Finishing some Nike's and GooGoo's, started a Masterlure Popper this am, also would like to try a Norris Squid, anyone have some measurements?? Going to do more BM Danny's and some Conrads this week, and build a spinner.

I'm 4 days into a bag I told a guy I'd build him in order to save some bucks on a reel I bought from him. After materials I figure my time will end up being worth about $2/hour. :wall:

I wish I made $2 an hour.

Numby... a plug bag?

I work like a turtle. I will have more to post sometime in the future.

Numby, after building a few of those bags between material and time do you think the price of higher end bags seem a little more reasonable?

keep practicing

DOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When sealing them I forgot to wipe off the excess epoxy. :(

So I sanded them like crazy with 80. :)

Then I recoated them lightly incase I sanded through with the 80,

AND FORGOT TO WIPE THEM AGAIN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :wall: :wall: :wall:

Was going to airbrush and clear them, but now I guess I'll just prime with BIN and hit them with rattle cans. :(

Yes and no. If I was trying to feed my family by building them I would have to charge a lot per bag. But if you look at the average backpack, they sell for about 50 bucks and entail much more complex construction than a plug bag. That makes me think that a professional garment manufacturer could turn out equivalent bags for much less than 100 dollars cost (probably 1/3 that) if the volume made it worth their while.

LMAO......Paul


VB

All is well that ends well.
 

These swim great, but not subsurface like Gary's Skinny.

Got to do some tweaking.:uhuh:

Those are nice! Great job with the airbrush

I managed to finish a few this week. I've been busy building jigs to make my next batches easier. 2oz. and 2.5oz. pikies, some 1oz. poppers which are headed to florida for some friends targeting speckled trout reds and tarpon. the yellow popper is a 1.70 ounce sinker. I saw a mike fixter pikie that was kinda the same color so that was my inspiration for the yellow/orange stuff

Nicely done Ryan.
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Finished up my gang this AM. Ready to swim!

Nice work Jon. I want to swim the Gary 2 you gave me.. I don't have that slim syle in my collection. How those the Lefty 1 lip work the plug? If you need the swimmer to dive you can change wood, tweak the weight hole forward or raise the lip slot. Another way though more labor intense is to take a larger lip and thin the width. Say a Danny or A-Jr. Let me know.

nice job. Those will serve U well. I like that plug a lot , fishing wise.

Nice stuff Guys. I finally got started this weekend. Its going to be a pretty light year for me, just needles, a few darters and some topwater stuff. I did myturning this weekend although I'm sure I'll add a few more odds and ends.

Here's what I'm working on..
Needles, top ones are pine floaters, bottom ones are maple. I made them a little fatter this year so I could put in a little more tail weight without turning them into fast sinkers.

Some replacement darters, and some gibbs style penils. I like the narrow profile of the gibbs, I think that size/shape matched the spike macks and whiting we had in the canal last year.

And I'm experimenting with 3 sizes of spooks, bottom ones are ayc, top are white cedar and the smallest ones are basswood.

look good. Do you weight your darters?

I made some wide ones a couple of years ago that were like 1 1/4 inch and they had excess bouyancy and I weighted some of those and got them to swim right. But if you put any weight in the tail it changes how they sit, and I needed to put some under the chin too to get it to dig in right. These ones won't have any weight.

all look awesome. Size/shape of the needles look perfect.

Nice stuff Diggin Jiggin! Everything looks great.Woody those slims are sick

Uhhhhhhhhh...........at least I got around to buying some wood this weekend........but this sewing stuff seems to be messing up my plugfest plans.

looks great. Surprised more square 4 tubes weren't made as oppose to 4 tubes long. Got to see Mike's bag over the weekend. great concept.

very nice g. A real beauty and perfect size.
As far as plugfest goes I stopped making tons to bring 3 years ago. Now I just bring a few and go mostly to see others work and catch up with friends, shoot the breeze, answer a few questions to inquiring minds. No epoxy worry. You should adopt this philosophy, much less stressful and more enjoyable and plenty of time to finish up plugs for another 2 months after.

Wow G really impressive work there! There was a person on another site that has access to a bunch of those plug insert tubes in various diameters, he gets them for free I guess. If your ever looking for them, I could PM ya his email. He shipped me some for my bag and I traded a plug in return.

Nice sack dude.:uhuh:

George nice work. I see you went in head first on the bag crafting. Starting additional endeavors adds a zest to the same same routine. Keep up the good work. If you need anything or info on bag making, a member of our club has been making bags for fisherman and has some incredible concepts. Shoot me a PM if you like to contact him.
On another note, I finally decided to spin up some stubbys yesterday. My plug making has taken a backseat to bat making. I decided to cut a couple dozen bodies. I have to say the mini dupe is no pro dupe. It felt like a toy in my hands. Once my head got over the size , I buzzed them out. The experience with the Pro model has helped me in being more efficient with the mini. One trick I use with the Pro dupe and put to use with the Mini is to remove the spring from the lever. Using your hand for feed under your own power eliminates dig outs and seems to speed up the ripping. Well I'm off to the sawdust room. All have a good day.

I finally had a night off and got around to epoxying 24 plugs for my friends and I. I used muskyslayers plate epoxy method, worked great, doubled the working time of the epoxy and was able to get 9 plugs done in a batch instead of the usual 5 or 6.

That's a great looking bag man!!! The color is nice too. I like the idea of a square instead of a long style.


Great work man!
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Finally got some paint and finish on some things. It's been a struggle this year to get stuff going for some reason. I do have alot of handcarved stuff that I'm starting to get finished.

These are the slim swimmers. I tried some circuit board lips in a couple also. I like the circuit board lips but don't like the fact that you lose the ability to tune them. I still have to get lips and hardware on the one I foiled but they are finished.

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/a.../11wood005.jpg

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/a.../11wood027.jpg

Got a couple more of the big ones done. I use a different gauge S/S for these lips and they are hard to cut but it gets the head sitting a bit more where I want it. I also switched to a single belly hook instead of two and think it helps them start up faster.

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/a.../11wood002.jpg

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/a.../11wood006.jpg

Really like the way the big popper turned out. I enjoyed building these. I wanted an oldschool look but didn't really want to copy something. I also want to fish these at a certain place so I built them for that purpose.

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/a.../11wood024.jpg

And just some odds and ends. A maverick copy that I like and have been playing around with for a long time. They don't last long because the tail is so thin and the through wire so close to the belly. If a decent fish gets both hooks they usually end up in the same place with the tail hook and wire getting ripped out. I try to counter that a bit using a very long S/S rivet for the tail grommet to get it back into the meat of the plug a bit more. I guess I'll see if that helps come spring.

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/a.../11wood017.jpg

Some topwater stuff. The yellow one is a handcarved swimmer I blew the nose up on drilling. Tried to save it and ended up making a popper out of it. The other is an attempt to copy the river2sea Larry Dahlberg Wide Glide. If you haven't already check out the video with him and Patrick Sebile from Sebile lures fishing for Stripers. Cool video and they are using some less than conventional tactics for bass. They are absolutely ripping the baits in at high speed instead of the more traditional slow approach. I found some video of the bait online and you can clearly see the weighting on it. I tried it and was surprised to say the least.

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/a.../11wood022.jpg


Nice looking stuff everone and looking forward to seeing everyone and everything at plugfest.

Wow, those are pretty.

Breath-taking stuff, Ted.

Wow, Greek your stuff is so clean looking!! The love combos are great.
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out of this world stuff greek! each style looks fun.

my plugs are all at different stages but I manage to epoxy a few to make room. Finished up some hybrid pencil style plugs I was messing with. Had this idea since last year but kind of stayed an idea until this winter. Made specifically for the canal hence the small flat bottom. Also finished up some large spooks.

In my "make everything slimmer" efforts, I started messing with a slim swimmer. Basically took a junior and senior size musso and compensated the thickness with length. Going to try the same weighting system but with 1/2 belly weights vs. 3/8. Just to experiment.

You will be happy with that swimmer. My experience has been that the ones that have trouble staying on top (skinnier and heavier) work great by night, and the ones that work like a true surface swimmer (lighter and slightly fatter...a 10th of an inch midsection makes a difference) are dynamite by day. They very definitely work better than fatter plugs in quiet conditions, but are less stable. Also, the design rolls so much you might want to forego the eyes and keep the colors solid.
I like the pencils as well.

nice job guys.

Beautiful stuff guys. Eskimo, I love the shape of those hybrid pencils and Ted, those are all beauties but that larger yellow swimmer is smokin! :smokin:

G, did you try out a shorter, wider weight? I have to pour them as I'm all out so I figured I would give it a shot. .375 X .75 high weight puts it well above mid level so maybe a .5 X ??? might be make more stable/less top heavy.

Although something about a unstable/tipsy plug might be the reason behind its productivity once you figure it out.

No, I didn't. My weights are high (3/4" x 3/8" I think) and drilled thru. I don't, however, think that the location of the belly weight makes much difference in roll (I could easily be wrong). I think most of it is from the width of the lip and line tie location.

Those lefty lips hanging low below the chin seem to create a lot of roll in thin swimmers. I wouldn't sweat it, however. Your plug is very close to the ones I've been fishing for the last 4-5 years. They are so unstable they will barrel roll with a twitch, and most won't stay on top like I had intended (altough widening the belly a bit changes that), but man oh man do they fish well in quiet water and have taken several fish over 40 lbs (there is a pic of one in this past years fish/plug thread) as well as a handful of fish in the thirtys.

I've found that solid white or solid purple fish particularly well.
You may have trouble keeping them slow enough with spinning tackle.
Skinny is good. I think mine are mostly about 1.17" mid section, but I've built several closer to 1.25 that swim much better (on top) with a little less weight (1/2 x 3/8 I think) and have proven better daytime plugs. At night I stick with the unstable slightly subsurface stuff....and don't have any reason to change.

Interesting info. Did you tail weight the slimmer version you made? I tapered the tail down rather then weight it. I made some tail weighted last season and preferred them as the plug swam a little more level. Although the non tail weighted version seemed a little better in stirred up conditions as the lip was able to bite better being faced down. Both had their place.

I was actually thinking of bumping up the lip a little more then original 1/16". maybe getting a few pre-bent lefty lips from M&D's would allow it be bent lower leaving less hanging below the plug. Just a thought.

No, I didn't tail weight any, but the weight is somewhat back from midline (I forget how much). I also built them out of ayc so they are a bit heavier than pine and weigh about 3oz. They cast well for what they are.

This thread has a picture at the end of an early version of the plug
http://www.striped-bass.com/Stripert...numbskull.html

wow, I never saw that thread G. A belated congrats.

The reference plug is a large BM danny right? 8" or so not the 6.5"?