Tail wag

[numbskull]

Learned something this weekend.

Took a burned out, over the hill necro-Zappa fan fishing. Along the lines of a monkey with a type writer he out-fished me at my own game. Obviously it was the plug, a design he had shamelessly stolen from Gary2, specifically a G2 Slim clone.

Now years ago, before internet forums, braided line, and tattoos on sane people, I first started to build wood swimmers. Not having much to go on, I relied on an account by Ralph Gray reported in Reading The Water about his success with a wooden Atom that swam with its tail up and thrashing out of the water. For years this was my definition of a good swimmer, the more wag the better. But some years ago, because of plug building mistake, I stumbled on the effectiveness of a slower action and since have avoided thrashing plugs like the yard work.

So Friday I and this make-weight fishing partner, who I invited primarily to save me a trip to get muffins, find large bass in clear, shallow, still water under a high sun. Nothing unusual about that in this spot........I often see them there.......and sometimes they'll hit a swimmer or pencil.......but usually they blue-ball me as I watch them roll on tiny sand eels (and yeah I've fly cast for them and had guests throw eels at them but not with great success). So for the next hour I throw everything I own and get ignored while he throws a blue/silver G2 Slim clone and constantly has fish draped all over it.

What I think was happening is that these fish needed something more active than a slow swimmer to excite them into striking, but the water and their mood was too lazy to get triggered into hitting a faster moving spook or pencil.

I feel this experience emphasizes two things; first the importance of tail shape for swimmers and second the importance of not fishing with other people. Here is a picture of some surface swimmers to show my point.
Top down they are a skinny donny (my creation)
a Musso donny clone
a Pichney danny clone
a surfster clone
a G2 Slim clone (the plug that he was using)

You can see that the G2 Slim is basically a surfster with a smaller lip and elongated tail. The concave thin tail on the pichney, surfster, and G2 slim drop water resistance and let them work with a faster tail action. The forward belly of the surfster and G2 acts as a pivot point to lift the tail and wag it more. Because of the smaller lip and greater length the G2 slim has a slower action than a surfster, but still more tail wag than a danny (because of its forward pivot point). Whatever, it is what the fish wanted on this given day and testament to Gary2's skill as a fisherman and plug builder.

Hopefully the unnamed gas bag I was fishing with will post a picture of his fish and plug. For now I put in a picture of him with a second fish that took a slope head version of the G2 Slim.......but that is another story. Sorry I didn't crop out his face.