A Swimbait Line Tie Question

[Tree_Fish]

So I have been playing with swimbaits and I have noticed if you look at soft swimbaits that have the hook molded in that the line tie is almost always on the top of the lure body. I always assumed this is so it would have a horizontal presentation throughout your retrieve? So my question is why does every hard swimbait I have seen has the line tie in the front of the bait? Is it because you just need more surface area from the body? Or because it offsets the center of gravity and retrieve axis? I would think it would tighten up the wobble like a rattle trap. Has anyone tried a hard Swimbait with a line tie up top and if so what were your results?

[Tater Hog]

Well you lost me with Center of gravity and retrieve axis?  That sounds too complex..I usally make a bait blank and drill a bunch of line tie holes in it.. I try to find the best place for the bait Im making.. I call it the sweet spot..90 percent of the time the sweet spot is right in the front of the bait.  Im guessing you could make a bait and put eye tie up on the head like a rattle trap but the swimbait better sink..floater might not swim...not saying it won't but if I had to guess I would guess no.. trail and error is your friend.  The fun part is failing then making it work. 

 

Swimbait 101

 

The wider the joints are apart from each other the bigger the wobble...the tighter the joints are together the smaller the wobble on lipless hard swimbaits.. Lip swimbaits are different animal but simlar as far as the joints apart theory.

[mark poulson]

If you keep the ballast in the first section, and maybe in the front part of the second section if you run out of room in the head, but don't put any ballast in the tail section(s), the lure should stay level on the retrieve, no matter where you put your line tie, within reason.

I typically cut a V notch for an open mouth look on my jointed swimbaits, and attach the line tie with a hole inside the mouth.  

That puts the actual line tie about midpoint in the lure's front face, more or less.  

I do this to "hide" the line tie a little.

I certainly would never put one lower than that.

[Tree_Fish]

Trial and error is killing me slowly lol, that why I thought I'd ask. I've been through so much pvc its crazy, I'm glad I don't have a wife because I'd surely be catching some flak over my little swimbait craze! I was hoping maybe someone would chime in and say they've done it and it isn't worth the time to mess with it, but I guess not so there's hope that I can get it to work   I do usually weight my swimbaits like that and that is generally how I do my line ties as well. The bait cannot stay horizontal during a retrieve because you are retrieving it at an angle. Maybe at rest or on the fall, or a slow shallow retrieve but anything more than that and you are definitely getting an angle, even if it is minute. This is the reason I thought about trying the line tie up top so that the bait would stay horizontal during most of the retrieve. I have a couple of successful lures following the conventional methods, now I guess you could say I'm exploring a bit

Edited November 6, 2013 by Tree_Fish

[mark poulson]

I weight my swimbaits so they fall head down.  They do stay level on the retrieve.

Here's a recent gallery post of one I made a few years ago.  It shows my line tie in the open mouth.

 

http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/index.php?/gallery/image/12021-7-inch-blacksilver-trout/

[Tree_Fish]

Dadgummit Mark ya always gotta shoot me down!! Lol I'm kidding, of course you are right, I forgot to take into account the offset weight, I still maintain that with a faster retrieve they are not level though. (surely you can let me have that one!) I'll be so glad when I can stop with my meds, it may not stop me from saying dumb shite but it might reduce it lol! Just got my boot off hope the meds wont be too much longer. I think I am going to try a line tie up top and see if it lets me stay level while burning it, and once again thanks for all your help Mark, I owe ya big time bud!

[BobP]

Soft swimbaits with action tails have a very different swimming mechanism than hard swimbaits so I wouldn't necessarily look to them for ideas.  Honestly?  Look at a bunch of commercial swimbaits and STEAL everything you can from their design.  No sense reinventing the wheel if you are building baits for your personal use.

[mark poulson]

Soft swimbaits with action tails have a very different swimming mechanism than hard swimbaits so I wouldn't necessarily look to them for ideas.  Honestly?  Look at a bunch of commercial swimbaits and STEAL everything you can from their design.  No sense reinventing the wheel if you are building baits for your personal use.

 

Hahaha...call 'em like you see 'em Bob!

[Mattlures]

There is a VERY simple reason why the line ties are in different places on soft and hard swimbaits. Most soft swimbaits use a top jig hook so the line tie will be on top of the head. Also soft swimbaits tend to have all or most of the weight in the jaw area so naturaly the line tie needs to be above the weight to balance it properly. Hard swimbaits are different and rarely use a jig hook so its easier to put the line tie where ever you want to plus they are weighted differently. The weight is usually spread out.

 

BTW its far better to design your own then to just steal from somebody else. By designing your own you learn why and how things work. By stealing you never make anything better. Use your brain and figure things out.

[mark poulson]

Matt,

I agree that I do learn more from my own failures, and they do help me understand what works, or doesn't, and why.

But I think Bob was using the term "steal" in the broadest terms.

Everyone making baits today has built on what went before, whether it's their overall design, the materials they use, or the incorporation of successful features, like a boot tail.

I think it's virtually impossible to duplicate someone else's bait, at least for us small builders.

But I, for one, do use existing, successful baits as a starting point when I'm making a new bait.  I am too old to reinvent the wheel, and I don't make baits to sell, so I'm no threat to commercial builders.

I know you've been ripped off by copycat knockoffs in the past, and that sucks.  The maker who knocked you off was a big outfit, not a hobby builder.

The people on TU aren't the ones who would rip you off.

I doubt I could ever match your successful actions and beautiful paint schemes.

[Tree_Fish]

Thanks for the encouragement and advice Matt! While I agree with BobP in the way that it is sometimes best to use what's already been proven to work, taking the easy ( I actually laughed to  myself when I wrote easy, we all know nothing concerning swimbaits is easy!) way out is no fun at all! I do like learning and sometimes the only way to do it is to go out on a limb and experiment. I'm not known for being creative but I can usually improve on someone's design or at least get it to work the way I envisioned.  I wish I was more creative but that's what I'm stuck with. Really I don't want to break the mold I just want something a little different, and half the fun for me is knowing I put hours and hours into a bait and it looks good and there is nothing else like it out there. Matt has already accomplished this, and even on a commercial level. I agree with Mark that I could never match your works of art

[Mattlures]

My point was to try and detour those from taking the easy rout of just copying stuff. I get it. I understand that building your own baits for your own use is fun and using proven ideas is the fastest, easiest way to make a bait that works. What I was trying to get across is that by doing this you learn very little. When you force your self to figure things out and make your own ideas you learn so much more. Its so much more rewarding. Its kind of like the difference between somebody catching a ten pound bass on there own or somebody being given a ten pounder that somebody else caught and said "here you can have mine" I was just trying to encourage you guys to think and challenge yourselves. the rewards are so much greater. Imagine if you came up with the next great bait and decided to keep it for yourself. You would rule your lakes for a long time.

[mark poulson]

My point was to try and detour those from taking the easy rout of just copying stuff. I get it. I understand that building your own baits for your own use is fun and using proven ideas is the fastest, easiest way to make a bait that works. What I was trying to get across is that by doing this you learn very little. When you force your self to figure things out and make your own ideas you learn so much more. Its so much more rewarding. Its kind of like the difference between somebody catching a ten pound bass on there own or somebody being given a ten pounder that somebody else caught and said "here you can have mine" I was just trying to encourage you guys to think and challenge yourselves. the rewards are so much greater. Imagine if you came up with the next great bait and decided to keep it for yourself. You would rule your lakes for a long time.

 

That does make a lot of sense.  Nothing teaches like experience, and lots of times failure teaches more than success.

Edited November 14, 2013 by mark poulson

[Travis]

Making baits for many has nothing to do with learning anything.    Heck one might make an argument that many of the baits we make could be done by anyone with a pulse.

 

Personally I like figuring things out but usually start with looking at what is out there.    Most baits are nothing more than reworks of others so always a good place to start.   Most of the time when I get a few of these baits in my hands I find out all too often the bait is really nothing special and comes down to  more to do with the guy fishing it than the actual bait.  

[Mattlures]

Travis you and I must look at baits completely different. When I design a bait there is a reason for EVERY single feature of that bait. Some body might look at it and think its just a molded fish with a boot tail or molded fish with a couple joints cut in it. What they probably will never understand or notice is how wrong that is. I carve all my baits because I have to. I might need a certain part of the body to be a little thicker or thinner. The line ties are where they are at on purpose. The hook hangers are exactly where I want them to be. The fins might be a half an inch forward or back from where the actual fish has them. The joints are  exactly where I want them to be. The style of joint and the pivot point I use to accomplish the goal of what I envisioned. Nothing is simple, and I just touched on the surface of what goes into a design.

Now why is figuring these things out important? Why does making baits for some have everything to do with learning? Well all you have to do is look at the countless inferior knock offs on the market. 95% of the time they never come close to matching the fish catching ability of the original design. Why? because the guys doing the copying don't fully understand why the original bait works so well. They copy what they see, but they cant copy what they don't understand. Of course there is a difference between a simple plastic worm and a multi jointed swimbait. The more complex the bait, the more that goes into it. Yeah anybody with a pulse can make a simple jig that catches fish but designing a swimbait is whole other animal. Heck not even all spinner baits are created equal. Go talk to the best spinner bait fisherman in the world and ask them what they want in a perfect spinner bait. You would probably get a long educational answer.

I guess we just have different goals in our bait making passions. We will just have to agree to disagree.

[RAswimmers]

Hi Tree_Fish,

I haven't tried a line tie at the top because I find that the baits that i've made have a very narrow tolerance for tie locations. It's been my experience that many factors play a role in a "good" location, size, weight positions, desired action and the front leading edge of the bait that cuts through the water. For example I've been working on a bass that has a steep bottom jaw, if I tie the line anywhere on the jaw slope the bait will roll. This is  because the retrieve attitude is such that the cutting edge is somewhat flat causing uplift on the bait. By moving the tie up .25" it doesn't roll because the uplift is not so strong that it takes control. I've found that by doing this you can completely control how your bait acts in the water, you can make it have and upward retrieve downward (like a lip) and so on. So in theory i think it would be possible to mod a line tie to change the behavior of a bait but you would have to study the shape size etc. to get the desired effect. 

 

 

In regards to Mattlures:

It's funny how these similar debates occur across many design disciplines, my education and work is in design and this topics on copying has come up many times. I think The idea of copying someones design / intellectual property for the sake of making money is complete wrong no matter what field you're in. On the other hand part of any learning process contains a level of mimicry in order to learn. If you don't know or understand something you look to precedence that work and you try and repeat a proven solution. In my opinion this should gradually fade as you learn and develop you own ideas and concepts. So I would say it's perfectly fine to "copy" a design but only as a way for you to learn.

 

I think this is more difficult when it comes to certain disciplines like aeronautics, car design and fishing lures. There are some inherent laws of physics that apply to these fields, a plane must have wings a car must have wheels and a lure must have a line tie. There is always going to be strong similarities in lures, just based on inherent qualities each lure must have. In jointed lures we only see 3 joint types, door style, pin and eye and fabric, these work and there isn't really any other viable options. The list could go on and on from paddle tail soft baits to stick baits. 

 

Sorry for the long reply I find it interesting that these same discussions go on in most design disciplines.

 

Pete

[littleriver]

The devil is in the details. Some take minutes, while others take years to learn. But we all have to start somewhere...............how much of it is understood................well we all have our limits. 

 

Designing and copying are two different animals. I started out thinking i wanted to design my own bait and quickly learned I needed to do some copying.   After learning much and making nothing from the baits I have copied, i am now making a few of my own design. These baits are in the gallery now and have design features that are known only by me. As much as I would like to share them all, I think it would not hurt that folks learn a few on their own. Sadly, I am still not making any money. 

 

Keep whittlin away at it.....

Edited November 15, 2013 by littleriver

[Travis]

Matt my comments aren't targeted towards your baits.  

 

I enjoy making the baits.  Copying isn't fun for me and I was never pleased with the baits.  Often when I put the time on the water with the original bait I often found I didn't care for the original one either and find hype and marketing to be the real key for many of these baits.  These baits disappear quickly in the market but often are the must have for a short time period.  I still believe the angler plays much more importance day in and day out than the bait.  I will take good angler with a poor bait over a great bait and poor angler any day.  Put a good angler and good bait together and look out...

 

As a scientist I see many bait makers from the smallest DIY garage guy to the biggest companies making nothing but bogus inflated claims without any data to support them. Some are legit and hold water others are nothing more than false claims to try to differentiate a product in a sea of products.   Doesn't take too long working with patents and you start to see the commonality in these type of claims.  As Pete pointed out rarely does a design not start with incorporating, just a rework, or knowledge of other similar baits as these characteristics are must because the trump card has and will be those pesky scientific laws.  

[Tater Hog]

Well who ever invented the hook needs to speak up and call all of us out!  Cause without hooks none of would catch a darn thing.....Im just saying..