The Arbogast Hula Popper – A vintage frog that’s still popping.

This winter I’ve come to a revelation... I need to learn some patience when it comes to topwater fishing. Last season, I threw a Heddon Tiny Torpedo (see my review) with a fair amount of success, but like with most top water lures I throw, my tendency is to move the bait far too fast. It's a fact - watch any frog, or insect or mouse for that matter, that is swimming across the surface of the water and you’ll see brief periods of frantic movement, coupled with long periods of rest. The only action you’ll see out of them during those periods of rest is the odd twitch of a limb or the gentle wave of a webbed foot treading water. A straight retrieve or even a “walk the dog” retrieve with pauses is just not going to cut the mustard. I need to really slow it right down this year. To this end, I’ve decided to go back to a topwater lure that I started my fishing career with – a lure my father threw, and his father before him – The Arbogast Hula Popper.

The Fred Arbogast Company was founded by its namesake, a true pioneer of the fishing lure industry, in 1930. Among the most important and revolutionary contributions Fred Arbogast made to the fishing lure industry was his development of the Hula Skirt - a flexible rubber skirt, that when added to his topwater lures, created lively, fish-attracting action, greatly improving their effectiveness. After the Hula Popper was introduced in 1941, it quickly established itself as a surface lure classic, and after seventy years remains the definitive frog imitating prototype.

In my father’s tackle box, there were always a certain set of lures: spoons, jigs, Rapala’s and Hula Poppers – that’s it. He had every portion of the water column covered. So naturally, the first topwater I ever threw was a red and white Arbogast Hula Popper. My dad taught me, or at least tried to teach me patience with the bait – a life lesson he tried to teach me early on and often. And it is this lesson that I want to revisit this summer, as the venerable Hula Popper, by its very design, asks the fisherman to present it slowly and methodically; its cupped mouth forcing a slow retrieve and its exposed hooks demanding of pinpoint casts. This is indeed the thinking man’s topwater, designed long ago by a man whose first love was fishing. I plan to throw the 1 ¾ inch version in all its colour forms, on a thin diameter Spiderline, spooled onto a light spinning reel and rod combo. A good tip with this bait is to keep a zip lock bag of unscented baby powder handy for storing the removable skirts. This trick will help keep them dry and prevent the rubber strands from shriveling and sticking to each other – a common sight with older Hula Poppers.

Topwater Bottom Line: Available in a number of fish catching body and skirt colour combinations, the time tested Hula Popper is a refined and effective bait, seemingly lost these days in the crush of current topwaters. Don’t get me wrong, there are some fantastic new offerings out there (that I have currently and will purchase in the future), but personally at least, at less then 6 dollars per unit, I think that the Hula Popper deserves a renascence of sorts – thrown by conscientious fishermen who are interested in our fishing heritage and visionary lure designers of the past. The best part of the bait for me is that it will teach me to fish slower, and perhaps – just perhaps, learn to be patient and catch more and bigger fish. As always, please practice catch and release with these lures.

Topwater Rating:

 

5 out of 5 bobbers

A classic frog that I plan to utilize this upcoming season - Coachdog for light, yellow and black and green for night.