fin

It's not just you. Last year I didn't have any, now have 4 whopper ploppers, two I found in trees, two were floating. Not really the colors I wanted, but hey.

Ah, I see. I thought you were just fed up with losing jigs / spending money on jigs. There are lots of rocks and wood where I fish, so I've lost a lot and got tired of spending money on them. Putting them together like @A-Jay does took a lot of time to rig, and rigging it while fishing from shore walking the banks is kind of awkward, and I never got into it seriously enough to get the right skirts/hardware before I switched over to just fishing trailers using a weighted hook, which has been pretty successful for me. Another alternative to the @A-Jay method (which I agree is a great method) is the centering pin thing @WRB does on his jigs. I'm not sure that would help in the rocks necessarily, I haven't tried it much but I haven't lost one yet (knock on wood). I would turn that weight around.

All that hardware is going to add up to maybe almost the cost of a cheap jig, and be a lot more trouble. I did it for a while, but I just t-rig a trailer most of the time now, skipping the skirt altogether. I'm not certain the skirt actually increases the number of bites. It obscures the hook and sinker, and I think that's the main benefit.

Here's a collection of lures that are driven by gases like baking soda, alka seltzer or even dry ice. There's also one that emits blood and one sardine oil. Also a battery-operated lure that had a battery in the bobber and an electrical wire instead of line running to the lure. I think these folks were more creative and ingenious back then than folks now with all the high technology at their hands. http://www.lurelore.com/bleeder.html

You got me wondering, so I googled 'alka seltzer lure' and clicked on 'images' and believe it or not, the fourth result was a picture of the Pirana lure. It was from a review of the lure and it suggested you could put alka seltzer inside the Pirana. It also linked to an old forum that mentioned a lure from the 50's or 60's called: It mentioned a site that may have a picture. I might dig that up later. The internet rabbit hole.

There's been a few 'bubbling' baits, and I've always been skeptical of the whole concept. You've got to have air to make bubbles. You can carry a tiny amount of air down with a lure, but not much. If you're after bubbles, alka seltzer is probably a better alternative (joking).

That's good, because I can't even see those worms.

I've seen display stands sitting out behind stores in strip malls many times. I assume they're trash and are free for the taking. Or you might ask someone in a store if they have any old display stands you could have.

Dick's SG has a $10 rebate on the Pflueger President, with $10 off any purchase over $50. A size 30 is $60 which would bring your total to $40 after rebate, free shipping. That Sedona deal is pretty sweet too. That's more like the old Siennas.

Just to narrow things down, maybe try adjusting the braking and tension while spinning the spool by hand to see if that has any effect.

I'm just asking about willows, specifically, and in the case I noticed this, I think the two spinnerbaits in question are very similar, if not identical. One spins on its axis, the other one spins in a big arc. I thought maybe it had to do with the type of swivel, or maybe the hole in the blade was not drilled perfectly on center, or the wire was bent, something like that.

I kind of wish you hadn't exposed me to this, because now I'm wanting to do a Frankenstein experiment. I've got an old Teckel Drunker, and hardware from old Torpedoes, and I could cut a blade easily. I'd just need to drill a hole in the Drunker and hope I get lucky and don't hit a hollow spot. Of course it looks easy, but it's probably not. I guess getting the action on that blade just right would be the tricky part.

Wow, that's crazy. What is that on the tail? Is that for looks or does that play a part in that action? My lure didn't swim like that. The strange thing is the tail didn't wobble at all, it just veered to the left, then to the right, about a foot or so in either direction. It wouldn't get any depth though. Is that a typo? I like that word better than "hunting". lol

I like that answer because I feel like should know the answer to the question myself after fishing spinnerbaits so long. I've swapped out blades and experimented a lot, but I don't feel like I learned as much as I should have, because like you say, it's all relative.

I had a lot of luck using one of those $1 black spinnerbaits from Walmart, but I don’t use them anymore. One of the great things about spinnerbaits is you don’t have to spend a lot to catch a fish, but really it makes sense to spend more on spinnerbaits, because the odds of losing them are way less than just about anything else. I’ve lost quite a few over the years, but it’s almost always when I’m really pushing the limits, trying my luck. I know chartreuse is big on this forum, but it's never been lucky for me. Never had much luck with jig colored skirts like @A-Jay posted either, but almost every other natural color has paid off. I'm getting into the custom skirts too. That's so crazy it just might work! I have a couple questions about spinnerbaits myself: Why do some willows spin on a nice, tight axis while others spin on a wider axis? All things being equal (same skirt, same blades, etc.) which can you roll slower while still keeping the blades spinning, a heavier or lighter spinnerbait?

You're right that slowing it way down will help some. You might try adding some weight to the nose, or put on a smaller tail hook like I did, if you want to stabilize any of your lures (I understand some people want them slightly unstable). The main thing is changing the angle of the bill as it sits in the water. The closer the bill comes to being horizontal, the less unstable it becomes. With a diver bill that has the line tie on the bill itself, the lure will nose down when you retrieve. With the line tie on the body, it won't nose down unless the bill is sitting at a steep enough angle.

I started a thread similar to this back in November, and several people recommended the Sharky.

It looks off in the picture, but it must be an optical illusion. I had it running perfect without tuning. Was it Walmart?

Correct. Bushing on left, bearing on right. Siennas have been $29 for a long time. They kept the price the same, because the market is so saturated at that price point, so their only option to maintain a profit was to reduce their manufacturing expense. I assume. It may be planned obsolescence to get you to buy more over time, I dunno.

I put a smaller/lighter hook on the tail, put an oval split ring on the nose and put a 1" Norman Speed Clip on that, and it swam great. I never got around to trying it without the Speed Clip. I think it was a combination of not being balanced heavier in the front so that its nose was down, and maybe being tied directly to the eye instead of a split ring or clip was contributing to the problem. The split ring and clip gets the center of balance out towards the lip more, if that makes any sense. Or maybe it was just the weight of the split ring and the clip. Yes, too big for sure, I was just trying to get it heavier to get the lure down. Now I see I just needed to only get the front down. I think what I've learned here is that with that type of bill and line tie setup, balancing the lure heavy towards the tail will cause it to run more erratic. It was just too erratic - too far out of balance. I just need to tweak it to find the right balance. I'm still curious about who made it. I was trying to find out the original hook size.

I just realized I have another lure that I also found, by the same manufacturer (whoever that is). The gill design is unique. I don't see it on TW, or google, so I'm guessing it's some foreign knockoff company, maybe something from Walmart. The other lure has a nice paint job too, but it had hooks on it when I found it and they were super-cheap looking. So I guess it's just junk with a nice paint job.

Yeah, and it looks like the eyes have always been painted on Big O's.

It may be an old Cotton Cordell Big O. The new ones don't look as nice - they have painted eyes and the bill is painted, but the bill design looks the same and I've had trouble with other CC cranks swimming right. So yeah, cheapo.

I've tuned a crankbait before, I don't think that's the issue here, but I will give it a try. Rattles good, not sticky. Body is in great shape, not cracked. This is more an issue of how that bill is designed I think. A squarebill is square and thin, this is designed like a diving lip sort of, but it's short and it doesn't flare out, and the line eye is on the body, not the bill. Maybe it's just a cheap lure, but I was really impressed with how well the gloss and paint held up. It was really nasty when I found it. I thought maybe it was a decent lure since it held up so well.

I found this lure with the hooks rusted off of it, but it cleaned up nice and I really like the paint job. I put some hooks on it and it swam kinda sideways and didn’t want to dive much, so I put these over-size hooks on it, it still swam about the same, so I put a 1/32 ounce bullet weight pegged right on the lip to see if that would force the nose down. It swam/dived better, but still wacky. You might say it “hunts”, I dunno, I’ve never been real clear on what that means exactly, other than it runs wacky - sometimes left, sometimes right, sometimes shallow, sometimes deeper. Without the bullet weight, it’s not really usable. I’ve seen bills like this before that aren’t quite squarebills, but not quite a diving bill, and they never swim right to me.