so tell me

[steelhead]

HOw different are the plugs when you thru wire them with the wood removed and wire going thru, etc., than the test plug with screw eyes? Do you feel you loose some bouyancy? Particualrly smaller plugs?

[bassmaster]

dont know on that one steel, Me thinks it would'nt matter though. utin:

[Tagger]

Thanks Dave ,, hooks pretty far back now ..Top 1 is mine bottom 2 are original ballerinas,,( you still talkin about that damm ballerina),,I hear ya's But ya ,, fishes well and cast well but doesn't cast like a polaris popper.. On bouyancy, I have found copying freswater lures you can add more weight converting to salt for the added bouyancy you get in saltwater, The arrow shows where the orig is weighted ,just like mine .. trying another shot aft of hook to improve the cast as long as I don't loose the angle of the dangle.. Iwant 20 degress .. not 90 not 45 "20" ... Speaking of bouancy I've made this lure out of just about every type of wood ,. What I want it to do ,,. is cover water verticaly as well as horizontaly. And it does. AYC this thing stayed on top and that was that ..Hard maple or birch is the ticket for me .. Snap it down and it works sub surface . snap it up ..there it is .. Yes I've put alot of thought into this .. not just winging it ..

[Christian]

tagger, im doing the exact same thing right now.
maple spooks and spooks with eyes in the back. these are the 1st ones, and ive gotten them to float right without any lead, just using bigger hooks, definitly want to switch over to lead though and get some more distance.

[Tagger]

Shapes on your ballerina spooks look good .. fat head, little arse,,I'm using a 00 shot where shown .. Maple is good for what I want ,, birch dowels are equaly as good ,, I'm sure youv'e walked the dog in your day,, but you don't have to do all that .. just random tugs (darts) and it will act like a real bait fish . I caught so many fish on the smaller one i made the 308l wire on the arse was all streched out , Thats the one I lost at PA and Mac went down the next night and saw a little kid walking with his dad had it in his hand.. He traded him a brand new Mac pikie to get the beat up piece of junk back to me . kid was thrilled and so was I .. a good friend .. If the added weight throws the angle out to much I'll try a larger arse hook thanks ..You want the 20 so when you give it a tug it moves "darts" and almost suspends some what level .. looks good .. arse dropping to 45 ,,90,, would be no good ,,Because I like to fish it real slow sometimes {alot} not all that mental dog walkin..Although when there is alot of fish and the feeding is competitive i do the fast thing .. Then again when the feeding is competitive everybody is catching on something different. I could throw my shoe in the water and catch then ,,

[Backbeach Jake]

Man, this is the thread I been waitin' for all winter! A lot of theory here that I'll never live long enough to discover myself. Thank you all! So, how do you weight that shoe? Don't hit me.

[Tagger]

Success feels good,, Like talking about that,, never forget the ones i smashed with a hammer that didn't work so well .. You must have gone through a thought process on that red ceadar,fatty,single belly hook,black danny you had so much success with last year Fred... Excuse me ,,, I gotta go check my mail box again ..

[Backbeach Jake]

is right ! I never saw it swim! It was untested and new moon when I first threw it. I wouldn't a bet that I even hit water. Blind dumb luck. It's stuff like that that puts the stunned look on my face. Gifts from above that I know I don't deserve. Like I said before, I have sooo much to learn. I also have some great and generous teachers here.

[steelhead]

I took a danny over to one of my little testing rips this afternoon. By playing with the lip angle and the thru wire loop, I was able to make it swim on the top makng a wake like a motor boat to bottom bouncing. in the current in the same spot. The difference between the motor baot and the bottom bounce was the thru wire loop. With the loop bent at an extreme upwards angle, the plug dove right to the bottom. With the loop and the lip bent way down, almost aprralel to each other, the plug swam right on top making a wonderful wake.

[Jigman]

I do all kinds of plug testing. New swimmer I'm working on, I gave some thought on the size/profile of the local bait, then tried to get something close to that in wood. Next was trying to duplicate that action of that bait with the plug. Tried several woods, lips, weight locations/amount and combos until I got what I felt was the appropriate action for the plug. Made up several in the usual colors. Will be testing/tweaking on fish real soon.

Once I have a plug that is catching well, I'll also try a variet of colors to see which work best. Have also done plenty of testing on various sealers, primers, paints, and clear coats and combinations of those. You can do some of that testing at home. Once you find a combo you like, you can try it for a season to see how it holds up under various conditions. Can test other combos against that to see what works best for you.

Jigman

[Nebe]

BM, how did the clearcoat on your plug hold up after all that abuse??

[Flaptail]

In the immortal words of the Bassmaster, "I'm ruined." I went down to the bulkhead this afternoon in Falmouth and test swam a bunch of my winter work. I don't turn so everything was either scratch and dents, mis-drills or charity that I sanded, re-drilled, primed, painted and coated this winter. I was holding off but after trout fishing yesterday ( which was pretty good) and seeing all the crocusses on rt. 6a then going out to Truro and Wellfleet to see the beach I had to do it. So I rigged them all out with hooks, bucktails etc. and let them swim. They all went great ( the white darter needs a single not a treble on the rear end) but the big pink/white and blue/white swirl Atom that I made from some Slipknot discards just made me loose it. I need MAY and the outer beach at dawn or the Elizabeth Islands. I was seeing mirages of bass coming up to look at them. I had to leave the dock. They swim that good. I cut the lips to match the individual bodies widths rather than use manufactured lips.I need Bass and I got a bunch of stuff to feed 'em. Come on April 20th at least !!!

[bassmaster]

good posts, i have surfsters to build and swim this spring along with some pikes goingto the islands....

[Slipknot]

Flap, I'm glad to hear your plugs work, gald to see some junk turned into gold also.

I test mine in the bathtub.

[steelhead]

Here are my best two danny plugs so far. Tested these yesterday afternoon in a nice rip near home. Once the lip and loop were aligned like they are in the picture they were like little freight trains. I thing I learned yesterday is that this style plug needs a nice shoulder to pivot around, at least in fast and turbulant current, as well as a belly weight. I have another almost exactly like these with no belly weight and it was clear that it wanted to be in
calmer water..

I'm sure that this is old hat to alot of you guys and the profile is a familiar one. But to own figuring it all out was priceless...

[The Dad Fisherman]

I just finished my 1st batch of homemade ever and will probably swim them this week sometime to see how I did. Being extremely new to plug-building I'm trying to work on the basics of building the plug right now, such as Shaping, sealing, priming, painting, epoxy-coating, and through-wiring (The Drilling is still a giving me grief but I had someone show me a jig that should make it easier).

I'm going to try out the few that I've made and see what i like/don't like about them. Once I'm satisfied that I have the basics down I'm going to start digging into the proto'ing process and really dig into what I need to do to fine tune plugs and what changes the actions.

Like I said right now I just want to learn the basics and then expand off of them. Now to catch something on the ones I've made

[nightfighter]

Steellhead and TDF, glad to see others on the north shore working in some larger wood. Do you share my view that dannys, pikies and the like are seldom seen up this way?

Steelhead, anything showing there yesterday?

[steelhead]

Nothing showing there yesterday... I see danny's, poppers and pencil poppers. Haven't encountered needles, and pikies being used by other fishermen. Maybe where I'm fishing???

[The Dad Fisherman]

What I've noticed is that the Pencil Popper seems to be the plug of choice up around here. I have seen a few people throwing needles and the, very, occasional Darter. after that i see a lot of bombers, yozuri crystal minnows, and mambo minnows.

[nightfighter]

We've been missing something......

And the plug makers are missing an untapped market.......

[Canalman]

I test all the time, I drive myself absolutely nuts... but I test. More lead... different spots... too much roll, fatter skinnierer........... but it does pay off in the long run when they do what you want and catch fish.


Hey BM...............
GREEN PAINT
Git off yer arese and maile that needle bub!