mark poulson

I wanted to give it a real test, since it is the first balsa bait I've made using super glue and screw eyes. I have it in the boat, just to make sure they are still eating the crank, and as soon as I verify that, I'm going to switch to the baits I make with Ben's denser balsa. That first one will go back to the "open only in case of emergency" box.

Bob, I slapped the bait because I was trying to put the super glued hardware to a real test. That part held up fine. I typically don't slap weeds off my cranks. I learned that long ago with Rapala deep divers...they had the crappiest, most brittle bills in the world! I made a lot of wake baits out of broken divers. I think the combination of the soft balsa, the hard vibration from the bait, and the slapping all contributed. I touched up the paint, dipped the bait twice more in Solarez, and I'm going to test it tomorrow. Each dip of Solarez adds .8 grams+-, so I'll see if the extra weight kills the action. So far, casting from my dock, it still throbs, because it X's so hard.

Richard, just don't volunteer too soon!

To me, single joint swimbaits are mostly glide baits, and both sections are more or less the same size. You can look at the S Waver to confirm. A totally free hinge, and having both sections fall completely horizontal and at the same rate, were the keys for me to get my bait to glide. Thanks to all the TU members who helped me solve this problem.

Man, that is impressive/intimidating! Funny how we all get hooked on different things.

I think that would make a great sticky for the wire baits forum.

A TU member sent me a template for a shallow balsa crank he made that is a fish catcher, so I went to the local hobby store, bought some balsa, and made one. It caught the snot out of the fish Sat. I sealed it with super glue, painted it with Createx, and top coated it with one dip coat of Solarex. After what had to be fish number twenty, I went to clean some grass off the bill and saw that the topcoat and paint were gone from around the circuit board lip slot. The bait wasn't damp looking, so the super glue sealer did it's job, but the extreme vibration from the bill seemed to be too much for the Solarez in that area. Since I dip and hang the baits from the nose over the Solarez jar, I'm guessing the resin was thinnest at that point. When I checked the bait more closely yesterday, I saw that there was additional chipping on the sides where the thrashing fish had slapped the treble into the side of the bait. I'm going to touch up the missing color, and then do another dip coat today, maybe two. So I'm wondering if it was just too thin a coat of Solarez, or if it was the soft hobby balsa. I just made two more of the same bait from balsa that is 1.5 times as dense by weight (thank you Ben), and I'm going to paint them in the same sexy shad pattern and dip them in Solarez one time. I'll fish them hard tomorrow, and hope to get a true test again, if the fish will cooperate. Has anyone else had that experience with either hobby balsa cranks or Solarez, or both? P.S. I put runny super glue into my pilot holes in the hobby balsa, and then used .072 sst screw eyes for the line tie and rear hook hanger, and an LPO 3 gram weighted hook hanger for the belly, and they all held up just fine. I slapped the grass of the lure a lot to see if the hardware would hold up to real fishing conditions, and it did. I was using 17lb mono on a med. light crank rod, and the bait had #2 short shank EWG trebles.

Hahaha I'm guessing Facebook sometimes doesn't like to be shared. It could be different people's ad block or spyware that prevents it from being seen, or just my lousy internet skills. I'm sitting here, thinking of putting his flame pattern on a shallow squarebill I have, and then I realized I don't have a lure holder like he uses. Doh!!! Oh, well, another project!

Well, short story long, he showed a couple of different baits. One, an orange and green craw crank, he said he painted by shooting successive layers of trans Createx over his white base coat, and then lightly dabbing off each color from areas to get a layered effect. He said he went from light to dark. It made a neat mottled craw effect. "Here is another simple technique I use on crawdads. I paint the base white, heat set. I spray on the first color then heat set, wipe off certain spots with a paper towel,. I spray on the second color then heat set wipe off certain spots. I do that with every color. Go from light colors to dark colors. This only works with transparent colors so you can see the color under it. Then clear coat as usual." Another bait he shot orange, then black over that and then, while the black was wet, he used some bunched up plastic to move the paint around, exposing the orange and achieving an almost flame effect. "This is a crawdad I did. I only used two colors and the black was put on wet and wrapped with clear plastic wrap to get the flame look. Here is a video of how I did it: " Like I said, it was neat, and, at least to me, very creative. The best part is that he shared his techniques for both!

That is clever! I had a classmate whose mother was a punch press operator, and she lost several fingers because, back then, there were no two button systems.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1243286799057343&set=pcb.913272428806783&type=3&theater This guy is good, and creative.

One one house I had the sheet metal shop clad an entry door in copper sheeting, and then sheet metal shop treated them with acid to get a really neat, almost marbled, finish. They were coated with clear urethane afterward, and looked great. The idea came from some copper hoods that shop had done. Maybe some kind of a chemical treatment before they are coated would work for copper foiled baits, too.

I got fish eyes from finger prints. Once I started wearing gloves they stopped happening. If you go over paint that doesn't have finger prints or other contamination, you should be fine without an intermediate coat of clear. It is the contamination that causes the fish eyes, not the paint itself.

I use spray PAM, and nothing sticks.

At the bank, and then the liquor store on the way home from the bank.

I've found that injecting my senko molds at 325+-, and stirring hard before I fill my injector, gives me baits that seem to have even flake/salt/ballast placement. When I place one horizontally in my test bucket, with a wacky hook and O ring in the middle, the bait falls horizontally, and shimmies at both ends.

The rattles in a lipless crank act as a weight transfer feature that helps with casting. That's why they cast like bullets. I think you'll have a hard time throwing a flat sided crank like a lipless without the weight transfer from the rattles.

Is the KBS too thick for dipping if you don't thin it?

I've found that small flake, like .15, will work fine when added to powder, but, for .35 and up, I add it to clear nail polish and use that to coat my jig heads. I use less flake, and can control where it goes and how much.

Not this year. My back doesn't like the drive anymore.

If you want a halo effect, you might try a thinned UV coating, or some Glo white/green powder in clear nail polish, depending on how clear the water is, and how deep you're fishing.

Well, I bought some, along with some spinnerbait hooks, and my buddy poured some 1/2 oz. heads for me to make chatterbaits. I don't trust the wire to hold on a big fish. He also poured me some arkie 1/2 oz. head jigs, with heavier Mustad 4/0 hooks, and I wound up opening up the eye with an awl and using them for chatterbaits. That softer wire might hold, but I don't want to find out on a good fish.

I tried the #1, and found the wire too thin to trust. What is the gauge of the #2 wire?