No More Miss Prissy

Magnum PI

For years a popper sold by Accardo they called the Miss Prissy was the goto popper for most fly fisherman I knew. Unfortunately that popper is no longer available. I have a few left from the last batch of fifty I bought a couple of years ago but after that it is all over.

The Miss Prissy did catch fish, which of course is why it was so popular especially with the "brim" fisherman. Frequently though this little bit of fish magic would attract a large bass and you would have to pray the little hook would hold in that tough bucket mouth.

For that reason I began toying with making my on versions of the Miss Prissy in a larger, bass size popper I called the Magnum PI (Prissy Imitation). Now that the Miss Prissy is no longer available this has taken its place in my popper box. It catches bass just like the Miss Prissy but the larger size gives you a more solid hook-up when the bigmouth does explode under it.

I'm not sure any popping bug will take the place of the Miss Prissy but its absence has stirred my interest and the interest of others in crafting my own popping bugs. A material resource that I had been collecting for years was wine corks. I felt sure I could make poppers from them but couldn't seem to find the time to figure out how. In the meantime my collection of purple stained corks grew from a small bag to half a garbage can full.

Stories from a fellow angler of catching monster bass on big poppers once again had me thinking of the wine cork poppers. I made a couple and gave them to him to try that Fall. It was downhill from there. That winter we cranked out three or four dozen poppers from the wine corks. Friends began to hear about the exercise and wine corks began showing up in my mailbox and on my front porch. So many that I suspected some of my friends might have issues with wine consumption. That concern led me to saddle the wine cork poppers with the handle Wino Poppers and that has stuck.

Wino Poppers, wine corks repurposed for a life of daring and adventure.

My popper arsenal is now made up primarily of the Magnum PI and the Wino Popper. Both are catching fish, maybe not as frequently as the vintage Miss Prissy but close enough to keep me cranking them out and getting them wet.