here is a set of pictures i took tonight. i sat down and figured out how to make a Clarke eel bob. hopefully these pay off this season..

here is what is nooeded. pliers, round nose pliers, some egg sinkers, wire (I used the 12" preformed from NJTackle), and a hook. that is an open eye 8/0

take the egg sinker and slid it all the way onto the wire. you may need to put the round part of the wire into the round nose pliers and tap the egg on with the other pliers.

here is how i hold the wire to tap the egg on all the way.

cut the 12" section of wire so that the straight section is 6" long. you can use this later to make another one.

grasp the wire about 1/2 - 3/4 of an inch from the egg. you are going to bend the wire around the pliers using the same technique as a tail wrap. there is a great how-to on this by Mac in the how-to threads.

here is the first wrap. i wrap the wire until i am tight up against the egg.

here is the finished "head"

here is where an open eye hook helps.

the final product with hook attatched.

i hope this helps. once you get good at it, they take about 30 seconds each. the one in the picture uses a 3/4 ounce egg. i have some made with 1/2 to 1 ounce heads. now i really can't wait for the winter to end!

nice....:)

Nice, thanks Toby. I'll have to make some of those:claps:

i am working on some tonight modeled after the "newport" versions with the exposed lead head. i picked up some carolina rigging heads today. i'll post if they come out ok.

i was thinking these could work great on the cape with a 1/2 ounce head and a small eel.....

wow...thats a good one ..

:cheers:

excellent toby.. i bet that would work nicely with a berkley power eel too :hee:

U can get carolina weights wit rattles.

Sweet.. I know what I'm doing this weekend ;)

Thnx Toby, I am gonna bust out a few of those too....

Ok, I know its a stooopid question but help me out here...How exactly do you rig the eel on one? Is this for live, dead or arties? Im asking because Ive never heard of an eel-bob in my parts.

Thanks in advance:)

Here is some info:

http://www.striped-bass.com/StriperTalk/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19899

http://www.tattoostackle.com/eelbob_dz.php

Thanks for the info. Im gonna have to make a few of those to try. From the looks of it the ell gets decapitated and threaded onto the hook, then the meat gets tied over the egg sinker? Is a little meat removed where you tie it on?

What is the best way to fish these? Im assuming low and slow?

I have yet to fish any. All the talk about them lately got me itching to see if i could make some first. I have wrapped up a couple different designs since I did these photos for different areas I fish. My understanding is that you skin the eel back to where you will be cutting its head off, cut through the meat only, slide the hook into the eel like you are rigging a rubber worm/grub onto the hook, then tie the skinned part over the egg sinker. I have a large bag of frozen eels just waiting to get rigged. When I get around to rigging them, I'll take some pictures of what seems to work the best for me. As far as how to fish them, I am assuming you want to use a "needlefish type retreive".

I was thinking about adding grommets to the ends of the egg sinker because the lead is soft and the feed loop wraps may cut into the lead. It would make for a better design.
Do you think it is negligible?

What type grommets should I use?

The hole of 1 oz. sinker can be forced with little effort to fit two 1/16 wires (316L), totaling 2/16

I guess you could add gromets, but I don't see that they would add to the effectiveness of the rig. These cost maybe 15 cents a piece to make. I'll just toss them if the get warn out and rig a new one.

Any pix of the dif desighns ya came up with Tlap?

If I don't get home too late tonight, I'll take a couple shots. I need to send a couple of these out, too. Did I promise you one? My brain is a mess these days.

yes , ya said youd mail me some after ya made em> im more curious about the variations that you did on them. I was gonna score some soldering wire this week and make a bunch for the season while i still have some free time left.