Untitled Document

Personality Profile

BOB POPOVICS

By Frank Abbate and Betty Anne Timmermann

Bob Popovics is one of the most dynamic, innovative and active northeast fly tiers. He is also one who works hard to keep the sport growing by devoting time to teaching and conservation. This is the first of a two part interview.

The most obvious question would be when did you first get interested in fly-fishing?

In 1970, when I came back from Viet Nam. I had taken a friend of mine fishing and he brought along a friend of his, whose name was Butch Colvin. He was Cap Colvin’s son. We were out doing some fishing for weakfish with conventional tackle when a school of bluefish came along the surface. Butch went into the cabin of my dad’s 21ft. Grady White and brought out some fly rods. I said, "what in the world is this?" He explained that they were fly rods and he was going to use the fly rod on the blues. I told him I had always wanted to try that and he said he would show me. The next day Butch picked me up at my house at the restaurant and took me over to his father’s place in Seaside Park, Cap Colvin’s Tackle Store. That was when I bought my first fly rod and had my first lesson with Cap Colvin right in front of the store. I was hooked from that time on, and that’s where it all began.

The first fly tying sessions at your home in New Jersey have become legendary. In fact I believe the Atlantic Salt Water Fly Rodders came into existence because of the large number of people coming out to your house. What started the sessions in the first place?

Don Wall, a friend of mine, who was also a member of a club called The Salt Water Fly Rodders of America Chapter One Seaside Park had decided he was going to Black Lake or Long Lake up in New York State. He said he needed some bucktails tied onto his jigs, and asked me to tie them. I really didn’t want to do that, so instead I asked him over to the house and said we could tie together, since I had to get my stuff ready for the up and coming fall season anyway. He came over that Tuesday night and my wife made coffee, cake and some brownies. We had a good time and decided we would do it again the following week. So the following week there were a few more guys and the next week a few more. Word got around, and people started to invite other people, fly fishermen started coming out of the woodwork. They were eager for all the information they could get, from tying flies to stripping baskets.

So, it wasn’t a monthly get-together, it was weekly?

Yes, it was weekly.

When did it become a monthly meeting?

We tied at my house for about five years. By the end of that time we had as many as fifty-five people showing up at the house. They were cramped in everywhere; they’d be standing in the stairway leading up to the fly tying room; they were standing in the bathroom; they were in all the rooms. It just got to be too much and we realized that a lot of the people that came over never even got close to the fly tying bench. There were so many not getting anything from it. I decided it was time to start a club. I put together a list of guys, maybe ten or twelve guys that I thought would be helpful in creating a good, well rounded club, and with well rounded ideas. It worked out pretty good; we formed The Atlantic Saltwater Fly Rodders of Seaside Park. That was in 1992, and within a couple of months we had over 100 members.

At what stage in your career did you find the need to design the series that became known as "POP-FLEYES"?

When I first got started tying flies, I wanted to design a fly that I could call my own, something I could put my name on. I tried and tried to design a new fly or a new way of doing things, but nothing seemed to work for me. It wasn’t until I started to say, "well, I want to make a fly that I can’t find." I wanted a big fly, a large fly the size of a mature bunker. There were no synthetics at that time; fish hair wasn’t even out yet. I didn’t have anything longer than bucktail or some stubby feathers that I found packaged, they weren’t any good. I had no material of any length, so I couldn’t make a long fly on a standard hook. I decided to use monofiliment to extend the length of the shank of the hook. I put two vices about 18" apart and strung mono from one to the other. I found that I could tie a series of bucktail or feathers and just keep going the length of the mono until I had the length I wanted. I would do the fly in a series of steps. I would take a strand of mono and attach a series of white bucktail for the bottom, take another strand of mono and tie a series of multicolored bucktail for the top. For the center of the fly I would tie two pieces of hackle tips to mono and fork the end, and stick the mono through some mylar. I had a top, a bottom, and a center; I tied the ends of all three pieces together and brought it all up onto a hook shank. There I had my length; I finished the hook shank off with a tapered head of chenille and bucktail, finishing it off with glass eyes.

That’s the first fly I can say I designed, and that design came out of need; a need for a long fly that I couldn’t find anywhere. I think that’s when I realized that I could design, it had to come from that need to have a fly that would perform in a way that I wanted it to perform. At this point I also had the experience tying all the standard flies to know how it all worked, which lead to being able to solve problems. By using that knowledge I could apply different methods and make it work. The experience coupled with the need for something new gave me the ability to design.

If you wouldn’t consider yourself the king of modern epoxy fly design, you could certainly be known as the crown prince. Run me through the process from: I need a more durable fly, to coming up with epoxy and silicone for your wool flies.

Epoxy was on my fly tying bench for the purpose of gluing things together, or making the heads of the flies more durable. I used it to glue the hooks inside of cork bodies for poppers. I used it to coat the threads on the heads of my fly instead of head cement or lacquer. Let’s say I’m using a Joe Brooks blonde. Sometimes it only took one blue fish to disassemble the fly. The mylar would frizz out or the bucktail would get bitten, the fly would become misshapen, even roll around on the hook. The head of the fly though, the part that was coated with epoxy, would stand up. It seemed durable. So, the epoxy was strong, and I thought why not do the whole shank, that would make it all durable. Maybe even hold it in the shape of a fish…. Although that was more an after thought. The primary reason was to make the entire fly more durable, and that’s what progressed over the years to what you all know as the epoxy fly or surf candy. The use of synthetics was very good, by learning that there were some translucent properties over certain materials, such as polar hair in the beginning and then ultra hair later on, and now super hair. I can get the fly to become more realistic. That allowed me to go a little further, to take it another step. At this point I keep taking it further and further just for the fun of it. Now they look totally different from the first ones.

What one person would you credit for helping you to bring the Pop-Fleyes series to the public?

Well, that would definitely be Ed Jaworowski. Back in 1990 or 1991 Ed wrote an article about my flies in The American Angler Fly Tier magazine.

I had the fly for so long and in the early days they were crude looking, it was messy for me to work with; I’d get epoxy all over my fingers and into the material. I didn’t realize that anyone else would ever go through the trouble. It was awkward; I had not yet refined the technique. I would only keep them for myself and only for blue fish. Then I gave them to friends, Ed, Lefty, Lance, and a couple of surf fisherman, they used them as teasers. They were working so well that they wanted more of them all the time. I have a story: Lance came into my fly tying room one day and he threw one of the flies over my shoulder. He said, "You’ve really got something here, I just caught twenty blue fish on that fly and it’s still in good shape." As a matter of fact I used that fly a couple of years later to catch my first Albie on a fly from the surf. It was at that point that I knew I’d better take the fly seriously. Ed wanted them; he had gone to American Angler with it. They said, okay, and they did the feature cover story in their magazine. Ed was the one who first introduced it. Ed’s article let people know about it, which lead to feedback, and I knew the fly was accepted.

You mentioned silicone before; I like to trim flies with fleece, the only problem is it could never handle any kind of abuse. Using silicone was another way of implementing durability in the fly. I went out one day with a wool fly, caught a blue fish and that one fish just killed the fly. At that point I knew I was going to go home and put silicone on it. That’s when I made it, shaped it, and put silicone on it. The next day I took it, put it on the water, and it floated. I called it a "siliclone mullet"; it mimicked that bait so well. They go to the surface and scoot and they make a nice wake across the water. I knew this silicone had a lot of application. I like the silicone even more than I like the epoxy.

hey make a nice wake across the water. I knew this silicone had a lot of application. I like the silicone even more than I like the epoxy.