jamie

Mark can you post a pic of that bait, I have an idea but need to see your bait.

Its kind of what your talking about but there is no vibration it does have a left to right glide when reeling straight in.Its the same kind of action as a glider when jerking but its a tighter glide when reeling in. There is nothing special about it. Its makes a s type of retrieve

the glide bait I metioned swims in a zig zag fashion on a straight retrieve

All the lures that I mentioned above has lead ballast weight in them. And for the lure that I make that has a natural swim to it, it works almost with the swim bait idea with vortex helping the swim.The key to my bait is a sharp nose and the body slims down to the tail of the bait. deimai there are alot of baits out there there that swim off of their shape with no lips look at a rattle trap.

I have a buddy of mine who makes suspending cranks for muskys using oak. His baits have a nice swim and hang there on a pause. Its pain stakeing work getting each bait weighted the way he wants them because it does float( very slow rise).all it would take is a few drops of lead to make them sink. I make some gliders ,out of oak, that sink that has a natural swim pitching left and right when reeled straight in and they are sinking baits with no lip in them. They swim from the body shape and design. So try useing a more dense wood because it does have bouyancy or you wouldnt have to add lead to it if it didnt. so try a heavier wood if you cant get what your working with to work.

Goto the wasco site its a taxidermy supplier and they have any paint that you wil need. They have a large selection of airbrush and they have what you are looking for.WASCO -- Wildlife Artist Supply Company

The exray that lapala gave is a good start in my opinion. Those baits are made to suspend and you can work them to a pretty good depth when useing them. The key is to find the right amount of weight to get what you are looking for.It only takes one drop lead when pouring lead into making it a sinker or a slow floater. I would find this point of sinking first , how much lead does it take to make a slow sink and thats were you need to start. Then you can play with lead placements on the bait to see if it improves your action or kills it. Dont overlook the weighting down the spine of your bait. Look into one of my old threads (weighting down the spine) and this could help.

Deimai I think you are talking about center of balance. When testing your bait in the water the bait will lay flat and even.

Thats the way I do mine.

Im having a hard time understanding what your looking for. I was replying to a comment made by diemai on the workings of turning the tow eye and its effects. The reason the lure and leader on a glide bait are not always straight in line with each other is the lure on a pull of the rod will glide past the leader and theleader being stiff will pivot and cause your leader and bait to make a > shape(one line is your bait on this shape here >and the other being your leader and the point being the pivot) The chain comment was just a aid to help diemai understand how it works. On the chain that I was talking about you really are looking at the last two links. The last link(the line tie on your bait) and the second link (being the leader connection or the snap).If you stretched the chain out the pivot point on the two links are only in one spot. If you take the last link and turn it sideways the second link ( your leader connection or snap)will be able to slideup and down the firstlink(your line tie on the bait) and the pivot point could be anywhere within the loop. You will be able to make a good glide bait turn sharper and you can turn a not so good bait into a glider. This wont fix every bait, due to the design from shape to thickness, but it does help. The way im describing is your should be able to look through you tow eye or line tie when you are holding your bait and your only looking at the top of the bait or the spine.

Since musky fishing is about 90% of my fishing that I do for myself sometimes I get lost in the terms.

Just one question is a 100watt bulb a stroger bulb than the 40 watt or do we have to have someone do a pulltest to see how many pounds is the stress mark:D

Ive came across some really good friends on other sites who I found out they live in my state. Over time we communicated and found out we live within a few miles of each other and now we fish and talk together all the time. I would have missed this if we didnt list what state we were in. I know that not all people want to give detailed info out and I understand, but its nice to know what options peoplehave in other parts of the world in building baits and you might make a good friend just like I did. I would have never known my old buddy was down the road if we never would have communicated.

The key to slower motors is a good thin coats of clear, thin being the key word. If you slop it on thick you will be in trouble

I may still have a bait or two in the garage thats busted and I will show some pics of the damage. Its just in some waters you never know what you are hooking up with. The state record musky at one time was held by an older woman who was trout fishing with power bait, go figure. It just goes to show you every cast ,anythingcan happen and any fish in the water could be on it.

I really dont know if a bass in marks neck of the woods in sothern cal. wouldnt be hard on those baits.When you get10 to 18 ponders I could only imagine the fight.

Diemai on some gliders they need a little help swimming from the leader. Think of the leaders connection to the bait as the pivot point. What I mean is when working glide bait with a leader the bait you will facing the other way. First you will snap the rod the bait starts glide in one direction and passes the leader up in the water.Instead of your leader and lure being in a staight line now it looks more like a > shape and the point of this shape is the pivot point and the leader is faceing the other way from the bait. You already know this but what the line tie facing the other way does it allows the leader connection to swing further inside of the eye of the bait causeing sharper turns because the pivot point has moved from directly in front of the bait now it may be anywhere inside of the circle of the line tie. The easy way of looking at it is take a peice of chain and stretch it straight it will pivot on the last link. Now take that same piece of chain and turn one link sideways and now it has the freedom to slide up and down that side of the link.Ive seen baits turn so sharp they spin and face the opposite direction they were going.I do all my glide baits with the eye faceing this way for sharp turns and you can also make them stay longer in the strike zone because there not moving as fast in a forward motion but more side to side.

Dave the torque test is not so much for the line tie strenght but the the strengh of the wood itself. Like I said earlier balsa baits when musky fishing bust down the grain and what if the grain bust at the line tie. Through wire has saved me in this situation.

Imsorry its just you mentioned musky jerkbait in the thread title and gliders in some places are called jerkbaits in the musky world. Goggle rollie and helens musky shops site and key in jerkbaits and you will see what comes up. Musky terms and bass fishing terms for baits are alittle different thats why all the musky guys were responding with glider info.

can you show a pic of your bait..You can also try taking some of the weight out of the belly of your bait and add a little too the spine of the bait. This subject was talked about in another thread and diemai I believe had a simular problem and fixed the swim of his bait by doing this.

My favorite sinking bait is the storm kickin minnow. These baits have good action and they slow roll well.

Dave the advantage to a weighted or sinking crank is your able to fish a whole new water column at a slower speed. there are several musky baits that I take advantage of this style of fishing. Its kind of like slow rolling spinnerbaits but you let the bait sink and you can slow crank over weeds or structure and keeping it in the strike zone alittle longer. You more jerk and pause these style baits for the best effect in my opinion.

Mark everybody of water is its own ecosystem here. Someplaces like newriver crawdads are the main menu, some lakes shad are the main forage and creek fishing anything smaller than you is on the menu. Its hard to say this is the food chain here because every creek, river and lake are all different here . I really enjoy small water creeks and rivers for musky and you will be suprised at how small of water these guys need and I imagine everything swimming to crappie to carpand everything in the middle are fair game.18 mile creek is a very small creek and there are places that you drag your jonboat through and the next hole and you only have room to cast forward ahead of the boat because the bank is about 6 feet of both sides of the boat.The scary part is people are catching mid 40s and a few right at 50 inchers in these pot holes.Now you can imagine anything goes in this ecosystem. I seen a pic last year of two older guys on my route down ( talk to them weekly) by 18 mile and he caught and ate the would have been new unofficial state record.These are country boys and they fish for food and the saw nothing but dinner for days when they caught this fish. It made my stomach ache when the showed me the pic,because I knew this poor fishs fate.It just goes to show you that little water can hold a big fish and anything is on the menu including the poor musky that was deep fried.

I myself dont make balsa baits for musky but I was given about thirty or so 6 and 8 inch cranks by a very good friend who passed away who fished with them. There action is great but they dont hold up for the long run. The monster shad that I used to fish with was a fad on the lake a few years ago and today I dont throw them for the cracking factor. I still fish with the cranks on small water, in my mind Im still fishing with him when I use them. I carry a picture of my best friend in my tackle box and he is still with me on every trip.

I used basswood in the beginning and ran into the same problem. Muskys teeth and hooks would pucture the bait letting water to seep in the bait and cracking was a problem for me also.