Quite a few mornings this season I fished a large-ish floating popper around sand eels at first light, and caught some decent fish -- mostly on the bucktail Siwash.

I made a mental note to try a more sand eel-specific popper next season and I've been thinking how that might be accomplished. I can certainly narrow the circumference and change the paint scheme...but I'm not sure you can ever truly narrow it enough. Might this be best achieved with a hook-less popper float and a sand eel fly tied off the float?

PS: Is the odd taper of the Cuttyhunk Popper built around this situation?

What I think may be happening is that the sandeels attract other fish and squid. The popper imitates a squid or scup/snapper feeding on the small bait. The larger bass are in there hunting this forage rather than the sand eels. I am sure this is also why slowly fished darters work well over shallow sand at night.

Several years ago an older cuttyhunk charter captain posted on here about using the Cuttyhunk popper (which floats) to imitate squid, even at night.

With sand eels I would use something I made out of a -Bic Clik- pen and would clean up.
no joke

Yes, lots of squid in this area I was fishing. The night bite would be good for decent fish, but once the sun was up the only real game was schoolies chasing some sand eels.

I'll have to try the slowly-fished darter. I am going to make some squid-specific needles this winter as well.

I haven't ventured into darter hell yet, but maybe this winter.