The Bull Pop has been one of Yo-Zuri’s most successful lure designs for offshore anglers targeting tuna and other species. The product has gone through some changes over the years, with the Sashimi Popper being the previous, quite expensive, series. At ICAST Yo-Zuri announced that they were getting back to more popular priced lures. Some of the features which added expense were to be scaled back – first among those was the “color change technology” type effect where the lure had one color when looked at from one direction and another from the opposite direction. Nice to play with, but in reality I doubt that the hungry gamefish gave a toot and never would take time to inspect the lure from two different directions. The feature as offered simply added cost, and in the case of the Bonita some anglers felt that the ribbed nature of the color change effect might work against the lure with wahoo – the slicker lure surface aids in allowing a lure to slide through the fish’s mouth and gain a hookset. (That was not the case, the lures got bit well and hooksets were not negatively effected.)
Yo-Zuri’s Bull Pop lures are available in two sizes, R1154 at six inches (150mm), 2 1/2 ounces (70 grams) and R1155 at eight inches (200mm) and 5 ounce weight (140 gm). The lures still feature stainless steel thru wire construction, makes use of 3X trebles, extra large eyes and retain a bit of the color change technology – but only on the top surface of the lure. A major improvement over the previous design is cost. The previous generation lure was, shall we say a tad too expensive. Now they are quite a bit more realistic in their pricing. The new lures run $29.99 and $19.99.