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I've given up trying to predict which paint schemes will work best in what kind of water. Bass, bass fishermen, and many bass baits are just too unpredictable. But the classic theory is that translucent baits work better in clear to lightly stained water because you don't want the bass to have TOO good a look at your bait. Some go to the extreme of fishing clear plastic baits that are entirely unpainted. Bass can hear and they can feel pressure waves so they have more senses than just color vision. You will not run a crankbait near a hungry bass undetected. Your hope is that it gives off enough correct sensory clues that the bass will evaluate it as food. Color is just one of several. As far as depth goes, I think color schemes become less critical as the depth increases and colors begin to get filtered out. Is there a depth at which color doesn't matter at all? I don't know. But 95% of crankbaits are used in water less than 12 ft deep and I'm pretty sure color can still be a factor at that depth.

I build my swimbait joints, using the pin/eye method. Although commercial screw eyes are available, I prefer to make my own eyes, usually twisted soft stainless steel, but lately I have been using brass. The operation that I always dread when making swimbaits, is setting the hinge eyes. Things rarely go perfect. I always seem to get one joint with the gap too large, or one eye sticking out more than the other on one hinge and I never seem to get all the gaps even. What is worse is that there is no adjustment. At least with screw eyes, you can screw in and out until you get the gaps perfect. I have been toying with the idea of a jig for this operation for quite some time and after screwing up the tail section gap on my latest lure a couple of days ago, I decided that the jig needs to be built now. I have just glued my first set of hinges with the jig and it worked perfectly. This is what I came up with: Dave