Hey guys. The pesky dinks and sunfish at my local lake like to take the tails off of my small (2"ish) swimbaits. Is there any way to salvage these to use for another day or are they good as toast? I don't mind if they tear up the non-rigged swimbaits but it feels like a waste to just throw out a pre-rigged swimbait that has an amputated tail.

Anything I can do?

 

 

Cheers!

They make this stuff called Mend It. It is a soft plastic repair glue that fuses soft plastics back together, Perhaps you could buy some cheap swim baits and nip the tails off them then fuse them to the blue gill. Also I suppose you could use the ribbon tail off a worm or something to give it some action. 

You can salvage the treble and probably the jighead too! You can recycle the plastic as well.

You can make a mold of the tail using "Plaster of Paris" and non-stick oven spray. Old rubber baits, in the color you want, can be microwaved and poured into the mold. Then trim both the swimbait and tail you made and glue back together using a Mend-it type of soft glue. Check YouTube for a demo. But have an adult help with the hot plastic because it can be over-heated to high temps that can burn the heck out of a person who isn't careful. Eye and hand protection is a must.

Get a bait keeper spring (like one from a swimbait hook), put a barrel swivel on the spring, and a spinner blade on the swivel.  Then screw the spring into the back of the swimbait where the tail used to be.  It should give the flash and action you are looking for.   In fact TW sells these pre-made, but you probably have most of the stuff to do it yourself.

Funny u ask my bro was using a 3 inch Berkeley shad swimbait put it in a tree and the tail broke off he was like oh well let's try it any way first cast with it he caught a 5+ pounder! I was dumb founded haha so I'd say throw it like that a few times.

Remove the rest of the plastic and figure out a way to fish the weird jig head skeleton inside of it. I used them with grubs and caught fish but there is no keeper, so the grub didnt stay in place too well .