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Well I finally got some stuff started, using soft maple.
I've been messing with the Donny shape that George posted dimensions of for me a few weeks ago. In addition to the surface swimmer it was intended as, I also wanted to experiment with it to see if I could get a deep swimmer with that same basic body shape.
I've also been adding a small tail weight to them and I like having only 1 belly hook so that throws the weighting off a bit so I've done a lot of test swimming this week.
For the lipless diver I extended the nose of the plug 1" and then copied the basic nike head shape. I ended up having to move the line tie higher, and making the head a little larger than the lipped swimmer to increase the size of the diving plane. I also ended up moving the weight forward of the belly hook to get it to dig in. It drops down 2-3 feet on a slow retrieve and will go deeper in current. It swims with a pretty wide wobble, turns left/right about twice as often as a darter.
Its pretty much what I wanted, we'll just have to see if the fish like it next spring.
I also had tried some 2 belly hook versions of the diver, but once I got the single belly hooked ones worked out I decided to turn the 2 belly hooked ones into jointeds. The first one I tried swam great but was just barely subsurface maybe 2-3". I turned a slightly thinner one yesterday that I'm hoping will go deeper.
I also turned some darters but haven't gotten to the point where I screw them up yet.
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