smalljaw

I like the silicone skirt material also, the rubber skirts have a little more flare and movement in the water but will melt together in clumps after a few days in a tackle box or a few hours in a hot sun. As for skirt collars, I use the rubber ones for the ease of use and like Clamboni said, I like to change them from time to time and wire or thread doesn't allow you to do it quickly or easily. I do have a few spinnerbaits and jigs that I know I'll never change skirts so I have them tied with wire, www.luremaking.com has jig tying wire thats 26 gauge in different colors if you want to go that route.

If you are going to pour your own you'll need a melter and ladle, and as cadman said, try using pre bent wire forms at first, after you have a melter and ladle I'd suggest a good pair of round nose pliers, they're similar to a needle nose except they have 2 round jaws that are smooth, these are essential to getting a consistant loop for the swivel and blade.

I've tried a bunch of swivels and the best bang for the buck seem to be the Worth swivels. I bought the import swivels for a few bucks cheaper in 100 pks. and they do spin well but the only problem I've encountered with them is consistancy, out of 100 I usually get about 5 or 6 that are unusable.

I have a little tip to give you, once you have your mold pretty hot, put the wire form and hook in and close the mold for a few seconds before you pour, this will get the hook pretty warm also which will help get the lead around the hook eye.

If you've tried all the usual spots then I assume Barlows is one of them. It seems they have more colors available and since I only make hairjigs for the winter and early spring it's perfect. Maybe you could look into buying straight bucktails and dye your own colors, I don't know how much is involved with doing that but it may be another option.

I'm going to echo jigmaster, I cut the sprue off and take a small file to it, only takes a few seconds but well worth it.

You need either a white base coat or primer when using vinyl. The vinyl paint will move if the jighead gets dented from hitting rock and such but it doesn't bond directly to the lead with out a primer coat.

I'm not sure about the owner deep throats but the mustad ultra point 32786 will work.

Try www.luremaking.com or Stamina, I believe I've seen them there.

I guess I'm lucky, My next door neighbor is a plumber and he gives me a lot of lead for free. He says it's pure lead but I'm not sure, all I know is he gives me it and it looks like a stick about 12" long and it melts and pours great. I have about 200lbs. so I should be good for awhile.

What sizes are you making those in? If and when you find your source I'd like to buy a bunch, let me know what you want. Great job!!

If you get the heads or pour yourself, use the regular hooks and just buy some spike-it lure and blade dip in red and dip the hook in, it works really well and you can do a ton of hooks. The down side is the red will come off in time but you can simply dip them again.

What about a piece of shrink tubing placed just below the bead? You could split a small piece of it and slide it over the hook just below the bead then heat it slightly and it should keep everything in place. Just a thought.

Never needed a base coat, that why I switched from vinyl to powder.

Spider jigs are usually smaller and have thinner skirts and most of the time use a grub as a trailer. They also are made using some sort of a stand up head design, they work really well on pressured fish because of the smaller size, plus the thinner skirt combined with the stand up head really lets the skirt flare out. You can make them using the poisontail jig head in 1/8 or 1/4oz with a 20-25 strand fine cut silicone skirt and a really good trailer for them is the back end of a Mann's auger tail worm, very little movement will make it come to life.

Really nice!!! I also would like to thank you on your fluid bed, it's absolutley the bomb!!!!

I have never found turtleback blades but I do use the wide willows instead, they are a little different as they only have 1 bend in them right down the middle but they do give off alot of vibration. Stamina has them a pretty good prices.

Janns Netcraft, look for split tail trailers. They aren't plastic, instead it's a rubber skirt collar with what looks to be a wide piece of living rubber folded over at the to and placed into the collar then split into 2 pieces from the bottom of the collar down. I have a bunch in chart. and white, if you want them just send me a pm and we can work something out.

I haven't used the glow colors except for white and it's not really white, it's more of a cream color and it is dull, I've also tried the glow overcoat on other colors and it has the same effect, it seems to make the color dull. As for the sulfer smell, it sounds as though you are using too much heat because I don't get any odors unless the lure is too hot and gets the paint smoking.

I use a small amount of epoxy over the eye. I stick the eye on and use a flat toothpick to apply epoxy arond the rim of the eye, have never had one come off yet.

I just stick the eyes on also, as spin casting has said, you'll probably lose the jig before the eyes come off. The only time I epoxy over them is if I'm using oversize eyes which I seldom do.

I don't use the flukes but I do fish slugos which are basically the same. I had the same problem when I started using these baits but I've found that if you push the hook through the bait and then skin hook the point of the hook to make it weedless, your hook up rates will go up considerably. What I described is called "texsposed" .

I have to agree with Gloomisman, I like Stamina myself but if I need something in a hurry I use Janns Netcraft. Stamina is at least a week minimum but it's more like 2 or more weeks. Janns is very quick, usually 3 to 5 days but they are a little more costly. I also like Barlows but they are also hit and miss, I got 1 order in 4 days and then the next order was 17 days.

Clamboni is correct, the wire is a nickle/titanium alloy that need to be tempered. Even terminator baits have problems from time to time like the loop not being cloed all the way and you lose the blade and swivel and I don't think I should have to "doctor" an 8 dollar spinnerbait with shrink tubing to keep it from happening. In order to temper the wire correctly and be able to bend it you would need 2 things, the first would be an autoclave and the second would be the exact alloy components and the temerature and time for tempering.

The colorado/willow combo is like trying to get the best of both worlds. It serves 2 purposes, the first one is that it'll give a little more vibration to the bait and the second is it'll let you fish it slightly shallower at a slower speed because the small colorado will help give it some lift. A double colorado is a shallow vibration bait. you see this mostly on heavy baits so you can retrieve it faster without it lifting out of the water. The size of the blade on the wire shaft depends on what you want the bait to do, like fishing shallow but at a slow speed then you want to put a colorado blade on front but if you still havt fish it too fast to keep the bait where you want it then you need to go a little larger, if you want some vibration but don't want the bait to lift too high a smaller blade, etc. Blade spacing works almost the same way, if you use a larger front blade, then you will want to have more space between blades because the lager blade will displace more water which can have an adverse affect on the main blade. Use your imagination and try out some different combos, you'll see what works and what doesn't plus you may find something that the fish find unable to resist. Good luck.