What is generally found to be the issue when the plug rolls and not twitches from side to side? A little roll is not problematic, because bait fish appear to do that themselves, and the swimmer I have been working on is swimming pretty good. Is the weight to far back or what? Is recessing the weight further into the diameter of the plug the answer? I am being anal about this, because I want to be able to withstand the scutiny of my fellow hobbyist and plugmakers with thw quality of my work, not just its fishability. Truthfully I would like to make the plug so it doesn't roll at all. I dont mind the experimenting, trial and error, but trying to understand this issue is difficult. I am not making excuses when I say this, but I cant be the only one who wonders about this issue.

Not enough keel....proper weight placement Frank! This can be achieved with the obvious which is more lead or properly placed weight or more subtly with addition of a larger hook or an additional hook (that would be 2 belly hooks) and this depends on the size of the plug. I am guessing you just need to experiment with your weighting?

That what I am going to continue doing. I wwish their was an equation or something you could apply to help with the problem.
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What the plug is doing is not unattractive I am just trying to perfect its design.

Remember wood desnsity varies from piece to piece......find your happy medium! Because its wood and the density varies you may have some that swim a bit deeper than others....and this can be corrected with the loop bending up or down or lip tuning but I never find it to be an issue that is glaring.

I think I am being overly picky, but I want my work to stack up against everyone here.

Maybe post a vid and we can help/
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Try a narrower lip

Try putting a slight bend on the corners of the lip like a lefty
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Thank you, take all the suggestions anyonehas
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watch an injured baitfish die...


all they do is roll... then for a second they make a valiant correction
which fades, then they go back to rolling
and making small curves.... as their endurance is almost lost.

that is hard to duplicate (with retrieve) on a non rolling plug
"sometimes..."

although the lip design idea is probably best! (no argument)
see if you can preserve a slight amount of roll -> as a goal
...............
same as wolf packs look for that "difficult to see"
signal of a deer or buffalo that indicates a health flaw
or a slightly weakened condition... then they separate that
individual from the herd. (for dinner )

Try a narrower lip

That never crossed my mind George. Will get a few pikey 2's for chits and giggles.
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New here, and not yet a good plug builder, but....

I had a similar question about roll that I asked on another site's builder's forum, and did not get a decisive answer...

So, I cut out 6 bodies from same piece of poplar dowel, and put 3 different lips on, so that I ended up with 2 with a wide square lip, 2 with narrower flat lip with semi-circle end, and 2 w/narrower lip w/bevel.

The wider square lip definitely had the most roll.

All the bodies were pretty d@mn close in shape, weight placement, etc.

As what Larry suggested Frank, KEEL weight. One way I tried is to make shallow depth weights. I make them say 1/2 wide X 1/4" deep and 1/2 X 1/8". Lowers the center of gravity.along with hook weight i.e. 6X trebles. Not to get too crazy over roll. Like mentioned above, dying bait fish never swim straight. I do realize this non roll concept is for your own knowledge. We as plug builders sometimes get crazy ideas. That's the fun of building and expirementing.