Some Needles
 

Just finished this batch before heading off to Block Island for four days.

These are all slight variations in an attempt to replicate a favorite and very productive waking/swimming/darting needle from last fall.

8.25" long, 3.2 oz.

Those are Mustad single-wire double hooks (manually splayed) on the green-over-white needles. The tail hook on the black one is a VMC single-wire double, which was a defect in a batch of hooks received at M&D's (wish they made them on purpose).

Trying some doubles this year to see if it helps with hooking damage to the fish, and hook rash on the bellys of the plugs.

sweet.... how do you weight them...

hope the fish gods are great to you @ Block!

ER,

Look great!!!!!

Good luck with them

MS

Eric,
Like the paint and the recess eyes!!! Good luck on the block!!!

Nicely done

slayers .......each one

Those look great man.

Interesting hook set ups, wonder how that will effect hook ups.
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WOW,:love:
4 days hope you have more.
GOOD LUCK GOOD FISHIN

Thanks, looking forward to some days & nights of rock-hopping.

All needles have approx .45 oz slug of lead about 1" forward of the "hip" of the lure. Roughly the same weight is in the rear. For the black, wired needle it's a centered weight; the others have (2) .225 oz slugs at about 1.5" and 1.875" from the rear.

I trialed a green-over-white one before painting & e-Texing; it waked and even "swam" under a steady retrieve or when swung in light current. It also darted well with twitching -- even a walk-the-dog action at and just sub-surface. It was just a tad less buoyant than I wanted...Something the e-Tex probably exacerbated.
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I know, me too. I'll report back.

I have enough time on similar needles I made last year to get an idea how the double (screw eye) / siwash set-up might compare to the treble (swivel) / siwash set-up from last fall.

Actually, I switched to a flag instead of a siwash last fall and did quite well -- all the hook-ups were on the belly hook.
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Thanks to all for the feedback, and thank you for all the help learning to build.
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I got a handful of PMs asking for specifics on the needles, I have the specs' on my home PC -- I'll post them when I get back.
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These are really nice! Have fun fishing them!

Sorry it took so long to post this.

The Block was a good time; mostly had bluebird conditions but we caught (no large for me). Had a great time with some really nice fellows from the Connecticut Surfcasters. It was a pleasure to meet Kevin, Dave, Tim and Arim (sorry if I misspelled that); and as always, it's great to fish the Block with Tom and Jeremy.

For once, Tom didn't bring a northwest gale with him. :devil2:

Out of the four needles, two didn't swim as I liked (too buoyant), but the others caught. This is the weighting scheme for the through-wire that sinks, but wakes (and darts) well.

E

holy schematic!, that's rad :)

look great and nice blueprint of the plug. Very helpful to those that want to make a few.

What is the software that lets you do that?

I use the drawing tools in Excel.

The grid has 1/8" x 1/8" cells. I adjust the pic' size so it prints to scale, then spray-adhesive it to Lexan and cut to use as a Vega template.