almost conked one off the noggin with a howdy when he popped up in front of me.
one swirled my plug too.
lots of mung and weed where we went

how's the schoolie fishing

Yesterday was a eating fest.I been sitting at the puter tying up smilin bills all day so i don't have to do it in that fall.We have fish.I'm gonna give it a go later.i'm gonna go for my Daily bikeride to the store to get smokes.:D
Then watch the Crap Sox get pounded by the evil empire again.

watching gibbs quality go steadily downhill over the last decade was a sad thing to see. IF i am to buy a current giibs lure on the wall, it is like buying a lure from one of the older custom wooden lures that used to be made - pick one up, look at it, inspect it for being true, centered, etc., and it's sad to say how many i would put one back while trying to find 2 or 3 to buy. when i do buy that new gibbs lure, the first thing i do is open the package, cut the wire and throw away the wire, hooks, and barrels. then, replace it with quality and hope the wood makes it a season. i see i am not alone in doing that and most have had worse luck w/ the lure not even making it thru a tide. again, sad.

now, i would still gladly fish a gibbs IF they changed several things. first, they need to go down one of 2 roads: 1.) keep the quality where it is now and reduce the price by at least 20-30%. or, 2.) leave the price where it is now and use better barrels, vmc hooks, seal all the plugs, dont cut corners when making darters, bottles, painting (crude at that these days), sanding, etc., (and please, thru wire that plug already!). as for the pricing comment, i have seen there prices steadily grow to try and keep up with other lure builders whose quality are always on top. gibbs has changed nothing, but increased their prices. sure, i can see a moderate price increase due to price incrase for oil, materials, etc., but not to the degree they are at now from where they were 10 years ago.

when gibbs decided to make the "pro series" needle, that was just a slap in the face. instead, why not make the "pro series" be one of their current plug designs, but w/ all the improvements already mentioned by me and others? gibbs took a 2oz habs needle and cloned it as best they could, which is still far from the quality of a real habs.

the current owners of gibbs are running off the history of the company to sell their plugs and not caring too much about their future. if they keep up business as they currently are, gibbs will only sell themselves out of the market.

capesams - i would have liked to have seen someone w/ your abilities take gibbs when the opportunity arose. i've seen your 40s and other lures. i'm sure you'd make their current danny lure something worth throwing again.

The comparison between Gibbs and Habs will go on and on.
Gibbs finish on the Pro Pencils does not compair to Habs. On every gibbs lure made there is Tareout. I 'm Not getting on them but it is a fact. You can go to my wall ang get any Gibbs plug and see that. Their belly holes are now not even filled in smooth (sunken).
It's getting to the point that we as a shop have to decide if the flaws and complaints are worth carring their product.The only thing that keeps Gibbs selling is their available.

......by the way;) .....at the Habratory , there are 2000 or so needles of sizes from 1 1/4 oz. - 3 oz. drilled and sealed , painting starts next week . :soon:

BTW, After reading this thread I put a call into a friend of mine who is good friends with Dan Smalley, the owner of Gibbs Lures. I let him know about this thread so Dan could respond to the criticism or at least address the problem. If he doesn't know something is wrong, and many times the owner doesn't know an inferior product is going out the door, he can't fix it.

They know, they watch this site - specially when their stuff comes into play... Hmmm - now if I could find that Nastygram from 5 years ago (that's a joke by the way :lm: )

I'm not a Plugologist so I can offer no scientific or nuts and bolts breakdown of their products. The stuff seems better than that of a few years ago but is it up to par with some of the other local hitters? Not sure. Though I have before recieved plugs from smaller builders that for example have the wire not through the swivel. Very rare though and I have experienced this more (in the past) on the Gibbs than some of the small builders. Seeing that I have more of the small builders plugs than Gibbs - that says a little something. I have not purchased much of the way of Gibbs products in recent years.

I think it is a QC thing for the most part and these are (I imagine) smart guys so hopefully the turn can still be made for the better...

what do u do?...hope to sell to the 10,000 weekender's that[kinda] go fishing or worry about the 1,000 hardcore's...$$$ talk's so hardcore's walk.....what a waste of a good co. and wood.

Exactly. I've been telling everyone that has an in with those guys that they should sell them without hooks, consideing that 80% of those crappy Mustads will break off on the first fish anyway. But the 1000 hardcores will change the hooks anyway, whereas the 10,000 weekenders won't buy a plug without hooks.