mark poulson

Smallmouthaholic, You may be right. I flip and pitch my 5, 6, and 7" senkos, on 5/0 wide gap heavy duty offset worm hooks, and I'm luck if I get more than one fish per senko. I find that, in order to get the same fall rate as the originals, mine seem to be more fragile. They hold up fine until a fish eats then, and then I'm lucky to even get one back with the fish. I've been using Kosher salt, because the larger granules don't seem to change the color as much, but I'll try some of the Bear's fine salt I have, to see if it makes my senkos more durable.

A bandsaw is, by far, the easiest and safest power tool to use to cut lip slots.

Salt makes a bait stiffer, and a little more fragile, so I use only small amounts in thin worms, and baits with thin appendages, to keep them more durable. Senkos need a 2/1 ratio of plastisol to salt to achieve the weight of the originals. I use soft plastic for them, to try and keep them flexible. Because salt clouds up a bait's color, I add it after I've heated my plastic and added the color and flake. It's easier for me to get the color I want that way. If I wrote everything down for whatever color/bait I was making, I could add the salt at the beginning, but I don't, so I can't.

Early in the year black/red flake works, but from prespawn on up to summer, a green with red flake is the ticket. Then it's green pumpkin/purple and green flake. I've got a hunch it has to do with water color, but it must also have something to do with forage.

I thought we didn't have any secrets!

Try dipping the craw tips in Spik-It orange or chartreuse with garlic. Easy, quick, and you get scent, too. http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/Spike_It_Dip-N-Glo_Worm_Dye/descpage-SIDGWD.html

If they are plastic cranks, try dipping them quickly in clean acetone before you paint them, and then mask off the bills before you paint.

The trick is to find paint with pigment particles small enough to shoot through an air brush.

Blue back and shoulders, white belly, red throat.

So I get bit on this colored senko and beaver in clear, stained, and dirty water. Why? I mean, does it imitate something they eat, or is it just two colors that bass see well?

If I remember right, it did kind of glow in the dark, but I thought it was just the beer!

It could be because so many loons have gotten into politics.

I think that, as people have become more distant from the land that feeds them by living in big cities, they have lost the basic understanding of the environment, of cause and effect, and they wind up with opinions that are based on what's convenient, not what's true.

There always seems to be a fringe group that's well organized and well funded with an agenda, and a politician willing to craft legislation to satisfy their agenda, in exchange for campaign money. It is a terrible commentary on how far politics, and the lobby money behind it, has made us all unable to trust anything a politician says.

I've never had a crankbait that was on the deck on a hot day swell. All my swollen baits happened when they were in a plano box in a tackle compartment behind the passenger seat in my boat. I kept it covered on my driveway in Los Angeles, and I know it got hot under that cover in the summer. I'm just perplexed because in the same plano box, some baits swelled, and others didn't. Even baits of the same model had some swell and some not. I remember reading that Aaron Martens insulates all the lids on his boat compartments. Maybe that's the answer. My boat is garaged now, so I don't have to worry about it anymore. It never gets that hot now. I test fished some of the swollen Red Eye Shads, and they didn't swim right anymore. But the DD22 baits that swelled still fish fine, even though they look awful.

I add glitter to clear nail polish, and it doesn't add much weight to the blades.

Having had lots of plastic cranks swell in the summer heat, I'd like to know why it happens? My Japanese cranks don't, and all of my first generation red eye shads did, as well as lots of my DD22s. Is there a more expensive plastic that isn't as affected by heat?

I add my salt after my plastic is heated, flaked, and colored. I stir the salt in really well, which lowers the plastic temp, and then put it all back in the microwave to bring it back up to 330+- to inject it, 345 if it's a hand pour.

Go to http://baitjunkys.com and ask Leonard to help you. He has non-bleed colors and flake.

And they say size doesn't matter! Hahaha

It's great to see a seller who follows TU, and isn't afraid to post. John Barlow and Predator Baits are two others who come to mind, and their input and customer service posts are great!

I think most of those friends requests are generated by the site's search algorithm, not by people.

Thanks. I was worried that the iodized part might be a problem.

There is no reason to sell stuff you make at prices you don't feel comfortable with. Feeling like you're being used sucks. There needs to be an automatic reply key that reads KMA!

I'm just a hobby pourer, but this works for me. You can also try adding your glitter/flakes/hi lite clear nail polish. I use it to coats jig heads that I've already powder coated to give them contrasting flake, like purple flake over brown powder coat. I get my clean polish at the dollar store.