kingfish1

Good question and since I'm more of a freshwater fisherman I have limited comments on how well it will hold up in saltwater.... I assume the "kingfish" handle is a little misleading...should be "kingfisher" for the bird and not the saltwater fish. I'd tie a few of each and use them and make your own observations for durability. I'd be surprised if bucktail was not the overall preference when you take everything into account but then again I prefer also wood plugs to plastic ones.

I'm more of a jig tier than flies but I prefer natural bucktail over synthetics also......since the bucktail is hollow it has a different action that I prefer and I can have the hair flair more than synthetics. Also on one tail you will have a variation of hair types...stiffer towards the base, finer toward the end and that's just the white parts.

Similar to what was mentioned by a couple people already I use a pair of vice grips in my bench vice, you can't rotate the jig so you'll have to learn to spread your bucktail or other tying materials around the collar without rotating the jig. Leave the locking lever out of the bench vice jaws so you can switch out jig heads and a bit of duct tape in the vice grip jaws will provide some cushion between the jaws to hook and add a bit of grip. Cheap and easy.

Very nice, I have something similar but since I use it for painting the jigs with an airbrush I used threaded rod instead of dowel, found it keeps the jigs from turning when painting since the hooks are in the grooves.

JBlaze's diagram is close as I could ever do. When we attached the spokes we drilled a tiny pilot hole through the fan belt and pushed the spoke through with the large end restricting the spoke from going all the way through, the fit needs to be tight or the spoke will not stay vertical enough to keep the lure below surface at high speed.

Many career changes ago I was involved with a couple tackle companies where I attended sporting show events to sell and promote lures and depending on the lure design, topwater or diver, we were able to effectively demonstrate the action in test tanks. The design was simple enough to be transported and set up at shows, demonstrate several lures at once, and appealing enough to gather attention from public, simply put it was a better seller than I ever was. The biggest difference between what I'm seeing here is that we didn't move the water but moved the lures instead, let me try to remember the set up and explain. The first design was for below surface lures, basic fish tank 30 to 35 gal with a plywood top, mounted to the top was an electric motor with various speed setting that drove a fanbelt between two wheels mounted inside the tank on either end, on the fanbelt there were at least 5 bike rim spokes pointed downward into the water and a short piece of mono and a clip/ swivel to attach a lure. The second was for top water lures, same variable speed motor but mounted from the bottom in the middle of a circular tank made from plexiglass around 4 ft across, motor in the middle with metal spokes to attach lures like a lure merry go round. We ran these things with one electrical outlet (motor and a light) for days without problems, kept the water clean with a simple fish tank filter and a common fish tank clearing chemical, packed them up and traveled to the next show. I hope I've made sense and wish I had a picture to show but I don't so if you have a question just let me know.