Search and ye shall find the mother lode of information. The magic word is "darter"
All BS aside at the top of this forum there is a thing that says search this forum, type darter in and hit go. You will then be on your way to darter hell.
Frasier: Niles, I’ve just had the most marvelous idea for a website! People will post their opinions, cheeky bon mots, and insights, and others will reply in kind!
There you will find jack frech's basic plans for a montauk darter. Keep one thing in mind there are errors in the articles that will cause the lure to not work correctly. The article is a basic plan, you have to work with the information he gives you to get the lure to act right. welcome to darter hell.
Most guys use a belt sander to get the slop on the top and you can use a fine glade hand saw to cut the lip. takes lots of patience and layout lines but you'll be surprised of the precision you can get and doing a few of them.
Thanks and good luck. They can be tricky but once you start getting to know what works and what doesn't you can almost tell how they'll swim as you make them. I've been pretty lucky with them so far.
Also, study some you already have to get a better feeling for the profile and lip angles.
Here's a few darters I made in the past.
Linear Mode
