River Rat316

Got out yesterday for about an hour ;D.... power plant river Thank you for the feedback also, it always good to hear reviews from new customers, I appreciate it!

lol

For me swim jigs do best in and around cover, bouncing off of stuff, I have caught fish on deep weedlines on them, but have more confidence in other presentations there. For a rod I am a little different than most, on my single hook moving baits I prefer a 7" MH mf, with 14lb Mono for more open water or wood cover, and braid for heavier weed cover. I feel the softer tip on the slower rod lets the fish take the bait more. I have always fished a slower rod on moving baits, and it works for me. I don't know if you got original style swim jigs or heavy cover style swim jigs, but remember with the original swim jigs one of the bonuses of the lighter wire hook is slashing fish basically hook themselves, so a huge hookset is generally not needed.

Been working on getting plastics up on the website, I am nowhere near finished, but got some up and my color chart. Will be adding more curl tails, a 7 and a 10", another DS bait, a 3.5" cross tail shad, and lots more to come in the coming months. Here are some though Trailer for the hairy craws, has a skinnier chunk end so there is no trimming when you thread it on Picture of both trailers, the skinny and the fat 7" Curl tail (JuneBug) 4.5" DS worm smoking purple shad 4.5" DS worm pearl shad

8-) jj. ISN'T THIS FUN?! Hmmmm I could say lots, but will keep my mouth shut on this one, since there is internet grammar police around. Must not have been hugged enough as a kid.... or slapped, depends on how you look at it.

I like blue gill colors, I don't know how many shad your area has, but MN has none (excpet for the lower parts of the Mississippi) so green pumpkins and watermelons are my favorites. This one is my particular favorite

Casting jigs usually have a regular wire hook in them, its meant for easier hook sets on long casts. A flipping jig usually has a heavy wire hook so it can pull fish out of cover. All series of jigs kind of get all thrown together though, each manufacturer makes them a little different and calls them whatever so the lines get blurred. Look at swim jigs, the originals had a light wire hook, light weedguard, sparse skirt. Now everybody (me included) makes a model that has a flipping hook, heavy weedguard, and not so sparse skirt.

LOL

Ahhhh The texting generation, you guys wouldn't believe the amount of resumes that are floating around out there with no punctuation, abbreviated, and misspelled words. My favorite was one I received that started out "hey man" and did not have one comma period or capitalized letter in the whole entire email. Of course the kid was 14, and made the statement that fishing was getting to expensive so he needed sponsors.

ohhh cripes, now I might actually have to buy something, thats not good

For square bill shallow divers I almost exclusively throw firetiger or black back with chartruese body. Red craw ain't bad either

Most places that have extensive dealer networks and wholesalers that they work with do not sell stuff direct on there websites anyways, its just there so you can check out the product, it is a deal they strike with the dealers and wholesalers

Unless you are eating lead, or grinding it up and snorting it, there is no danger from lead either, actually there is little danger for ADULTS in ingestion either, kids, thats another matter.

Yes it can, almost everything can. The point was tungsten was marketed as a "safe" alternative, when if you look at the msds sheet for tungsten, its radioactive, lead is not. There isn't a "safe" heavy metal, they all have there drawbacks. Another thing to think about is most of the worlds tungsten is owned by the Chinese, so most if not all of the tungsten manufacturing is done in China.

I have the buzz bait wallet, and its pretty good, only thing with the wallets is you sometime zip up the skirts in there. I am redoing my spinnerbait storage and am going to go with 2 of these http://www.***.com/Falcon_FTO_701_Spinnerbait_Organizer/descpage-FTO701.html It should come close to holding my spinnerbaits, I haven't counted them in awhile but I hope that I am not that hopeless that I have over 60 ;D

You can copy write protect a name

3s and 4s will be more acrobatic, but bigger fish have the ability to be acrobatic, and scream drag at the same time. I haven't done near as much lake fishing for smallies as river fishing, those river fish are something else, they are just flat out a mean fish, they will fight you until you put them back in the water, then they splash you on the way out.

We have a couple lakes around here where that bullhead one would be killer on, I have watched bass eat large slow moving stupid bullhead on a couple lakes, also had a 5+ go to a 4+ when it puked up a 8" bullhead on my carpet. I am sure that if there are channels around bass would take those down to.

really like that idea, I have around 3 or 4 colors that are meant for muddy water at the photographers right now, will strongly consider this

I wanted to ask the board members a question. so please all reply no matter if it is about my product or not. If you were buying jigs and one had rattles and one had no rattles but was considerably cheaper (lets say like 25-30 cents cheaper) and all other components were the same, which would you buy? I am asking because I feel like my premier series of jigs is pushing the envelope as far as price on jigs goes, and material costs for me over the last year have went up considerably. I don't feel I can raise the price of the jigs, and don't want to and won't change the hook, skirt or any other components. If I was to eliminate the rattles and just offer them on the side for an extra cost I could drop the price of the jig at least 25 cents, I haven't really crunched the numbers but knowing hard costs and such and with how much materials have gone up a 25 cent reduction is on the low side. I personally don't care if the jig has rattles or not, there is certain situations where I want rattles, but not having them is not going to hurt my confidence. I have looked around the market and it seems like alot of companies have ditched the rattles, or are offering them on the side. So what say ye, rattles or no rattles, would like to hear all points of view!

Now thats funny right there

If you just want to try and make your own tubes you can do it super cheap. Go by some lag bolts at your local hardware store, the kind that don't have threads for like 3-6" and cut the threads off the end. By some new plastic, or just get a bunch of old plastics, and a pirex cup (do it ina well ventilated area, like a garage that is open) heat the plastic, if you are reusing old plastics, don't use 3x or berkely powerbait, 3x won't work and powerbait plastic stinks like no other, chop the old plastics up into small pieces, put them in the pirex cup and heat them for like 2 minutes take out and stir, keep heating them up in 1 minute intervals until the plastic is hot, it should be pretty runny when its hot, be careful though you don't want to scorch the plastic, if you scorch it just throw it out and don't breathe the fumes. take the rod that you chopped the threads off and dip it into the pirex, I like 4" tubes, so I make sure I get the rods that would have 4" with the threads off. it might take 1 or 2 dips to get the thickness that you would want in the tails, and 1-2 dips more to thicken up the body. Now the only thing that is going to cost you money is the tail cutter, you can get the tail cutter at lurecraft.com, you could go all out and by the press one for like $100 or so, or a hand one for like $30, I have the hand one. When you cut the tails put the tube on a piece of wood, I use a old 2X4, and cut the tails, you have to press hard to get it to go through all the way. I make it sound easier than it probably is, dipping will take a little to get used to, when you pull the rod out of the plastic you have to roll it around so the plastic doesn't form a drip and then cool so it looks all deformed, it can be done though so you get perfect tubes, I do it all the time.

BTW, thats not the ewg hook on the v&m jigs, I just looked at them at tackle warehouse, its the same hook used in almost all the heavy series of swim jigs

IMHO in a swim jig the best hook is a round bend light wire hook. One of the design aspects of a swim jig is for it to track straight through the water, without rolling over, or spiraling, a light wire round bend hook allows the jig to do this the best. One of the benefits of a light wire hook versus a heavy wire hook is that when the jig contacts cover and bounces off the light wire hook allows the jig to upright itself easier. Also the long wire on the round bend hooks sort of acts like a rudder allowing your bait to run truer. The thing about the ewg hooks is the bend starts way back towards the trailer keeper, which means most of your trailer is not threaded through the hook, which allows the trailer to swing "free" and not allow the jig to run true, this is especially true with single tail grubs and paddle tails, not so much trailers like paca craws or rage chunks. If you really think about it also, there is no reason to have a ewg hook on a swim jig, a round bend hook has more than enough gap left with any trailer you are going to put on it, and like already said you will get better hook ups with a round bend, that all has to do with the angle of the hook point on a round bend compared to the ewg. (the ewg hook point is pointed directly at the line tie) The original "Wisconsin" style swim jig is like the grandfather of swim jigs, they spent years refining the perfect swim jig, and most of the principles they built there jig on are still followed today. Southern Anglers just can't get by that light wire hook though, so thats why most makers offer a Heavier version, but imho a light wire hook just runs better, but then I don't have to deal with bass over 10lbs either.

Just looked at his color chart, the neon is like .15 diameter flake, and the normal gp red is like a .35 or so flake. The neon would show more red in the water. But agreed it is a minor difference, and is more to catch fisherman then fish