One piece glidebait

[Papas82]

  Ok dear luremakers. A simple question to you that have been into this field for a while.

I carved this guy down there with a length of 10cm ( 4" ) and my first plan was to make it a glider. What i did though was that i made it so all the sides are flat, over and under as well, the edges are sharp as well. I tried  several casts with PU resin ( i made 4 different with different ratios of microballoons) and i placed the weight in such way so the glider will sink slowly and level. My problem is that it won't glide as i would like. It does glide a little bit with some adjustments but it tends to show sides a lot, like it is unstable almost. I managed to stabilise it but then it will swim straight and no matter what when i twitch it will roll more or less.

In your opinion what is the ideal body shape for an one piece glider? Round, oval or flat? Could it be that because of the flat body i have issues to make it glide? I know about buoyancy, center of gravity, density etc and i tried to do all this as close i could "by the book" but still i don't get it yet. It's so frustrating that i almost want to give up PU resin and start doing that with wood instead but it takes so long time, specially with all the carved details i'd like to have.

Help please? 

[Vodkaman]

It is because the lure sits level. The lure must be 'nose up'.

I suggest a test on a lure you have already built. Wrap some solder or attach weight to the rear hook so that the lure sinks significantly 'nose up', say 30 degrees, then test it again. In fact, try several angles and note the results.

Dave

[ravenlures]

Nice carving anyways but keep testing and write it down.

Wayne

[Papas82]

Thanks guys, i'll try to give it some more weight in towards the rear part and i'll see what works best. I should keep notes yes, not fun doing the same mistakes again.

[Vodkaman]

Another tip when testing prototypes, it doesn't apply here but is worth remembering. 'Only change one thing at a time'.

Sometimes after a swim test we think 'this needs doing, that needs adjusting'. But, if you do all the changes in one go you will never know what worked and what didn't, or the effect that each change actually made.

Also, ALWAYS test with the hooks fitted.

Dave

[Papas82]

Vodkaman thanks. Good advice and i have to admit that i have been making multiple changes at once. Then it just didnt work. I'll do that step by step and try to figure out what works and why. The hooks are always on under testing.

[Vodkaman]

Papa - we all did it

Dave

[azsouth]

I think we are missing the title guys....I have been around a while and have yet to see a 1 piece glide bait, that will actually do what 2 piece baits do! I am not saying it is impossible but you might want to take very good notes and Patent it. 

[Papas82]

Azsouth my goal is not to get it swim like a jointed glide would ( even though it could be nice to get it in one piece glide) but to have it run from side to side and under spinstop it will glide as most one piece glide baits do. Nevertheless to manage somehow to stop the rolling during twitching as well.

[ravenlures]

You know you don't need the carved details while testing just the base one step at a time and write it down. If and when you get it to go where you want it to go then carve in those very nice details. Do the testing with hooks in.

Wayne 

[Papas82]

Ravenlures true, i was maybe overconfident that it is going to work well though this is only the master in the picture. The trying lures are PU so i can mske agdin and again if it doesn't work one or another way. I suppose thst this is what someone could call a universal body shape that should work well. It's just to break the code with balancing.

[LHL]

There are two methodologies to weighting a single piece glider. Either have an even distribution of weight across the entire body (more in the head where it is larger and therefore more buoyant, and less in the tail section), or concentrate the weight around a central pivot point. Having the lure sit flat in the water will give it the furthest glide possible but is also the trickiest to balance. Having the lure sit slightly nose up will certainly make it easier to work but your glide will be short.

If the lure does 'nothing' when you weight it,  I would try to taper the face in to come almost to a point where the eye on the nose is (like in the attached image).  When pulled, the water should catch the tapered sides and push the lure to one direction. Once you get the glide to swing to one side, it is much easier to keep a cadence and get the lure to glide from side to side.

If your lure is doing a lot of rolling it means that your weight is too close to the central axis and needs to be lowered to keep it stable. Many gliders in the musky fishing world are desirable if they can both glide, and roll on the retrieve  

As for your question, I think that all gliders, flat, rounded, etc. work equally as well.

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Andy

[Papas82]

Thanks Andy for very good info. I suppose i'll go for weighting across the whole belly section but the problem with rolling is there even when i try my lure with the weight outside the body stack on various places on the belly so it's nowhere close to central axis. 

My wish is for a nice side to side action when retrieving and a nice glide when stopping or twitching 

[LHL]

14 minutes ago, Papas82 said:

Thanks Andy for very good info. I suppose i'll go for weighting across the whole belly section but the problem with rolling is there even when i try my lure with the weight outside the body stack on various places on the belly so it's nowhere close to central axis. 

My wish is for a nice side to side action when retrieving and a nice glide when stopping or twitching 

How wide is the back? Generally speaking I like a glider to be taller than it is wide. 

What I would also try to do is to continue to add external weight until you get it to glide. Sometimes for some reason a lure needs more weight to get the action that you want at the sacrifice of a faster sink rate. If this is the case you might want to redesign the lure as the shape may not be ideal to get it to do everything you want it to.

[Papas82]

The back is thin. Yes, the lure is taller than it is widebut that makes sense. More weight maybe would stabilised it more.

[Vodkaman]

I may have mixed glider with jerk baits in my comment above (post 2). LHL (post 12) makes a lot of sense, horizontal = longer glide.

But, something has to create a vortex in order to generate the side movement. With jerk baits and glider baits it is a single vortex which changes the direction for the rest of that cycle.

It strikes me that if the glider is aligned with the direction of the tug then no vortex is generated. The taking up of the slack line before starting the jerk retrieve is possibly aligning the lure with the pull direction, in which case the first jerk should be off to one side.

I think I am out of my depth here due to lack of experience, so I apologize if I gave out bad information.

Dave

[Papas82]

Vodkaman no worries hehe, you give me very good info in every question i asked in here. I am going anyway to try different weight locations and variables to see which action will give me but i was planning anyway to try and get it level. 

[mark poulson]

It sounds like you have to weight a sinking one piece glide bait just like a top water glide bait.  The more level it falls, but with the tail slightly lower, the wider the S glide.  For my bigger surface gliders, I want the back 2/3s of the bait to be just underwater.  Smaller baits, like a Sammy, can hand down more, because they are typically walked instead of gliding.

[Papas82]

I was with the family a short trip to the beach today so i took that lure and some extra tungsten putty to test it. I drilled two holes in the front between the nose and the belly hook and two holes back behind the belly hook. I placed more weight in the holes in the front an less in the back. The action was ok but not better than that. When i placed slightly more weight behind and a little bit behind the rear holes between the belly hook and the rear hook the action was much better. I am not expecting large S action since the lure is not very big but i got some side to side action and it swan also somehow unregular like an injured fish. Still though i want it better but i didnt have much time to test. At least i'm getting there.

[Papas82]

Soooooo, today i had the chance to be in the lake and i spent 1,5 hour trying to find ideal weight and balance for this particular lure. I had two copies, one with 12% microballoons from part A and the other 16% microballoons from part A. 

I got somehow a nice side to side S action when i balanced my lure so it sank slightly tail down BUT twitching the rod tip, no chance.

It looks like the curse of the lure rolling around its axis won't leave me. No matter how I weighted the lure and no matter where i put the weight I didn't get rid of this rolling. During stable retrieve it wasn't a problem but immediately when I wanted to give the lure a kick it was rolling regardless what I was doing.

The holes didn't exceed the centerline of the lure but still the problem was there. Now i spent the summer trying to get rid of the problem but it won't happen. 

I'm honestly fed up with the resin and I think I'll give up on that and start working with wood instead. I don't have power tools required to work with wood but I'll do it slowly, one blank at the time. Though I'd prefer to work with resin due to consistency and much easier productivity but it looks like I can't break the code there. 

[Vodkaman]

The only thing left to try on this body is to move the eye position. I assume the tow eye is in the nose. Try various positions, I would try between the eyes.

Lifting the eye position effectively raises the rotation axis and will make the ballast function more effective.

You don't have to drill for testing, you could whip an eye on the lure with cotton thread.

You must milk the prototype for every last piece of knowledge.

Dave

Edited August 16, 2020 by Vodkaman

[Papas82]

Hey Dave, actually i didnt think about that. Yeah, the eye position is actually exactly where the lips in the fish's mouth is. Maybe too low? I'll try to place that higher up where you mentioned. It could be a breakthrough.

[Vodkaman]

Your lure body is fairly high in the back and shallow bottom. You obviously understand the mechanics of COG and ballast, it is just something to be taken into account at the artist stage. Personally, I draw the hardware and then draw the lure around it.

Sure it is nice to have the eye on the tip of the nose, like it was meant to be and not an after thought. But the only way to achieve this is to draw the nose where it needs to be rather than accurately reproducing a bait fish.

A slightly flatter back and slightly deeper belly would achieve a good compromise.

Dave

Edited August 16, 2020 by Vodkaman

[Papas82]

You're damn right there. My whole approach from the beginning to the end is wrong. I start first to think how I want my lure to look like and then how I want it to run. Fair enough but I should think the design not as an imitation factor but as a functional factor and how changes in the whole design could possibly affect the action. Well, i have to try with that one and exhaust all possibilities before I redo it but at least now the line tie is moved further up so when I get the chance I'll be heading out to the lake again. 

I forgot to mention that the lure weights approx 7,5gr without any hardware on added 16% of microballoons on part A. I opened 4 cavities, two in front of the belly hook, one behind and one shallower one further back between the belly hook and the tail hook. I am planning to get it around 14-15gr with hardware and ballast on which will be double the weight from the blank itself. You think it is overkill maybe?

A last thing. I understand the principe of moving the centerline further up on the lure to have more space to play with the weight but then how do these guys who make pencil lures and in general very thin profiles weigh their lures without "violating " the centerline of the lure and manage to avoid this bloody spinning of the lure? 

Edited August 16, 2020 by Papas82

[LHL]

Pencil surface lures are generally weighted with all of the weight in the back 1/3 of the lure so that the nose sticks out of the water. Because it is such a thin lure, the hooks and split rings act as the ballast instead of weighting below the center line of the lure. The difference is that with the back half of the lure in the water and the front half out, the drag is significantly different from back to front, which is how the walking action is achieved.

Over these past weeks I just built a 10 inch glider and was finally able to test it at the local lake. With the weight distributed over the entire belly of the lure, I can still get it to roll if I twitch the bait way too hard. It's because I built this one out of maple which is much more dense than the traditional cedar glides. Maybe try to not jerk the bait so hard, but work it soft and methodical. Each lure, especially when handmade, will have it's quirks. Once you figure them out, you'll be able to get them to dance.

Last thought, you can always add a rear stability plane like they have on the Drifter Hell Hounds which will significantly decrease it's ability to roll:

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Andy