Be careful or a bloodthirsty bluefish will eat your cork first!

Pop-click, Pop-click, Pop-click. Want to call the fish to you rather than hunt and peck all day? Then break out the venerable popping cork. It's a staple piece of tackle on Southeastern and Gulf Coast coastal waters, where anglers dangle live baits, jigs and plastic shrimp for redfish, tarpon, seatrout, snook and many other species.

I spent an eye-opening week fishing in Florida with Mark Nichols, owner of the D.O.A. Lure Company. His patented Deadly Combo, a rattle float/plastic shrimp tandem, took a number of fish, so I began using his techniques in the Northeast fishery, where popping corks are not commonly used. However, the modern day popping cork is a lot more sophisticated than what many Northeast anglers recall.

Beads add to the level of sound.

Why is it so effective? The popping and clicking sound is similar to what striped bass and weakfish make when they take a baitfish off or close to the surface. Think of it as a standard popping plug being worked slowly across the water's surface slowly and how effective that is. This rig however, has a few other features. A couple of beads on top and below the cork, plus a metal weight or sleeve, causes the clicking sound when the rig is popped on the surface. It also has a plastic shrimp or some other lure or bait trailing behind it just below the surface. When a fish comes to investigate the noise, the trailing lure is an easy meal.

I'm convinced that the popping cork is more effective than a standard surface popping plug because it allows for a much slower presentation across the surface. Therefore your lure is in the water or strike zone a lot longer than normal. When fishing where there's strong current, the flow the will carry the cork backward when stopped, taking the lure back toward any structure below the surface, whether it's sand bars, rocks, ledges, weed and grass beds, piers or docks.

Another area where popping corks are very effective is around docks and piers during the night or predawn. These areas usually have some sort of light source on them that create shadowlines. Striped bass and weakfish will dart in and out of these areas from beneath the docks to feed on baitfish. A popping cork is the perfect tool for fishing these areas because you can fish them so slowly and deliberately right up against the pier or dock.

Why Different Shapes of Corks?

From left, cigar, cupped and oval floats.

Popping corks come in a few different shapes. The standard shape is the cigar, an elongated body that tapers to a rounded end at the top and bottom. Larger, more rounded styles are designed for fishing bigger baits and soft plastics. Still another type has a round/oval body with a concave head which creates a much louder popping noise. This style of cork is particularly useful when there is a lot of wave action. That's three styles for three purposes. The cigar-shap cork excels for delicate presentations or when fishing calm water or shallow flats. When it's windy, the cigar is less wind-resistant than others. The larger oval shape is used for bigger baits and lures and the hollow heads are used to create more noise on the surface.

Materials
Almost all corks are made of high-density closed-cell foam for buoyancy. They come in high-vis yellow, orange or red-and-white. Most have a flexible shaft or wire through the center axis. Some companies use titanium wire which better retains its shape and flexes back if bent. At each end there are red plastic beads and two swivels, one for the main line from your rod, the other for your leader where you attach your lure or bait. Cork-fishing leaders are usually 18 to 24 inches long for shallow water, and you can set the depth by placing a "stopper" on your main line so the cork will rise to the level of the stopper and your bait will sink even deeper. This works when fishing deep dropoffs or channels or bridge abutments.