"The Best" dartah

[numbskull]

Stan Gibbs was a better fisherman than I can ever hope to be.

Flap told me that Gibbs said if he could only use one plug it would be a darter. In "Reading the Water" there is mention of Gibbs fishing his darter at Gay Head. That is a very shallow spot full of snags. Flap also said that Gibbs liked his darter at SOH, also a shallow spot.

So one of the best plug fishermen that has lived picks a darter as his favorite plug and fishes it in shallow water? Seemed like something worth considering. So I practiced with the darters I owned until a found a way to fish them shallow and slow....and when I did I quickly realized what a fool I was for not paying attention to Gibbs' advice decades earlier.

One truth I've learned with all this plug building stuff is that if Stan did it, it works.

[Sgt Striper]

George, Speaking of Gibbs are these worth duping?

[numbskull]

Originally Posted by Sgt Striper

George, Speaking of Gibbs are these worth duping?

Probably, but I have not tried it yet (I was set up to do so this winter but never got to it).
I have not fished that style very much, but Musso (in the SJ article) mentions that he chose a similar style for his plastic darter because guys were doing better with the narrow gibbs as opposed to his wider darter at the time he geared up for a mold. This likely correlated with the big sandeel years. My experience has been that the wider darters fished better for me than the narrow Gibbs or Superstrike so that's what I stuck with......but likely I'm missing out on something good since both Gibbs and Musso came to prefer that style.

[tlapinski]

Originally Posted by Sgt Striper

George, Speaking of Gibbs are these worth duping?

The old Gibbs 3-hook darter is great in shallower spots. I have a few areas where they excel but the problem is getting the lip dinged up in the rocks and eventually rendering them useless. Until then though...