Tried making a few more bait profiles this week, a couple slabsiders and another small swimmer.

The swimmer on top is about 3.5" long. It pivots nicely at the head of the bait, but it wants to drift to the right a bit when it's being retrieved. Needs some tuning... The middle one is made of 3/8" stock, 6" long and a strong 1 1/8" tall. I put a few small splitshot along it's belly to make it sit so that the back of the bait just breaks the water's surface. It has a small rounded lip. It swam with a nice tight wiggle several feet down. I think it's going to make a great herring/smelt bait. The third one a fatter slab sider, 5/8" stock, 6 1/2" long and 1 5/8" tall, no belly weights with 4/0 VMC 4X hooks. I put a larger/wider rounded lip on it. It sat taller in the water, slightly tail down. Now I know what a nice wobble/roll looks like! It has pogie written all over it! It swims with an incredilbe wake and can be teased to swim slightly sub-surface. I'm torn as to whether to put a few split shot in it's belly up toward the nose to level it out and to get it to swim a bit deeper.

Nice work. Can't wait to see them painted up. Nice to see someone testing before the paint. I would make another of that plug and add lead to that. One prob with lexan is you can't bend the lips to add or subtract an action you want.

Nice work. Can't wait to see them painted up. Nice to see someone testing before the paint. I would make another of that plug and add lead to that. One prob with lexan is you can't bend the lips to add or subtract an action you want.

And lexan and rocks make a bad combo.......don't ask me how I know this. :huh:

make a few with the extra weight so you can cover all you fishing bases


They look great... did you make them out of AYC or birch / maple?

Top two are cypress. (love the stuff) Bottom one is poplar. I have other density woods cut to see if I can get different depths without altering action.

Lip angle will also come into play, I'm sure.

Some of these lexan lips are very rugged. In order to snap one you have to put it in a vise and bent it back and forth (90 degrees) several times. They are not like the older lips where when they hit something they break. You might consider revisiting them.
I fished them a lot the last two season on my mag minnow plugs and I have never broke one. If you cut them out from a sheet your mileage may vary as I am not sure the composition is exactly the same.


I have been working on a similar plug to your number 3 without much luck. Mine is slightly larger but I can't get it to swim like you describe. I have a few more schemes to try before I toss it in the woodstove. I need lead to get mine to sit properly and the added mass in yaw is too much for the lip and it tends to swim somewhat then kite to one side. How much does your number 3 weigh?

The #3 bait weighs 2.5 ounces. This is the first one in that size. I'm going to make some more and play with the balance and lip size/angle more. I suspect there is a sweet spot in there somewhere... Then I'll go to a thicker piece of wood and give that a go. What I like about the thinner piece of wood is the the bait sits vertical in the water without any weights, so it can be tuned.
(Easily, I hope...) I'm pretty sure that the thicker wood is going to need lead in the belly right from the get go, which introduces another variable before the bait even hits the water. I think overall, this is a bait profile that wants to be fished with a soft touch. I'd like to get it to the point where it can be fished like a jerk bait. We'll see.

Last fall, I made other versions of the #2 baits but with a much larger lip and they would roll out pretty easliy, until I got a pretty good row of split shot buried along the length of the belly. Then they swam pretty nice, but real deep.

Sandman, hope this was helpful...
BTW, what's your mag minnow bait look like?