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.