fatfingers

The Suick is poetry. It is not a glider and it is not walk the dog bait. Back before I made my own baits, I owned a few Suicks that had the magic juice. Muskies would smash them so hard you could hear the bait scream in agony.

Americans are generally not willing to live without a washing machine, cable TV, Internet service, and a host of other things that many people elsewhere routinely forgo ( as outlined on this very thread ). If they were, our minimum wage would go miles farther. Heck, I'll be that many minimum wage workers here use a smart phone during their break, as but one example. Additionally our min wage includes workers comp, which provides protection and benefits for every worker for on the job illness or injury, along with contributions for social security payments in retirement, disability income, survivor benefits, etc. In my state, if you are injured on the job, Workers Comp pays 100% of all your medical bills, plus if you're off work for an extended period because of an injury on the job, you can collect a hefty percentage of your normal pay. I wonder if that's the case in Costa Rica? Of course, I am glad we have all these protections, but my point is that there is a reason why our jobs are driven offshore. Yet, we'd raise the mandatory minimum wage further? Everyone who punches a time clock should be able to have a house, 2.2 kids, and a picket fence? Ok, but ask yourself this question: Will that bring the jobs here? Or ... send more of them elsewhere? I certainly don't want to start a debate here, but the problem is not wages, folks. It's jobs, period. When there are too many jobs and not enough workers, the employers must bid for workers. When there are too many workers and not enough jobs, the workers must bid for the jobs. That is how it always has been and how it always will be. You cannot simply legislate comfort and prosperity, here or anywhere else on the planet. Competition is always a factor. I'm an old fart. I've lived a long time and had a lot of jobs. I had jobs like the ones shown in the video and some much tougher.. (I love their use of stencils by the way). I made minimum wage working jobs like that and it was a great motivation to get an education to do something harder that required more education and paid a higher wage. There is such a thing as an entry level position that requires only minimum skills and pays a minimum wage. Always has been, always will be.

There is physics involved as well as math. The process is not linear and getting it to run at all may be problematic even if you were dealing with like kinds of materials. In this case, the leap from plastic to wood is more than likely a a very big leap. I have designed a number of successful baits and upsized them. From what I've seen, there is an envelope in which upsizing is possible but only within a specific range or scale. By that I mean the bait will run...but the action will almost never be truly identical. Beyond certain limits the bait may fail completely and not run at all. I have one model for muskies that is 5 1/2 inches long. It will scale up to about 7 inches and down to about 3 1/2. The action changes despite duplicating the scale on the body and the lip on the unweighted version (which eliminates the weighting question in this case.) Beyond those parameters the bait doesn't run properly and at the beneath the lower end of the scale, the bait runs but the catch rate seems drop off sharply. Imagine a bait made from half inch wide stock with a relatively blunt nose. Doubling that width means you are trying to pull a one inch thick piece of wood through the water. The lip will only compensate for a certain amount of resistance. Thereafter, other variables must be altered or removed. Can you get a 16 inch bait to run in the same shape as an 8 inch bait? Maybe, but duplicating the action of the 8 inch bait will mos likely require fundamental changes from the 8 incher.

Here is my take on this topic... I was approached by the gentleman who started this magazine. He was respectful and offered me the chance to showcase my baits in his online magazine. The offer was at no charge to me and he asked for nothing but photos...as many as I wanted to submit. Although I have not contributed as of yet, I saw nothing but an honest earnest offer to participate in his venture. I am currently busy with other matters but I may participate later just for fun. Why not? I enjoy building and I get a kick out of sharing my efforts...don't we all? Isn't that why the gallery here has no shortage of contributions? I think that like any new venture, he will probably have some growing pains and that's okay with me. As is often the case with any new idea or venture, the mission may change as time goes on and perhaps will have more for everyone later. I wish him all the best as he tries to get his venture off the ground. I hope he succeeds and I hope at some point he profits from his desire to showcase custom lures for everyone to enjoy. We all enjoy looking at baits and on a blog that I started on another website, I have also tried to showcase what I consider to be some of the finest bait builders from all over the world. People seem to enjoy that and this fellow is simply trying to do the same, from what I've seen. I see absolutely no reason to wish him anything but the best of luck as he tries to do something that he feels has a certain value for all to enjoy.

Cool topic. The following is only my humble opinion, of course, and it pertains almost strictly to musky baits, although I've built a lot of bass and walleye baits over the years too. A lot of baits run, but not all baits have the juice. Sort of like "All men die, but not all men live." The action of a bait is usually the first prerequisite for a winning plug. (Once upon a time baits were called plugs. I love that word. It sort of nostalgic in a lure-maker-nerd sort of way) The profile and the lip and the choice of wood, resin, or PVC are also huge factors and like the other guys said, I wish I had all the answers, but I don't. I know color can make a day and night difference at times. I've spent an awful lot of time experimenting with lip designs. I've taken proven bait profiles that I designed and made the lips bigger and smaller. I've changed the shape and the thickness and the angle. I've also made combinations of those changes. I've concluded that in some cases, there is a distinct sweet spot and if you go just a tad beyond that sweet spot in either direction, the fish ignore the bait, despite the profile, choice of wood or resin, or color. I think baits with a wobble that is too wide are worthless. Not talking about a bait that hunts, just wobble. Then there is the subject of jerk baits and gliders. Now you have to remember, bass guys and musky guys use the term "jerk bait" but in musky fishing the term is usually referring to a long lipless bait. Anyway, jerk baits and gliders are a great example of how a bait can run seemingly in accordance with its specific purpose but not catch fish. I've made some that produce amazing results, and I've made others that are only good for giant key fobs. Once in a while guys will post videos of gliders under water and I can pretty much look at them and tell they will not produce a lot of fish...if any. Same thing with cranks and especially twitchers and wake baits. I'll see a video of a musky bait, sometimes made by an extremely popular maker and I'll just shake my head. I don't like a crank that wobbles too widely at normal speeds. They just don't seem to produce much. I think you can go the other way and still have a lot of latitude, meaning you can build a very tight wobble and still catch fish. But, there is still the sweet spot for any given bait and sometimes a not so tight wobble or vibration is better than too much. Of course, there are those days when the fish are chewing anything and everything that moves and on those days you could tie your car keys to your line and catch fish. I also think that guy holding the rod is a factor in how effective a bait is. Some guys are just excellent at casting cranks and imparting the right amount of action and speed by manipulating the rod and reel. I've also watched guys use jerk baits and it is poetry in motion. Others just cannot get the hang of it and will condemn a popular bait because they are simply unable to get the rhythm needed to make the bait perform as designed. The Suick is a perfect example. Even then, a Suick made of wood and a Suick made of a plastic compound have slightly different actions. To further complicate the matter, the wooden Suick was never made with a bullet proof clear coat and often takes on water after the finish is breached by hooks or teeth. (Re-sealing an out of the package wooden Suick has a pronounced effect on its action...and the effect is usually negative) A "water logged" Suick does not have the action that a dry Suick does and some guys preferred it water logged and some did not. Those who preferred it wet would actually soak the bait before using it. And finally there is size. You can make a bait too small and you can make a bait too big. Again there is a zone and within that zone there is usually a sweet spot. Oh, and did I mention the body of water as a variable? On some bodies of water they want smaller baits and the bigger ones are either far less productive or even useless. And vice versa. Color is also a huge factor on certain waters. Sorry to ramble on, but this is a cool topic and one that I have spent a lot of time working with as a builder.

I'm glad I posted this because I learned something in the process. I'll have to try the buffing wheel! I don't own one but I'll have to pick one up. I've been doing a lot of work with Kydex in addition to building a few baits and a lot of guys use a buffing wheel to polish the edges of Kydex too. There was a member on this forum who once posted that he used to polish each lip by hand. He would rub the edges on his carpet until they were like glass. And he was working with tiny lips!

Quick tip for the those newer members when making your own diving lip. I like to shape the lip on belt sander after cutting out the basic shape with a band saw. I use a heavier girt belt to get the lip shaped (using a paper template to both cut it and rough sand it) and then I polish the edges with a worn out fine grit belt on the belt sander. The heavier grit belt shapes the lip and removes all the saw marks on the edge, then the worn out belt removes all the marks left by the heavier grit belt. You are left with a lip that has an almost polished edge and a very accurate shape each time. Both the heavier belt, if somewhat worn out, and the worn out fine grit belt seem to allow more margin for error as you shape and polish the lip. So...hang on to your used and worn belts. I'll post pictures if it helps.

I posted pictures of mine once. It scared the horses.