BobP

http://www.scout.com/outdoors/wired2fish/story/1467188-how-to-use-sonar-to-find-hard-bottoms rock transmits sonar better than mud so it should show up thicker and yellow on your color sonar. If I had one sonar on a boat, I would mount it on the transom and have the display on my console. That way, you can cover water faster from the comfort of your seat, and at higher speed. See something? Toss a marker buoy out the rear of the boat. I'm betting that once you get used to it, another sonar for the bow will soon follow. I use my trolling motor unit too, but turn it off when I get shallow and stop the boat to fish so as not to spook the bass (and run my TM at low speed for the same reason).

You don't want to connect your sonar to the same battery as your trolling motor because the motor will cause electrical interference whenever you turn it on. This shows on the screen as vertical lines. There is a lot of information on a sonar screen if you learn how to interpret it and like anything, it's a learning curve you have to climb to get the most out of it. How to set up the sonar to give you the best information? What do bait fish look like? What do large fish like bass look like? What bottom structure is conducive to bass habitat? What does a thermocline look like and how does it affect fishing? The best advice I can give is to get on YouTube and see some of the screen interpretations from experienced users. Then get out on the water and see how your sonar pics compare. I use sonar differently according to the season. In warm water periods, it's mostly to find the best bottom structure to fish, to find how deep the thermocline is, and to note the presence of scattered bait fish. In winter, it's to find schools of bait fish and see if they have active bass around them. I don't fish offshore unless and until my sonar tells me the bass are there. It eliminates the unproductive water and sometimes points you to a surefire bite.

Unless it's a suspending bait, a light sanding to give the surface some "tooth" before painting is all I do too. Personally, I've never had good results with soaking baits in a solvent. But if I had a blast box, I'd probably use it all the time because a major reason you repaint is that the old finish is torn up and blasting removes all the old finish that otherwise has to be removed anyway, while preserving any detail in the plastic blank.

Not too many of us have the advantage of a blast cabinet. Tim Hughes of Hughes Custom Painted Baits does. You might visit his site and ask him. I think I remember that they use wlanut shells, but am not sure.

I think there are two competing impulses about copy machines. There are guys who want to engineer one just to tinker with the machinery and get it working. And there are guys who need to acquire or build one to increase the volume and/or repeatability of the lures they build for commercial purposes.

Speaking of knives, I got a Murpy knife a few years ago and it's all I've ever needed for rounding over baits. They come razor sharp and the cost is very reasonable. Sold on wood carving sites or direct from the company.

To me, the wood you choose depends on the type of bait you're making. Balsa is great for shallow running baits if you want them to be very buoyant and lively. Cedar is heavier but still lighter than basswood, which is the heaviest wood I use for baits. You want to cut lip slots and joints while the bait is still "square", just after you cut the basic blank shape out of the plank of wood. Then it helps to keep the bait symmetrical if you mark off the tapers for the front and rear of the bait, and lines for the limits of where you want to round over the edges. You need to plan out your work steps according to the tools and the methods you have available for the job. As far as woodworking goes, baits are very small projects but they require a lot of exactness if you want a good finished product. It may be tedious to do all the marking but it pays dividends in the final results. I use a Murphy woodcarving knife to take off most of the material when rounding a bait, followed by hand sanding to final shape. A Dremel tool with a cylinder sanding disk is also useful in sanding. It takes some practice to get the hang of building baits, to learn where you have to pay attention and where you can sort of motor along without much thought. When starting out I think the best advice is to take it slow. You can always remove more material but once it is removed, you can't put it back. I never considered using a chisel, it's too much tool for the fine work needed.

There are two methods that might be what you're looking for. The first is to print a picture of a real fish onto tissue paper and glue it to the sides of your bait. You still have to paint the top and bottom of the bait afterward, and clearcoat it. The second is to buy plastic "lure sleeves" that you shrink onto the lure with hot water. Haven't tried either method but think there was a recent post about lure sleeves you might find that includes a link to a provider.

On a flat sided trolling bait I have been making for many years, narrowing the lip gives it more roll, which I like in moderation.

I've heard that a leaf shaped lip on a deep diver with its narrower waist near the bait body makes for a bait that's easier to pull through the water. If true, the downside of that might be that a bait that is easier to pull also makes less turbulence as it swims. In my limited experience with leaf shaped lures, they seemed to be harder to tune than normal. That's just an impression I have from the few commercial lures with this lip shape I have fished. considering both lips, a 2" long lip on a shallow bait seems very long to me, if that is the length that will be exposed after mounting. If it's too long, the bait may spin. Just my impressions. On-the-water results are the only real arbiter of design.

I don't know if they compare but I use size 2 round split rings on all of those baits. I think oval rings make sense on a line tie to keep the knot from slipping into the ring, but I don't see the utility on a hook hanger.

I assume you're using soft temper stainless steel wire. I don't build musky baits but use .041 in bass lures and when bent into a small circle for a hook hanger or line tie, find there is no deformation of the eye during fishing. Plus, it is easier to form and works especially well for line ties anchored in a lure's wooden nose since it allows tuning the bait without breaking the finish around the eye. if you have serious reservations about the wire, you can go with one that has intermediate temper, such as Malin stainless fishing wire. It's much easier to bend than hard wire but harder than soft temper. Malin Hard-Wire is the brand name. I occasionally use #12 Malin wire that is 180 lb test and only .029 diameter. It comes in a resealable bag at a reasonable price.

I spiral wrap most of my rods, except rods used for jerkbaits or other presentations where the rod is held downward while retrieving. Main advantage imo is that you can usually get away with one less guide on the Rod. Other than that, I haven't really experienced any of the big "advantages" of spiral wraps in the practical sense.

Not wanting to gunk up the kitchen sink, I use a small jar of naphtha to soak away the grease and then dip a toothbrush in the jar and get off anything that's left. It won't harm plastic parts and evaporates faster, too.

I use the same stuff as 21xdc and clamp it with clothes pins. I got my netting at a local fabric shop. They sell it by the yard, so a few bucks gets a lifetime supply.

The new software looks suspiciously like the Bass Resource website, which is a good thing 'cause I'm familiar with that one too.

Guys (including me) don't experiment enough with ballast position, imo. One of the best fish-catching baits I ever made was a flat sided shallow runner which had chest ballasting that made it float entirely head down. In its first day on the water, I cast it out and noticed a 4lb bass turn and look at it as it rested on the surface. On the first pull, he rocketed 10 ft and smashed it. The next day, I caught 20 lbs of bass on it in 10 minutes on a very tough lake. Why did it work so well? Not entirely sure but I think the bait's very distinct and sharp thump when retrieved was the main attraction. Ever since, I've gauged similar shallow crankbaits' action against that bait. And I'm not happy with any bait until I get it out on the water and feel it's pulse as it is retrieved. Pay attention and you can pick winners and losers just by the tactile feedback.

I have never used Pro Paste so can't comment. I think the longer the cure time of an epoxy, the better it usually performs. I have tried U-40 Quick Bond versus U-40 Rod Bond and prefer the longer work time of the Rod Bond. I don't like to be in a hurry when using epoxy on a batch of baits so the minimum work time of one hour for Rod Bond is a feature I like. Quick Bond's work time is around 15 minutes. It just depends on how much epoxying you have to do at a time. Rod Bond (and probably other) rod building Paste epoxies have to be strong and somewhat flexible adhesives to hold handles to Rod blanks permanently. Both qualities are good for crankbaits too. I've never had Rod Bond fail in a rod or a crankbait.

Talking about medium to deep cranks with the line tie on the lip, you have to be careful. Generally, the closer to the nose the tie is, the more wiggle you will get. But at some point, the wiggle will overpower the bait and it will begin to spin. A very general rule of thumb is to place the line tie a little less than half the distance from the nose of the bait to the tip of the lip on deep divers. It is striking how much you can change the action on a deep diver by adjusting the line tie position by just a millimeter or two. On baits with the line tie in the nose of the bait, the closer down toward the lip surface you place the line tie, the wider action you will get from the bait. For instance, a trick used by some guys who fish Rapala Husky Jerks is to bend the line tie in the nose downward to give the bait a wider harder wiggle. If you look at many shallow runners like square bills or custom lures like the D-bait, their line ties are right down in the nose next to the lip surface.

Dale, I keep a variety of epoxies on hand: liquid, paste, and putty, and use them depending on which best suits the task at hand. I particularly like Rod Bond paste because it has a long work time and it stays where you put it, but is easy to put into hardware holes and lip slots. It takes several hours to begin forming a bond but hardens in about 8 hours. If I'm repairing a broken lip, I often use epoxy putty because it's a fast way to fill in a ragged lip slot that is now too big to comfortably fit a thinner circuit board or polycarbonate lip. I sometimes use it to glue in belly hangers if I have drilled the hole larger than the belly weight. it hardens in a few minutes and has a very short work time. I reserve the liquid epoxy for topcoating. I don't mess with plastic bodied baits very often. If I did, I'd probably use adhesives other than epoxy for some of these tasks.

Etex is a decoupage or bar top epoxy that contains a solvent to aid in leveling and expelling bubbles. Glue epoxies like Devcon Two Ton don't contain solvents. My choice for mounting hardware and lips is Rod Bond Paste epoxy, which is designed for gluing Rod handles onto blanks. It has a much longer work time than most other epoxies, at least an hour. Wchilton's comment about epoxy requiring a minimum film thickness for strength is Important. If your lip won't slide into its slot smoothly, the slot is too tight. That's where a paste epoxy rather than a liquid epoxy comes in handy, imo.

I have a .2mm Iwata HP and a .3 mm Iwata Revolution BR. Of the two, I much prefer the Revolution for 95% of my crankbait painting. It's also the least expensive of the pro range Iwatas, at around $90. Easy to use, just squirt a little paint in the small cup and clean up between colors with a spray bottle of water.

I haven't done testing but I have used epoxy to mount hardware for the last 15 years without a single screw eye pulling out or becoming loose. I think where this question matters most is in mounting lips, which undergo considerable strain and shock impacts. I can often remove a lip mounted with CA by simply torquing it to the siide forcefully, shearing the glue bond. So I'm a little suspicious of CA's shear strength. Plus, frankly I don't want an instant bond when mounting a lip. I want to be able to adjust it multiple times if needed to insure it's in there perfectly straight. All that said, I'm pretty sure either type of glue is "good enough" for most purposes.

In a lure factory setting, blanks are usually ultrasonically welded. In an Asian batch factory, they are probably glued by hand which results in more that leak or are unevenly matched. That's why you see a lot of knockoffs with sanded seams, etc. it's just part and parcel of buying Asian knockoffs. Where available, I choose knockoffs built in Japan, which have fewer defects. I check each lure out closely before finishing for holes in the seams or stuck internal rattle weights, etc.

Mark, my favorite putty is whatever brand's on the shelf at my local Home Depot. I can't tell much difference in any of the brand's I've tried, although I did like the very smooth consistency of a stick of J.E. Moser epoxy I ordered from Southwest Woodworkers. There may be small differences in work time between brands but generally, they all harden in about 5 minutes and have the same material attributes when cured. I also use putty to install belly weights when in a hurry. I use liquid, paste, and putty epoxy just depending on which is easier and most effective to use for a particular crankbait building task.