Test lure blank results.

[UKandy]

Hi guys, as promised, I can now share the first outing results, of my initial resin test blanks.

I hope a few of you can give me some guidance moving forward please.

The lure blanks that I made are all identical one piece lipless 7" flat sided, rounded edges, jerk/glide baits, the tie eye was placed on the centre line, the belly hook directly on the centre of gravity point & the rear hook on the centre line.

Having weighted all 10 of the blanks in differing positions, I found that a 50/50 ballast split front & rear had the closest action to what I was after.

The ballast was split 63mm away from the belly hook (cog) for the front & 36mm away for the rear, this gave the lure a flat horizontal slow sink rate.

The lure was fished a few feet under the surface during my tests.

The lure on a steady continuous retrieve had a really nice right to left swimming action, however it did have a very slight amount of roll in there also, I would say the right to left sweep on the swimming action was around 12" to 16" not massive but looked great (pretty much just like a fish swimming) I was really happy with that, been my first attempt, I did notice that if the reel was paused at any point of the retrieve, the bait only glided within the 12" to 16" range as above & then it would straighten itself up.

If I then retrieved the lure on a few cranked turns of the reel, the bait would loose a lot of the nice sweep action & the side rolls became much more obvious & spoilt the action. (Funny thing is i had 2 fish swoop at the lure when fished like this, but the lure just didn't feel or look right too me) I'm sure a few of you have also had that feeling!

I was hoping that the bait would glide out more on the reel pause of the retrieve, but the lure seemed to instead straighten up really quickly.

I would like to point out that I tried removing the rear hook to see if that changed the glide action on the pause, it did not!

I couldn't quite grasp why the lure acted so good on a steady retrieve & then acted so bad on a few cranks of the reel, it's confused me a bit, maybe im asking one lure to do too much.

All the blanks I tested with differing ballast positions did have the right to left swimming action, which was encouraging, some rolled out more than others & some had a tighter swimming action, something I did note was the difference a slight adjustment to the tie eyes made!

So i have a few questions please:

Should I try sitting the ballast horizontally so it's much lower down in the body of the bait? At present it has been drilled in vertically, so is very close to the centre line of the lure, I'm hoping this may address the roll issue?

Secondly do you think the roll is effecting the glide on the reel pause of the retrieve, will it be acting like a kite catching the water, preventing a smooth glide?

Also I'm not sure if the belly hook should be sat directly on the (cog) point, could this be having some negative effect maybe?

Really hope you guys can give me some sound advice as I feel close to having a good lure, any other input & advice you can suggest will really help me out.

Thank you
Andy.

[Big Epp]

Thanks for the follow-up!  I'm curious to learn with you on this one!

[UKandy]

4 hours ago, Big Epp said:

Thanks for the follow-up!  I'm curious to learn with you on this one!

I'm going to have a think about what I can change & then make a few more blanks up in the coming weeks & test them again, I will let you know what happens my friend!

I was both happy & deflated after the initial tests  it's difficult when you've spent so much time on something.

Andy.

[Big Epp]

I completely understand.  I worked up some lipless crankbaits the other day and took them out to a pond to test.  2 out of 3 floated. The 1 than sunk didn't have much action.  One of the two that floated actually dove and swam really nice.  There's definitely room for more testing!  But the benefit to how thorough you are being is that when you do get the action right you'll have the exact action you're looking for and you'll understand all the various factors that impact that action, which will allow you to have a much more consistent result.

[mark poulson]

I'm not sure this will apply directly to your baits, which sound like they already work well, but, in my experience making spybaits I found that the higher the ballast is up from the bottom, the more the bait shimmied side-to-side on the pause.  I wound up with a 1/3 ratio, with 1/3 of the ballast above the baits centerline, and 2/3s below.  I used lead wire, and pushed it up into holes drilled into the belly up toward the back.

[UKandy]

8 hours ago, mark poulson said:

I'm not sure this will apply directly to your baits, which sound like they already work well, but, in my experience making spybaits I found that the higher the ballast is up from the bottom, the more the bait shimmied side-to-side on the pause.  I wound up with a 1/3 ratio, with 1/3 of the ballast above the baits centerline, and 2/3s below.  I used lead wire, and pushed it up into holes drilled into the belly up toward the back.

Cheers for the info mark  I will be making some more test blanks up when my products arrive, so I will give your idea a try, it's always interesting to learn, second time lucky hopefully!

Andy 

[UKandy]

15 hours ago, Big Epp said:

I completely understand.  I worked up some lipless crankbaits the other day and took them out to a pond to test.  2 out of 3 floated. The 1 than sunk didn't have much action.  One of the two that floated actually dove and swam really nice.  There's definitely room for more testing!  But the benefit to how thorough you are being is that when you do get the action right you'll have the exact action you're looking for and you'll understand all the various factors that impact that action, which will allow you to have a much more consistent result.

Yep totally agree with you Big Epp, I'm keeping plenty of notes so will be able to cross reference information.

Vodkaman's ballast calculator started me off on the right track, so big thanks to him, I will keep learning and hopefully the next outing may have a fully working lure!

I have actually been wondering if I was fishing the lures too aggressively on the rod jerk part of the testing, causing the roll, this again will need to be tested with a more subtle jerk style, I've been that used to fishing the shop bought jerk/gliders I have, it never even crossed my mind.

Andy.