so tell me

[JHABS]

BM, How do you test a FLOATER..................

[Tagger]

always testing,,all winter.. haven't caught much lately .. building,,testing,,tweaking,,thats the whole hobby ain't it ? Its only been a few years ., Is this a test ? I didn't test well in high school .. they threw my diploma at me .

[BigFish]

I am testing...only building for a year but testing none the less! They catch fish...test over! You testing plugs for 3 years does that mean it took that long for you to catch fish on it?

[Karl F]

I had an interesting conversation at the show with somebody who has been fishing and making plugs since before we were in diapers. I know where your coming from Dave... but this gent said something to me.. he said the action of the plug, is only as good as the guy swimming it, he claimed it's up to the angler to impart the action he wants into the plug.... I'm still chewing on that one... I agree to a point,but...shouldn't the plug have some of the required action, built into it? .... but I am like young grasshopper kung-fu.... still searching and confused...
Tests, everytime we throw one it's a test..... do I have to study for this test?

make plugs, fish eels, catch more fish
that's my Thought of the Day

[bassmaster]

good replys guys, im glad this thred is taken the good way
to funny on the pics.
karl, that guy is smart and that is true. you can tweak some plugs that swim like poop to swim better or at its optimum performance.
its an art all in its self to tune a plug. there are tricks that will throw you off as far as tuning goes. such as the sweet spot. Im saying that You may want the plug to stay on top yet you will bent the eye up( now U think that the plug will dive) Yet now You have taken the roll out of the plug and now You are bending the lip down, and then You tweak the eye and lip to get the action You want.
solid colors are great due to the fact that You wont have to worry about roll and get many a type of action out of the plug.
so if you want the slow snake like flaptail likes and talks about or the wiggle like i like most the time then these tweaks will put you on the road to fish.
as far as a danny goes. if you really want a plug to stay on top this is when You would jump to a phat body lure to keep the lure up on top and yet swim great and true along with it being able to dive. I have built some of these only for my self out of another wood other than ayc and pregnated the wood with epoxy and then prime paint. so its all in how far you want to run with it.
Dave>)))'>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

[steelhead]

I've been doing this for about a year now. This winter I made a batch of swimmers with all the same body profile. Then I added diffferent weights and lips to them. There were about 18 in total in the first batch. I was amazed at how differently they all swim and moved and how much I could manipulate their action, and attitude in the water by fiddling with their lips and line tie angles. I've since done two more generations of the same plug, playing with wood type, weights and body profile. Again, eye opening. I still don't know which ones will catch fish, but I've learned so much about what does what relative to action in the water. (Not that I can remember it all. It's kind of like info overload at certain points.) I made these guys dive, roll, wobble, wiggle, swim like a snake. I've also learned that certain lips need to be trimmed and reshaped a bit to get a particular action that I'm looking for. Here's what I've learned for sure... There are clearly rules of thumb. After that, it's sort of an art and a bit of black magic that you build on as you go.

I'm lovin' it and can't wait to see how the fish vote this spring!!!!

[bassmaster]

GREAT POSTS. keepem coming......
howelsedo others tweakanddo things thathelp themlearn