smalljaw

Almost every type of in-line spinner has this problem but musky bucktails don't suffer from it as bad because, as you mentioned, the thicker and heavier blades. The only thing that I know may help the problem with the lighter blades is to match them up with slightly smaller wire diameters so that you can use a smaller clevis. From making and fishing with safety pin style bass spinners I can tell you that on larger baits if you want to drop the size of the secondary blade, the on that rotates on a clevis, you either have to use a smaller diameter wire to drop down the size of the clevis or speed the retrieve, I make a 3/8oz spinnerbait designed to us in fast current in a river and to get the bait to come through without rolling over I found that I had to downsize the blades, it works well but if I throw it into water with little or no current I have to burn the bait in order for the smaller blade to spin.

Thats a Fish, the siliflash skirting isn't on the market yet, I got a sample of the stuff from GLC fishing, they make the perfect skirts for strike king and the easy hub skirting for Z-Man, and they also make the living image skirts available through Fishingskirts.com. The paint is just the candy color powder paint without any base coat which gives it a mettalic look because it lets the shine from the lead come through. Once the siliflash is available I let you know were to get it, right now it's probably going to be offered through Z-Man fishing. Thanks for commenting on those baits, the smallies really like them especially when it's sunny out as you can see them coming through the water from a considerable distance.PM me your e-mail and as soon as it is officially released I find where to get it for you.

It doersn't have to dry clear for weed guards but it does have to be waterproof.

Wal-Mart has probably demanded a lower price which Devcon won't go for so they stopped selling it but I have an ACE hardware store here that has it so I get it there, it's a little bit more expensive but well worth it. As far as not knowing what to get, look for the Devcon 2 ton epoxy that has the holding power listed as 2500 lbs.

I use the devcon 2T, it's by far the most durable and so far it's the only one I've found that dries without getting dull or yellowing. I've tried flex coat epoxy and while it dries clear, it's very dull, I also used the seal coat from CSI and it does dry fast but it isn't very durable as I've had jigs that I was able to peel the finish off of after an hour or so of fishing, it may have been bad or I didn't stir it enough but I never had any problems with devcon so I stick with that.

What is tha advantage of powder paint over blade dip? The reason I ask is because I use the blade dip to make red hooks and once in a while I'll color some blades but I never used it on jig heads or anything but I know it's a lot easier dipping into the dye than it is the paint. I know the dip chips off my hooks and blades but thats because I don't have a top coat applied but this has me wondering if I can do jigs with the same results or does the cured paint hold up alot better?

For single colors I put the powder into a wide shallow bowl and heat the head up and swish it through the paint but for multiple colors I too use a spray gun and it works well and I have an economical solution for a spray booth. Take a large cardboard box like the type that work boots come in which is what I use, flip the box open so that the top of the box is sitting veritical and the bottom of the box is flat on your work bench, then you take a plastic grocery bag and tape it to the inside of the top part of the box, do this so that the bag is open by taping just the side of the bag thats next to the box. Now you have a make shift spray booth and when you spray the excess powder hits the back of the box and falls into the plastic bag so you cna recycle the lost powder.

My neighbor is a plumber and gave me a lot of lead but he got it in bulk a long time ago and it was in a dome shape and each piece weight 50 lb. and he gave me 6 of these so it was 300 lbs. worth. Anyway I got a big cast iron pot and borrowed a friends burner from a turkey fryer and melted it down into usable size ingots, you could buy a lee ingot mold or get yourself a muffin pan and pour yourself small inmgots and then store it in a box close to where you pour. I do like cadman and store the ingots under my work bench.

Once again cadman is there to the rescue!!! Listen to him because he has helped most of us here at one time or another. 1 thing I can add is make sure before you pour that you mold is HOT, put your mold on top of your melting pot while waiting for the lead to melt then make some casts without wire or hooks and after you get a few complete casts without the hardware then you can go for the real thing. It will help to leave your wire and hook colse to the pot to keep them warm, not hot but warm, I had problems in the barb area in the winter time and after making sure my hardware was warm to the touch it was good to go, and the pure soft lead is the only way to go with that mold.

Cadman is really spot on with his assesment but I think I may be able to help also. You can tell if your lure is too hot if you get smoke and strings, yes, strings, the paint will go on real thick and come out of the container in stings of paint. If the jig isn't hot enough it'll be just like cadman said, dull which is an easy fix as he explained, but the main thing is once you figured out hot hot to get the lure you must QUICKLY SWISH the lure in the paint or you'll get it too think and you'll have the same problem you have now, remember, practice makes perfect!

I prefer the hook bend lined up with the center of the main blade because I feel it gives me a better hook up ratio, bass mainly go after the blades at first until they see the body and alot of times they will hit the blades, with the blade positioned over the hook I catch a good bit the only hit the blades. The reason you see the short arm on single colorado blade baits is because of the way most people fish it which is dropping it down ledges or deep holes, the short arm keeps the blade away from the body, hook, and skirt which allows more water resistance so the blade will spin freely as the bait drops.

If you bought the bodies then all you need to do is add the blades and bend you loop, you don't need to trim any wire unless you want a shor arm bait or you want it to run a certain way. I bend my own wire and I know how long to make the blade arm for the baits I use, most of the time I want my main blade that is attached to the swivel to extend past the hook so that the bend of the hook falls around the center of the blade.

Thats the norm for red hooks but instead of paying more to buy red hooks just get some spike-it spoon and blade dip or lake hawk lure dye and make your own. Using regular hooks saves money and the amount of hooks you dye red with a bottle of the lure dye is amazing, plus when the red wears off you can dip them again and it's like a new hook.

I've never heard of this happening but I'll try to help. How are you heating the weights? It sounds almost as if the weights are coated in plastic, because if you burn plastic it will turn black and get into a fluid state which sounds like the same thing you are experiencing. The lowest temp I know of to cure powder is 270 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes which is what is recommended for those who cast jigs with the weed guard in place.

I would suggest the new brush jig but if the flay eye hook is a must then the flat eye arky jig is whay you want. For me I really like the poison tail although it doesn't have a flat eye, I fish this jig in weeds, laydowns and deep offshore humps that most use football jigs for. It's a versatile jig and the hook up precentage is really good thanks in part to the EWG hook it uses.

You would have to find a source that makes the wire forms because titanium needs to be tempered otherwise it's too brittle and breaks easily. From what I was told the tempering process is complicated so you wouldn't be able to do it at home and you can't use wire thats already tempered because you wouldn't be able to bend it.

GLC manufactures a ton of great stuff and then they sell to distributors, the living image skirts are one example as is the perfect skirt and sili-flash skirts some of which are sold by Z-Man. They are supposed to come out with a do-it-yourself kit to make the ez/perfect skirts at home and I'm one of the people who can't wait!! Charlie Hymes at Fishingskirts.com also sells their products which reminds me I have to call him to get some of the new tubes that GLC has produced.

Booyah has what they call the "vibra-flex" wire, it's nothing more than thin diameter super stainless, the Terminator baits are good but in order to make them out of titanium the wire is bent first then after it's bent they heat temper them which is something you can't do at home. In raw form titanium is brittle but after it's tempered it has that "snap back" property, the big deal about that was the fact they could make a bait with a large diameter wire that vibrated like thin wire yet be more durable the only problem was that some baits the loop wasn't completely closed which would cause you to lose blades and swivels and the other problem is the tempering process wasn't always perfect and you would catch a fish and the next thing you know you were reeling in just part of the wire because the bait broke in half and at $8 or$9 a pop it's hard to swallow.

Have you ever tried using different head and wire combos to get what you are looking for? The reason I asked was the same thing happened to me with a paticular bait, Terminator spinnerbait, when they first came out before the T-1 and T-2 and all of that kind of nonsense. I'd lose blades and swivels because the loop wasn't all the way closed and once the titanium was tempered ther was no real way of closing it but that bait was working for me. I tried a bunch of different ones but nothing worked so I decided it was time to make my own, I started with a bullet head design and tinkered around with different wire and blade combos and found things that worked for me(thats half the fun of making your own tackle), then I found the ultra minnow head and I've been using it ever since. The head design determines how the bait moves through the water, some heads have more weight toward the belly and fall faster others, like the ultra minnow, will fall slightly slower but will come through weeds like nobodys business, I guess what I'm trying to say is get some baits with different kids of wire and blade configurations and just might be surprised to find that there is more than one bait that'll work for you.

I use watermelon, chartreuse and some black and they turn out pretty good, however pro-tec now has green pumpkin already made up.

I use both the regular gold and the metallic gold and thats not going to do the job of making it like a war eagle bait because the war eagle baits are as cadman stated, they are gold plated which is why they have such a shiny look to them.

I don't make in-line spinners but I fish them for trout and I always use a swivel because of it. I may be wrong but I don't think you can eliminate that, all of the spinners I've fishe had that same problem and it seems like the heavier the lure the more the wire spins with the blade.

My wally world stopped selling it also but a small local hardware store near me has it although for a little bit higher price. I've tried flex coat since it is what I use to glue my weed guards in with and I'll tell you that it dries dull and within a week it begins to yellow, the CSI cleear is easy and simple but it takes a long time to cure and doesn't get very hard. So far D2T has been about the best thing I've used.

It was lumiflex, you can get it from living rubber if I'm not mistaken.

I put my mold on the pot while it is heating up and I leave it there until the lead is melted, but while that is going on I put my hook near the pot, not so close that they are too hot to touch but just close enough that they are pretty warm. Once you have a hot mold, you can place the warm hooks in the cavities and close it up and wait like 3 or 4 seconds, this will make the hook hot enough that you shouldn't have to worry, if your mold is hot enough it will pour fine.