original Method

There is no requirement to reproduce every obsolete product number in order to reproduce Pattern 788 faithfully.

We would separate the pattern into what is fundamental and what is historical.

If you do reproduce it, test modern primers, paints and adhesives on scrap balsa before committing a finished body. Coating systems can interact, and the old pattern sheet assumed products available to Ed at the time.

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Why Pattern 788 Still Matters

The easiest modern version of a popper begins with a manufactured body. There is nothing wrong with that. It is fast, consistent and makes excellent flies.

Pattern 788 preserves a different kind of knowledge.

It shows how a fly tyer can begin with raw material, make a cutting tool, manufacture a body, alter that body for different surface actions, bond it to a hook and finish it for multiple fisheries.

That is more than a recipe.

It is a way of thinking about fly tying as fabrication.

Ed Story built Feather Craft in an era when many useful tying components were unavailable because nobody had manufactured them yet. The solution was often to make the component yourself, then make the fly.

The archive gives us the instructions.

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Keep the two original Pattern 788 sheets with the fly. They are the source document. Use Feather Craft's Fly Tying Materials and Fly Tying Hooks collections only to replace the consumable components Ed would have selected from the materials available in his own day.

Feather Craft · Est. 1955