Why testing is important

[Back Beach]

Just made and tested(thank god) these two swimmers out of AYC. Both are based off a pichney 6" troller I recently acquired...same hook and lead placement in both models.

One of them is a pichney troller knock off and is set up with an upper slot danny 2L lip and .4 belly weight. It swam as I envisioned it would when I built it with no tweaking, except for a slight downward bend of the wire.

The other has the same body but no slope and is set up to swim on top with a danny 2L mid slot lip. I started off with a .4 belly weight, which drove the front of the plug down and caused my "surface" swimmer to run about 1' down. Next I went to a .250 belly weight and same thing, it ran deeper than I envsioned despite messing with the lip and wire.

Last, I said eff it and removed the lead entirely...it now swims right on top as I envisioned it would. Without the swim test I'd be very disappointed had I gone ahead and finished up a bunch of surface swimmers.

I'm finding AYC to be a bit fickle with regard to making surface swimmers. You really need to check the wood density as some pieces look the same, but are up to 1/2 oz different in weight once finished. I have some with very wide growth rings which makes for a great surface swimmer, but the tighter grained stuff needs your attention if you intend to make a surface swimmer with it...not recommended unless you test it out first.

Pine seems to yield more predictable results, at least with regard to making Danny surface swimmers.

[PNG]

Did you seal them?

[Nebe]

Beachmasters are made from Pine.....

[Back Beach]

They're sealed...purpose of this thread is to underline the importance of testing stuff out before you make a bunch of something and find out the hard way they don't do what you expected.

[PNG]

I understand and appreciate the purpose of the thread as far as sealing (even quickly) the plugs for testing after a few dunks with unsealed wood they act different over ones that are sealed...just saying. minwax sanding sealer works well for this and dries fast for the impatient

[l.i.fish.in.vt]

the only way to test a plug is fish it,unless the plug comes in side ways or upside down,or is totally unfishable,you won't if it is a fish catcher unless you fish it.i always make at least a dozen of a plug to give to others to fish for feed back other than my own.if i hadn't done that i would never continued making a few of the plugs i make.

[Diggin Jiggin]

Its way too early to be testing. You gotta wait for a nice single digit day in january

Funny thing about your post is that 1 foot down is NOT a bad place to be...

[Back Beach]

Originally Posted by l.i.fish.in.vt

the only way to test a plug is fish it,unless the plug comes in side ways or upside down,or is totally unfishable,

Point taken...but...in this case I was trying to make sure the plugs did what I envisioned when I built them, thus the testing.

Had I not tested them I would have wound up with someting other than what I planned, at least with the surface swimmer. It may have still worked like you say, but in this case I wanted a surface plug which wouldn't have been the outcome had I not tested them and made changes to the weighting.

Another example:

If I made two "identical" surface swimmers, one out of pine and the other from AYC, the amount of weight required would be quite different for each plug. In my case the pine body needs at least .250 in the belly to achieve the same action as an unweighted AYC body of the exact same style. The pine rolls out with no belly weight, but the AYC stays down.

[numbskull]

I'm not sure catching fish is the ultimate test of a good plug (or design).

You can drive a nail with a piece of pipe, but that does not make it a "good" hammer. Likewise, I can catch fish on all sorts of crappy plugs laying around in my cellar, but don't use them because I have other stuff that does the job better.

Certainly catching fish is a necessary condition of a good plug, but it is not the only condition.

Test swimming your stuff gives you invaluable confidence your tool will work the way you want it to when you use it. Each time you get it right you learn something that lets you build better tools in the future.

Fishing plugs well is not a passive sport. You don't throw it out there, reel it in, and hope a fish bites. Rather, you assume the fish are out there and you need to solve the problem of getting them to eat a piece of wood. To solve a problem you need different tools that do different tasks, and you need to know how to use each tool for the task it was designed. No better way than building and testing your own stuff.

[ProfessorM]

no wonder I can't catch anything on my plugs. I'm too passive

[numbskull]

And I'm too intense...........
Now shut up and go finish something I'll fish.

[Back Beach]

Originally Posted by numbskull

And I'm too intense...........
Now shut up and go finish something I'll fish.

Skinny dannies are on the home stretch...

[l.i.fish.in.vt]

Numbskull,to each there own.the only thing i want from a plug is for it to catch fish. don't really care about how it swims,how it is sealed and all the other bs i hear when talking about plugs.if a pipe can drive a nail then it is a good hammer in my book. years ago i was doing some trim work,an old timer was changing the blade on his table saw,using a hammer and a screw driver,i offered him an adjustable wrench,declining it,saying he had been doing it that why for 25 years.when i saw the nut later on,it would have been impossible to get it off with an open end wrench.the only plugs that i have ever fished or swam other than the ones i make myself are a few plastics.i guess after close to 15 years building plugs and 12 years reading these forums,i am tired of looking at pretty plugs,that swim great,are well designed and can't put a fish on the beach.i have stood next to enough people throwing the latest and greatest without sucess when my crappy plugs are catching fish,not that that means those people aren't having as much fun as i am,but personally i like to catch fish not watch others catch them.as i said to each there own.

[Back Beach]

Originally Posted by l.i.fish.in.vt

Numbskull,to each there own.the only thing i want from a plug is for it to catch fish. don't really care about how it swims,how it is sealed and all the other bs i hear when talking about plugs.if a pipe can drive a nail then it is a good hammer in my book. years ago i was doing some trim work,an old timer was changing the blade on his table saw,using a hammer and a screw driver,i offered him an adjustable wrench,declining it,saying he had been doing it that why for 25 years.when i saw the nut later on,it would have been impossible to get it off with an open end wrench.the only plugs that i have ever fished or swam other than the ones i make myself are a few plastics.i guess after close to 15 years building plugs and 12 years reading these forums,i am tired of looking at pretty plugs,that swim great,are well designed and can't put a fish on the beach.i have stood next to enough people throwing the latest and greatest without sucess when my crappy plugs are catching fish,not that that means those people aren't having as much fun as i am,but personally i like to catch fish not watch others catch them.as i said to each there own.

John, are you saying the first darter you ever made worked perfectly and caught fish? You never tested them out or had to tweak them to make them perform better? Of course you did and that's what this thread is about...a lure does have to perform some basic functions that you can pre determine before building in order to work properly, does it not?

If someone asks you to build a floating needle, do you grab a hunk of maple and a bunch of lead? I understand your argument meaning the heavy weighted maple needle may still be a killer, but it doesn't make for a good floating plug.

[wrikerjr]

I think that John and George both have it correct. You want a plug that catches fish, but as Hab's pointed out you can catch fish with a potato peeler when conditions permit. Many plugs today never even see water they are simply very nice paint jobs rather than good fishing tools. There seems to be a great emphasis on fancy scale patterns, copying of other makers, etc, rather than on developing a plug profile and action that the builder deems appropriate.

IMO profile and action when properly designed and executed by a plug maker will result in an appropriate lure. Is that what the fish are looking for in the area you are fishing, that is up to the fisherman to figure out.

[wrikerjr]

Originally Posted by l.i.fish.in.vt

don't really care about how it swims,how it is sealed and all the other bs i hear when talking about plugs..

As a plug builder I am certainly worried about how the plugs I build swim and are sealed. I would never classifying swimming action and sealing as BS.

Originally Posted by l.i.fish.in.vt

i am tired of looking at pretty plugs,that swim great,are well designed and can't put a fish on the beach.

Not sure how a plug that swim greats and is well designed can't catch fish unless its being fished in the wrong water column, if that is the case that is angler error IMO. Pretty plugs, I have some pretty plugs that are excellent fish catchers.

Originally Posted by l.i.fish.in.vt

my crappy plugs are catching fish.

I would not call your plugs crappy

Originally Posted by l.i.fish.in.vt

but personally i like to catch fish not watch others catch them.as i said to each there own.

Not sure what this comment is here for, but to me it sounds like at numbskull which i take exception to as he is certainly a very capable angler and plug builder in every aspect. IMO.

[Slipknot]

Originally Posted by wrikerjr

You want a plug that catches fish, but as Hab's pointed out you can catch fish with a potato peeler when conditions permit.

I saw him do that

[Back Beach]

One of my mentors, Old Goat, used to catch fish on bic pens and old toothbrushes...that is, back when he had teeth.

[numbskull]

Originally Posted by l.i.fish.in.vt

personally i like to catch fish not watch others catch them.as i said to each there own.

That is why God made eels.

In seriousness, however, I understand what you are saying. The worst swimming plug I ever built is this "skinny donny" design I stumbled on. Horribly unstable (it barrel rolls with a twitch), unwilling to stay on the surface, and virtually unfishable on spinning tackle (too hard to retrieve that slow). I tested it, rejected it, and forgot about it until one day I stumbled into a bluefish blitz pushing peanuts on a beach near my house. I ran home and grabbed something I could care less about losing, threw the plug into the melee, and a 15 bass came out of nowhere to crush it. WTF?!!!.

Subsequently I fished it, tweaked it, and have ended up with a plug that has taken several fish over 40-47 lbs for me and a few friends. The plug swims so poorly that I've stopped giving them away since guys would swim it once, decide it was crap, and never use it again.

So although I don't agree with your "try anything as a hammer and stop with what works" philosophy, I do agree that none of us are as smart about plugs as we think and there is always more to learn by trying stuff and letting the fish decide.

[ProfessorM]

Originally Posted by wrikerjr

Not sure what this comment is here for, but to me it sounds like at numbskull which i take exception to as he is certainly a very capable angler and plug builder in every aspect. IMO.

He'll now need to get a bigger hat or a bag of frozen peas to get the swelling down.

[beamie]

Sometimes I think what we forget is that it really doesn't matter what it looks like to the builder when it swims....it is what the fish want.....and that may be what they want on Monday at dusk on a dropping tide but next Tuesday with a half moon on the flood they won't touch it, they want something else.

Of course everyone who enjoys making there own lures wants them to perform well to thier eye. But just like that plug Numbskull rejected it caught fish, go figure.

[numbskull]

A better example are needlefish. Who in their right mind would ever think a stick coming straight through the water was a good design for fooling fish? Live and learn.

[l.i.fish.in.vt]

Mike,when i first started making plugs,i went to the Gibbs website to check out differant plugs and what they looked like.i saw the darter and decided to make some of that stlye.i had never fished one and had no idea how they swam.i took them done to LI and fished them at one of the inlets i grew fishing in,i caught a few fish on them. later that summer i was on the cape and gave some to Jack that worked at Nelsons,he told me to move the eye back a little bit ,which i did on thee next batch,made a big differance.that fall another gent ,TC asked if he could buy some of my darters,i wasn't selling so i gave him a few to fish.the next year i saw TC and he told me liked the way the darter worked.i gave quite a few to other guys that i know to fish them,everyone caught fish on them.over the years i gave the tail more of a taper so they cast better.Billy,though i don't know George personally,we have at least one mutual freind,so i know he is a very knowledgeable fishermen,and probably knows more about building plugs than i ever will.but i have been fishing and working on the water long enough to know how to catch a fish even on a piece of wood.as far as sealing i have plenty of pine dannies, cherry needles ,poplar pencils and many other plugs that are scared enough that i know they get water logged after using,never do they stop catching because they get waterlogged.the only plastic plugs i fish get so much lead added to them that they are more like jigs, how do swim like lead ,but they sure catch fish. well i guess while everone is spending there time messing with plugs this winter i will be skiing .

[JFigliuolo]

Originally Posted by l.i.fish.in.vt

....

well i guess while everone is spending there time messing with plugs this winter i will be skiing .

I just wanted to say I HATE YOU!

When I lived in upstate NY I'd ski 2x's a week.

Haven't been in a few years...

[stripermaineiac]

Question back beach. What speed were you using. I've tested a load and have found that speed sure makes a diff especialy with surface swimmers like Jr's,Dannys, 40s and surfsters. Add the lip and all with a short rod compared to a long rod and the plug swims different again .So how precise are we getting with our testing considering all the conditions we fish. Short of the plug going belly up retreive will make a load of diff in how deep a plug runs. Ron

[Back Beach]

I try multiple speeds. Basically start with barely crawling and keep speeding up or down until it comes alive on top. Some will dive a little on the faster retrieve, but most of mine roll out on a fast retrieve as they have mid slot lips. Also keep bending the lip wire until something works. Most of the dannies I made this winter like the eye bent down, regardless of size. Here's a bunch of stuff just completed. Top one is an eely, the rest are surface swimmers made from different kinds of wood. Ones on the left are copies of plugs I did real well on last year. Ones on the right are ready for action, who knows what will turn up.

Bottom left was my best producer in 2010. Its a 7" skinny danny and weighs about 2.25 oz...made from pine and has a .4 belly weight right around the widest part of the body. Also has a danny 2L mid slot lip.