Time to be a bother again
 

Well the season for stripers is over for me since a deer decided to take my car away and give me 2 possibly permanently jammed wrists :cens:.
So of course with school finals to study for and being injured, I just thought about plug building and had nice arguments back and forth with myself :D. I'm sure you wizards of the craft can settle these debates/questions.

I am making a darter as my first ever self built lure (like I have said when I first came here) but funds are tight. The 2 things that have been messing with my over thought are: color (I'm using a brush not an airbrush), and (I hate to call anyone out so I'll just quote from a thread) the concept of using "big SS screw eyes with 2 ton Epoxy" instead of thru wiring.

Now I know for darters, especially superstrikes, before I could finish a sentence "YELLOW" flies into my ears. Believe me, I have the same illness as the next fishing fanatic in that I would just make darters and make them ever color and combination to cover the entire spectrum known to man BUT thinking of the bait we have around South Shore LI in spring and fall (sand eels, eels, clams, bunker being the main ones I think) I don't understand why Yellow would make a productive color since baits here are not yellow. The only explanation I was given was that the guts of the fish being eaten turn yellow in the mouths of the fish when feeding but from my 15 years of experience so far I have only seen fish vomit up whole bait and they mainly were just bloody if cut in half. I have only seen yellow and orange being in the guts of green crabs. I have a yellow A-Bomber of 6'' and never got even a fish to follow it no matter how i fished it.

The staple colors for bucktails, swimmers, and poppers I have always been told to go by is White, Blue, Blue and White, Green, Chartreuse, and....Yellow. Black and Purple of course used for night which is a time I do not do (due to narcolepsy and school).

I never really hear of anyone catching bass with squid or squid colored lures (pink) around our area, only weakfish.

Reasoning it in my head, each fish has white on them from their belly, blue and blue and white would represent snappers (havent heard of mullet around these parts), and sand eels and spearing/shiners/silversides being green/silvery/sort of chartreuse. Bunker is bunker color :P and live lining porgies became illegal even though it was extremely productive over the years.

So, for that first color or first 2...what would you guys recommend? There must be a color that is useful for both clear and cloudy water and days, and day and night. I fish just before sunrise and an hour or two after sunrise. Note that I do everything by hand, I have no place for a lathe and other materials like that so my production rate is way slower than yours.

I have all those colors with other lures and in those combos but due to the accident I only got a few runs out to fish this season and they were feeding on sand eels. My green needle caught nothing but I had no issue catching them using a good old silver hopkins and another tin called Atom Shag N Shad (pretty sure it's a crippled herring looking at it). I also have red/white combo colored bucktails but only got weakfish using that and word is red is not really great for Bass here. Even the surf rats only had luck using tin this season and most swear by bombers and bucktails.

How would you go about epoxying SS screw eyes? Drill the hole and then fill it with epoxy then insert the screw eye? Should I still use thru wire from the nose to tail or that is pointless for that setup? Is there an easy way to find where I would need to have weight placement without epoxying it in first so if I screw up I can save the weight and fix the wood?

Has anyone in saltwater had success using cotton cordell super spot lures or should that hit the Returns desk?

Sorry for the long post, if you guys prefer multiple smaller threads instead of the long post please let me know.

If you only used black and /or white plugs.... you'd do as well as anyone on the planet..


color sparks big debates... the bottom line is, whats visible to the fish under a certain condition.. after that.. it's all speculation...and personal preferances..

dont be afraid of
screw eyes, especialy in hard wood like birch or maple.. a dab of 2 part epoxy on the screw threads assures all will stay intact...

Zeal - I'm not speaking from personal experience but IIRC, the darter is one of the hardest lures for experienced builders to get done right so you may wish to try another type for a while.

Here is an article "How To" from a couple years ago by Jigman on making a Danny. Instructions can be good ;)

Striped-Bass Fishing | Merry Plugmas Getting Started with Plug Building

Thanks! I am using that article along with the darter "How To". I know it isn't the easiest but I always aim for the stuff I need regardless of their difficulty in anything and have plenty of patience :D

Guess you guys hit it all on the head since everything got quiet haha, ty for settling those debates.

Hate to repeat myself though, any possible way of being able to test weight spots without wasting epoxy?

Nobody has used even a knock off of the cotton cordell super spot lipless swimmers?

I think bunker has a yellow hue while in the water. It has always produced for me, but that is because I use yellow a lot. You might have juvi squeteague down there which would be yellowish/gold in the water...I think... I use yellow because I have confidence in that color. Lots of yellow pencils, needles, spooks, and swimmers stirring around my house.

yep.
tape the lead to the plug
or temporarily hold it in place some other way, it has been discussed before