Originally pencil poppers were designed by Stan Gibbs to reach striped bass busting well beyond the reach of other lures.   This trait alone has earned it a permanent slot in many angler’s bags.   They come in many different designs from wood, plastic, floating, sinking--- the options are almost limitless.

Here on the west coast you would be hard pressed to run into a fellow angler throwing a wooden swimmer.  Most are accustomed to throwing either bucktails or plastic swimmers like the SP Minnow.  The wooden swimmer is more commonly thrown by surf fishing purists.   They know the history of the sport and are familiar with all the different wooden plugs such as pikies, surfsters, lefties and of course the cigar.

So by no means would I consider myself an expert when fishing a bucktail/ hair raiser, or whatever you want to call it.  Honesty, I wouldn’t call myself an expert on any of the variety of artificial’s I throw.  If you’ve heard the phrase “the art of fishing the bucktail”, I am nowhere close to knowing what that actually is – at least for now.