BobP

Corey, there are lots of ways to do it, you just have to jump in. Most hobby builders cut out a basic 2D blank on a band or scroll saw and cut the lip slot while the blank is still square. After that, shaping begins. Some prefer a belt or drum sander, a knife, etc. I use a Dremel sanding cylinder. Taper the nose and tail sections and round over and smooth out the edges until you get the finished shape. Ending up with a symmetrical bait is important and that means shaping baits is mostly about control. I mark off the tapers, do them with a disc sander, then mark off shaping "limits" on the top, bottom, and sides with a compass so I can control the hand shaping. If you don't mark it off, it's easy to be fooled into taking off too much or too little because you are shaping curved wood surfaces. The wood grain will also tend to fool the eye.

I think you'll find that "hard" monos have better knot strength, cast a little better, have less stretch and a bit more sensitivity than "soft" monos. Most brands offer a hard and soft variety, like Trilene XT (hard) vs Trilene XL (soft), with the soft line advertised for spinning applications. Personally, I like Izor Line Premium (a hard line) and Izor XXX (a soft line). They are less expensive than the highly advertised brands like Trilene but have all the quality (smoothness, knot strength, consistent diameter, etc). Izor in 1/4 lb spools is sold by several online stores. The downside of all hard monos is that they develop line memory more quickly than soft monos, which may be an issue in PA. I switch my baitcasters from hard to soft line during the cold months. Of course, if sensitivity is really the priority, you should be fishing with fluorocarbon. Yeah, it costs more but it lasts much longer than nylon copolymer lines on the reel. Long enough that I think the increased cost is pretty much a wash versus its life expectancy. And it's definitely more sensitive.

Nice lip work, Whittler! JMHO, a lip with an integrated line tie needs exact hole placement and some craftsmanship in twisting and bending the wire loop if you want it to work well. It's not rocket science but it's not a snap to do, either. Plus you have to buy a sheet of Lexan (aka polycarbonate) or circuit board (aka G10, Garolite, Micarta) and the correct type and size of wire (I use .040" dia soft temper stainless steel "safety lock wire"). If I didn't build crankbaits as a hobby already, I'd probably look at "store-bought" lips from Janns Netcraft or other online sources to see if there is an easy fix. BTW, if you have to cut the lip out of the bait, you'll have a larger lip slot than on the original. If so, I recommend using epoxy putty to install the new lips. Fill the slot entirely with epoxy putty, then push the new lip, wiping off the putty that squeezes out the back of the slot. The putty sets fast, has a similar density to cedar, and doesn't leak out of the slot like liquid epoxy will.

Hot Sauce is a very good oil. Bit I'd never use it due to the red dye that migrates all over inside the reel. Yuck! If you have lubricated drag disks in your reel, you should lubricate them with a specific drag grease like Shimano ACE-2 , which is a heavy, sticky cosmoline grease - NOT regular grease. Among oils that you can find in stores, I'd pick the Reel Butter Bearing oil. I've been using Yellow Rocket Fuel for years and like it, along with SuperLube grease (a white PTFE fortified auto bearing grease you can find in 8 oz cans at NAPA stores). Good stuff.

X3 on the Shimano Crucial dropshot rod. I got one a few years ago after recommendations from some western dropshot pros. It has a fast action but light tip section mated to a medium power shaft, which has been described as a "hinged" action. Plenty of sensitivity but will handle big bass. Lifetime warranty and priced around $150. You can use lots of rods for dropshotting but I've enjoyed this puropse-designed one and I think it matches what you're looking for.

I started out with a $20 Badger single action airbrush, cans of compressed air, cheap $2 hobby paints (all from the local Michael's craft store), and $2 syringes of Devcon Two Ton epoxy. Do I recommend that route? Not if you can afford better equipment that will enable you to learn faster and easier. But it was a way to get my feet wet. Now I use a tool compressor with moisture trap and regulator, a couple of nice Iwata airbrushes, airbrush formulated paint, and a couple of different clearcoats plus whatever ancillary equipment is needed to make everything work together. I've seen some very nice baits painted with aerosol spray paint, so I think that while nice equipment makes things easier and faster, great crankbait artists will find a way to paint great looking crankbaits.

It sort of depends on what you have been fishing before, but I think the Avids are somewhat overpowered compared to "average".

I tend to disagree. If you're a no-brain yahoo with no experience and think it's cool to run across the lake with your hair on fire at WOT the first time out, a fast boat may well teach you a few hard lessons - that is if you, your passenger, and nearby boaters even survive the experience. If you're that kind of guy, do yourself and the world a favor and stay out of them. If you're a responsible and safe boater and work your way up the driving skill curve, no problem. You'll be OK and will love the boat once you get experience. I've lots of "highly experienced" boaters do stupid things in fast bass boats. Guess what? It ain't the boat's fault - it's always the numnuts who's driving it. The only way to learn to drive fast boats is to work your way up to it .... in a fast boat.

I use Picasa, which is a feature-filled but easy to use photo editing/organizing program that you download for free from GOOGLE. With Picasa, you import pics from your camera in their original format, fix any defects, then export a pic you want to post online in whatever file size you like. For posting pics, I choose 640 dpi and have Picasa export the file to another place on my computer, then upload that pic. Picasa is very good at maintaining the sharpness and detail of the pic when you downsize the pixel count. Picasa also organizes all the photos on your hard drive into easy-to-find albums and shows them to you in thumbnail size, which is very handy when you are searching for pics. I also like Irfanview but find that it sometimes distorts the shape of the image when resizing it. Probably my fault but since Picasa is just about idiot-proof, it's easier for me to use.

Damage to what? I've changed out lots of spool bearings and no, it doesn't cause damage anywhere. BTW, sanding is not polishing.

There is a difference. Senkos weigh more than most of their competition and have a faster sink rate, and that's significant when you're fishing them. The only brand I know that is really similar is the Wacko from Wacky Worm. There may be others but I haven't weighed them. If you use something else and catch fish, there's nothing to complain about. But when times are tough, I'd rather be throwing the original or a Wacko.

I say don't rely too much on conventional wisdom about jigs versus plastics. Everyone has fishing prejudices. I really enjoy fishing jigs more than fishing T-rigged plastics but think it's sorta dumb to have a prejudice about what you are gonna throw on a given day because one will work better than the other and you won't know which until you try it. I favor jigs when fishing rock because I get hung up less. But I've had days when they wouldn't touch a jig but would readily eat a slow falling plastic bait in the rocks. Maybe I could switch to light jigs but I'd rather throw plastics when a slow fall rate is called for. Bigger jig fish? Can't prove it by me. Maybe my jig fish have averaged larger than the fish on plastics but the fish over 7 lbs all came on plastics. Bass - just when you know you got them figured out...... you don't.

When mounting a lip in a slot that's too large, epoxy putty can be your best friend. Cut off a little of the putty log, mix it, fill the slot with the putty, push in the lip so you get the correct lip angle, and smooth off the putty that squeezed out of the slot. No worry about voids, no worry about liquid epoxy dripping out of the slot, no worry about the lip moving while the epoxy hardens. You're ready to roll in 30 minutes.

If you are mainly concerned about breakoffs, yes, a low stretch copolymer makes a stronger knot. If you're more concerned about line visibility, fluoro is better. Personally, I'd do what you've already done - go up in diameter on the fluoro leader. And I think line breaks with a fluoro leader (or when braid is tied directly to a lure) are often due to snap hooksets. The instantaneous strain of a snap hookset can easily break braid up to 30 lb test, or break the fluoro leader at the knot. A little restraint is called for.

I think it's situational. Water getting clearer in fall, yes. Bass moving to open water and becoming less active, yes. Using smaller baits, yes. If it just rained, the water is dirty, and you're fishing heavy cover, no.

Google Moisture Cured Urethane and you will find several sellers online. The brands I most often see are GARCO and FAMOWOOD. Dick Nite S81 topcoat is also a MCU. See above post if you are interested in that brand.

Like Big M, I ALWAYS cut the lip slot at the time I'm cutting out the basic shape of the crankbait from a plank of wood. That way, I know the lip will be square to the bait when finished. It's devilishly hard to cut an accurate lip slot in a bait that's already shaped and sanded - there's nothing "square" to relate the slot to (unless you build hundreds of a particular bait and have built a custom jig to hold them while cutting the lip slots). I epoxy in the lips after painting but before clearcoating the bait. That's why I use the "false lips" mentioned earlier to hold the bait while airbrushing. You want the clearcoat to cover the margin where the lip meets the body for finish integrity.

Where suspending baits really come into their own is in colder water. A bait that suspends in cold dense water will sink in warm less-dense water. If you make it float very slowly in cold water, you can use it in warm water and can add a few suspen-dots in cold water to get it to suspend there too. There's really no substitute for "test floating" a lure in water if you want it to suspend. On a wood bait, undercoat the wood (no paint yet) and add all the hardware (hook hangers, lip, split rings, trebles hooks). Then float the bait in a pot of water the temperature you will fish. Hang lead weight on the treble hooks until the bait rises ever to slowly. Use the weight of that lead to ballast the crankbait, then paint and topcoat the bait. That will get you very close to suspending. The only weight you will be adding to the crankbait after the test float is the finish, which weighs around .02 oz on a typical bass crankbait.

Dalton, many guys who paint metal use solvent based lacquers and topcoat them with a solvent based urethane. Acrylic latex (water based) paints also work fine if topcoated with a penetrating clearcoat like moisture cured urethane (MCU). Whether the paint runs is a function of how you apply it, not the paint. Use thin coats and let them dry before applying more paint. Most airbrushes will work OK to shoot paint on lures. Better airbrushes cost more but shoot finer sprays and so work a little easier on a small surface like a lure. For more "distinct" patterns, most lure painters resort to using paint templates cut from any waterproof paper or plastic. You can buy a roll of frisket material at art stores, which is what professional airbrusher's use to make templates. You can get very distinctive results just using templates and spray cans of paint if you're on a budget. If you want to get into airbrushing, check online airbrushing sites for more info.

I've tried several different brands of "water borne urethanes" on crankbaits. They are hard and durable when dry but WILL soak up water when submerged for a few minutes. When they do, water penetrates under the urethane and gets into the underlying acrylic latex color coats on the lure. Then the finish will delaminate. Wish they worked on crankbaits. But they don't. I'll stick with solvent based urethanes or epoxy.

Water in a lake will always tend to stratify according to it's temperature, warmer water on top, colder water beneath it. That's because warm water is less dense and weighs less than cold water. Sometimes the demarcation between the warmer upper layer and the colder lower layer is very distinct - that defines a thermocline. The significance is this: the warmer water is not mixing with the water beneath the thermocline. If it did, there would of course be no thermocline. The deeper water just sits there and does not get re-oxygenated, so most fish will not be able to live below the thermocline. Fish and other organism in a lake often congregate just above a thermocline. It's the coolest water available that also contains enough oxygen to sustain life. If you have a decent sonar, you can see a thermocline in many lakes in summer. If you can't see the actual line on sonar, you can often see that baitfish are holding at a specific depth line throughout a large part of the lake on a given day - and you can assume the thermocline is just below them. Thermoclines help you locate fish. If it's at 25 ft deep, there's no reason to fish deeper. But you may want to check out the areas where the thermocline hits the 25 ft deep banks of the lake, especially if those areas have cover that can hide hungry bass. As water cools in the fall, the upper water layer will eventually cool to the same temperature as the water below the thermocline, at which point the two layers will mix and the thermocline will disappear. This is called "turnover'. In most lakes, the water will become very cloudy and you will see lots of small debris floating on the surface. That's junk that was sitting on the bottom of the lake. The turnover is not a good time to fish.

If you're asking what tool do you use to handle the bait while you're shooting paint on it, I like locking forceps. I clip it on the bait's lip after putting blue painter's tape on the lip to protect it. On wood baits that I'm building, I insert a 'false lip', i.e., a piece of scrap lip material with some tape on it to give it a friction fit in the slot, and hold the bait by the lip with the forceps. The false lips also have a hole drilled in them to hang the baits above my workbench on nails between color shots. Different guys like different systems, this is just the one I use.

I leave fluoro on the reel until there's too little on the spool to fish. For me, that may be a year on some reels. No problem with breakage but I always store reels in the garage where temps rarely reach 100 degrees. I hear fluoro is not damaged by UV light like nylon lines, but I'm a little skeptical since UV seems to degrade just about any man made material. So does heat. I use the same knots as you, but different fluoro brands (usually cheeper!).

Any line extruded as single strand is rightly called a monofilament. That includes all the various nylon lines, including copolymers and even fluorocarbons. But common usage in the marketplace has confused things. Monofilaments extruded from a mix of different nylon polymers are "copolymer lines". The mix of copolymers are chosen to get particular performance characteristics into the line. If you have a 'quality monofilament' line that you like, choosing a random 'copolymer' line is not going to get you anywhere you aren't already. Personally, I like Izor Line Premium and XXX. The Premium is a hard finish line with good knot strength and limited stretch. The XXX is a softer formulation with a little more stretch that develops less spool memory. They are akin to Trilene XT versus Trilene XL. One big reason I like Izor is the price on 1/4lb spools is very reasonable compared to other "premium copolymers". Another I like is McCoy's Mean Green. It has performance characteristics that I think of as "medium" in all respects, which makes it a good "all around" line.

I don't think there is any "clear winner" among the options as far as performance goes. I've chipped balsa baits topcoated with Devcon Two Ton on rocks, etc. Some guys say Envirotex Lite epoxy has better chip resistance. Fishing in cold weather makes epoxy a little more brittle. For topcoating plastic baits, I do think MCU, and particularly Dick Nite S81, is superior. It's solvent soaks through dry acrylic paint to the plastic underneath and makes the finish a very durable integrated whole. Epoxy sits on top of acrylic paint but doesn't penetrate. It works like a tough plastic jacket and is fine as long as it is intact. But If chipped, water tends to infiltrate the acrylic paint and expand it, delaminating the finish. I've used epoxy on hundreds of wood baits and will continue to do so, especially when I want a thicker topcoat that I know will look "perfect" when hard. But I'll also use MCU when it fits the bill. I love it's simplicity. Dip it, hang it, DONE. The five second finish!