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Showing content with the highest reputation on 05/11/2021 in all areas

  1. You can have a range of overall weight to blade spinners and still have the spinner perform. The weight range will give you the ability to have spinners that run higher or lower in the water column. I have some size 4 blade spinners with 1/4 to 3/4 oz weights. I sometimes troll spinners and spinnerbaits. I use the different body weights and blade sizes to get the bait to the depth I want. Generally, it looks like I use size 6 trebles on size 2 blade spinner. On size 3 and 4 blade spinners, I use a 4 treble. On a few size 3 blade spinners, I have a size 6 treble (mostly for trout). On some size 4 spinners, I upsize to a size 2 or short shank 2 treble on colors like red white and fire tiger that are just as likely to get a pike as well as bass. On size 5 spinners, I use a number 2 treble. You can downsize the hook for stream fishing. You can upsize when snags won’t be an issue and when big fish are possible. The chart from Jann’s can be useful. I wouldn’t just go with the standard spinner setups. Experimenting is the key to finding the most successful spinner. https://www.jannsnetcraft.com/content/make_fishing_lures.htm Just wait until you start using Siwash hooks or weighted swimbait hooks. That throws a lot more variables into the mix. I have made and purchased some double 4 and 5 French blade spinners. I have not any more luck with those compared to a single blade. The double blades do run shallower. You can get them to run just below the surface with the rod tip up. On a double bladed spinner, I like using 2 clevises that are overlapped as opposed to the one piece S shaped clevis. I like the look of the 2 overlapped clevises in the water. I catch more fish on the 2 clevis setup, but it could just be a confidence thing that causes me to fish those more. I have not built a ‘staggered’ double blade spinner yet, 2 different types of blades or different sizes of blades (ex. a size 4 French with a size 5 French, or a Indiana with a French blade). The staggered blades setup has become popular for muskies. I wonder if a downsized version will work for bass. If you have a stockpile of bronze, you can use those for undressed, tubing, and silicone strand dressed hooks. Use the bronze for the dressed hooks that will dry the quickest. Use the black nickel of the fur dressed hooks. I do have a spinner with a rivet. It don’t know if it squeaks. I never thought about the squeak. I was short on beads and used a rivet. I can’t hear it as it is under water. It doesn’t seem to be any more or less effective. In addition to properly drying spinners, I like to keep mine in a ze-rust or rustrictor plano type box. You can also buy the anti-rust tabs to put in any box. They do seem to help.
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  2. Whenever I want to make a harder alloy I use super hard from Rotometals. Sometimes I also add tin that I get from scrap pewter as well. But the super hard is a 30% antimony alloy. The nice part of that is that the antimony has already been alloyed in. Antimony melts somewhere over a thousand degrees. But once alloyed in melts at much lower temperatures. I have a Cabine tree lead hardness tester and I highly recommend this hardness tester. So once I know how hard the alloy needs to be, say for a cast bullet, then I guesstimate how much super hard to add and melt it into the pot. Then I pour a test ingot and test it with my hardness tester. Then I adjust from there if needed. This means that every batch that I cast has to be adjusted this way. Since I cast in a bunch of different bullet calibers and sometimes cast sinkers or jigs in different hardness alloys, this is not that big an issue for me. But I suppose if you wanted a large volume of all the same alloy it would be a little bit of a pain to do it that way. Though my largest lead pot holds ~186 lb so I guess I could blend a pretty good volume of alloy in it if need be. I've never had trouble casting any alloy that I've needed to cast. They've all filled molds out quite nicely. So I can't teally give you a specific alloy or ratio. For me it's about determining and reaching the BHN(Brinnell hardness number) that I am looking for regardless of the exact percentages in that alloy.
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  3. i use cooking spray on my rods (both core shot and tube molds) it works great, super cheap and lasts a long time. i just spray it every time i inject, on a paper towel or hand towel, then roll the rods around to make sure they are lubed
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  4. I have not, but its been unavailable for very long time now. Running a 220 outlet to the back is not THAT big of a deal. I had to run outlets for all my other machines and its not a big deal. Plus, I plan to run a little bit larger hard plastic injection machine sometime in the future back there anyway.
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  5. I buy from here... Great service. I normally get my order in 10 days ish.. Look at all 7 pages of tabs as well as other items he sells. Shop - Fishing skirts materials (shartopfishingtackle.com)
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  6. Thanks for the replies everybody. Roto Metals actually does sell a 6% antimony alloy at a hair over $5/lb called hardball alloy for guys who want harder lead bullets. They also used to sell a product they called hard alloy (I have about 20 lbs of it) that guys would mix with their pure lead to get various hardness lead for bullet casting. I didn't see "hard alloy" listed on their website just now, but I may not have known what to look for. I originally bought mine from them off Amazon. Don't know if they still sell on Amazon or not. Now I need to find a second casting pot to go with my old RCBS Pro Melt. I want to keep it filed with soft lead, and set up a second for hard lead. Looks like the only thing close still on the market is either a 220V RCBS 2 or a Lyman MAG 25. I don't have a 220V circuit back in the corner where my bait making bench is, but I guess I could run one.
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  7. If you are willing to try a plastisol from a different manufacturer, the Super Tough from Bait Plastics is just as its' name implies. That stuff is tough as nails. I use it to make chunk trailers for bass jig, and also for dipping the heads of drop shot baits in. It is hard to tear off a hook, and it has decent action for the chunk trailers as well
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  8. I agree with Azsouth in looking at the total weight of the spinner compared to the blade size. I have a couple of size 4 and 5 French blade spinners with bodies that weigh over an ounce for fishing deeper water in reservoirs. These spinners would be useless in a stream and most rivers. I prefer the standard thickness blades. I want the blades spin as easily as possible. I find the thick blades can be tough to get start spinning. The thick ones can spin lazily and look unnatural. I use the LPO regal finish blades and painted blades. I mostly use French blades as they seem to spin the easiest on an inline spinner and start immediately. I have a few with swing blades and a couple of with Colorado blades. I only use the .040 thick blades on big bucktails for musky/pike, just for durability. I have not tried any .032 thick blades. Those might not have the lazy spinning of .040 blades. The LPO blades are .025" thick which I am happy with. I like the common stirrup clevis. Just personal preference. .030" shafts are fine for size 3 blades. For size 4 blades, I use .035. For size 5 and 6, I use .040" shafts. For bigger spinners and bucktails, I go to .051" shafts. I tend to favor the thicker wire shafts as I frequently fish waters with bass and pike. For dressings/trailer, I have used just about everything from undressed, colored tube on the shank, flies and streamers put on a split ring, feathers, squirrel tail, craft fur, flashabou, bucktail, silicone skirt strands passed through the hook eye and held on with a small piece of shrink tube, grubs/ menace grubs/ thin bodied craws on straight shank hooks, and paddletail swimbaits on swimbait hooks with a corkscrew. They all have their time and place depending on the conditions. On bluebird sky, clear water, calm no wind days, silver blade undressed hook may be the way to go. Clouds, slightly stained water, ripples on the surface, gold blade or copper blade with a subdued to moderate dressing. For rainbows and browns, I usually go with a undressed hook, a fly, or just a few silicone strands trimmed short for dressing. Typically, just 4-6 black strands to resemble a fly or bug. Heavy chop, chocolate milk water, low light, painted blades with a larger type hook dressing, grub or paddle tail swimbait. The better the chance the fish can get a real good look at the spinner the more I like a subdued presentation. I keep switching up until I find the right combo. I mostly use black nickel hooks. I think they look better in addition to lasting longer. Using any bait such as a inline spinner with a dressing, spinnerbait, buzzbait, jig, or anything that can trap water, the key is to let it dry before putting it away. I always try to carry an empty hydroflow plano 3505 box to hold baits like those while fishing. I keep an empty one in my boat. It's like a hanging dry rack. Never put wet baits back with dry gear until the baits are fully dry. Once I get back from fishing, I can dry them with a paper towel and lay them out to dry completely somewhere. I usually remove any soft plastic trailers (grubs, chunks, swimbaits) before putting the baits away. The salt in trailers can corrode hooks. If you have an unused plano box or want a smaller hanging dry box, just take your unused box or buy a cheap 3504 box and drill a bunch of holes in it. Remove any gear from the box before drilling. I only say this because an idiot friend of mine drilled the holes in his Plano box without removing the gear inside and ruined a crankbait he liked. Some more info in a past post: http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/topic/37610-blade-weight/
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  9. when you say inline this is what I think of.... Inline Spinner Blades Brass Finish Lacquer Coated Sizes 1 - 6 - Barlow's Tackle (barlowstackle.com) blade thickness to me does not matter as much as target weight of the total spinner, I think that once you really get into building spinners instead of buying them, you will find blade size to weight is very important. it allows you to fish it the way you need to..... mass produced ones have a tendency to be just around what you need not dead on. My .02
    1 point
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