Fly Of The Month

April 2000
BOB'S BANGER

By Frank Abbate

If there was ever a fly so aptly named this is it. Fish, especially Bluefish really bang this fly. What makes the Bob’s Banger so effective lies in the material and construction. Unlike its cork and plastic counter parts, this fly is made with foam. It also lack’s the concave face found in most other poppers. Standard poppers pop. OK they gurgle too.jeez. The Banger sort of pops, but it slides too.

A popper and a slider. You could say “more banger for your buck”. What’s more is they are so eeeeeez to tie. The foam also comes in also diameter’s. Livebody and Raineys carry the foam( I like the Livebody a little better, because it’s a tad more hard).

OK here’s the material list.

Materials:

Hook: Any long shank hook, Tiemco 911S is nice.

Thread: Flat waxed nylon in white.

Prism tape: color, your choice

Eyes: Stick on, again color and size your choice.

Coller: Eztaz.

Tail: Bucktail

Flash: Flashabou.

Body: Livebody foam.

Tying intruction’s:

1.        Heat a Bodkin(dubbing needle) and pierce the very center of the foam head and push it through to the other side.

2.        With hook in vice, begin wrapping your thread from behind the hook eye to about the center or a little beyond, but no further than the hook point.

3.        Tie in your tail at that point, also add your flashabou to the bucktail.

4.        Begin wrapping the eztaz around the bucktail thread wraps, going forwardbut not so much as to hamper getting the popper head on.

5.        There are two things you can do at this point. 1. Glue the head on so it won’t come off. 2. Don’t glue on the head, so you can change colours, by wrapping an assortment of heads and size’s at your discretion.

6.        Which ever you choose, take some prism tape and wrap twice around the foam, this makes it a bit more durable. Put your stick –on eyes on either side of the foam and Dude, you're done.

You can fish the Banger in ocean or sound, although because it lacks a cupped face, it doesn’t track as well in really really turbulent water.(a dremel tool can fix that though).