Vodkaman

I have given this subject a LOT of thought; what to do with a new lure design. A - Design and build a unique lure that catches more fish than any other lure. B - Develop a low volume production process that guarantees a repeatable product. C - Issue the lure to testers. Beware of family and friends, you need honest feedback. If you get passed A, B & C, then the subject of patents must be addressed. Do you intend to sell the design to a company? If so then quality, robust patents need to be put in place before you go any further. If you put product on the market before a patent is in place then you risk losing the patent. Even 3rd party testing is a risk. Selling to a company is not as easy as it sounds. Companies will not even look at your product because of the legal implications of their future designs. If you decide to keep the business and have the funds to rigorously defend your design then you now need quality patents. If you do not have the funds to defend patents then you must proceed in the knowledge that your product will be copied and mass produced if successful. You probably have 12 months to make your money, depending on the complexity of the design. Now comes the most creative part; sales, marketing, promotion, sponsorship, paperwork, taxes, etc. There are many strategies from Mom and Pop stores through internet, EBay, websites, sales sites and a lot more. I don’t have any advice except do research and develop a strategy. Conclusions – Protection through patents is the biggest issue and requires a lot of research. You mention the ‘lurking company’ approaching with a lucrative deal to save the day. But, if you do not have quality, robust patents in place then why would they bother. Even if you had patents, if they were not strong then their legal team could take them apart. The ‘other company’ cannot take patents out on the idea even if you did not protect with a patent for the same reason that your patent is weakened if you patent after putting the lure on the market. Once the idea is ‘out there’ then it cannot be patented. Of course, a slick legal team will always find ways to negate these fine details. Personally I have been put off bringing a unique lure to market UNLESS it is a fine balance, and cannot be replicated without knowledge of how it works. Dave

Buy all the molds and other expensive equipment you ever wanted now, before another female moves in Dave

Carbite - Message sent. You must consider the flowing water when thinking about multiple inputs. The body of water moves as one. All the disturbances, lip, body, spinner etc. the water has to interact with as one flow. It is a difficult concept to explain, you need to have a good think about it all. Dave

I have posted this complex sinusoidal idea many times, in the last post of comments page 2 for example. I have even drawn the graphs on post No19 of this link. I might have posted some 14 years ago when I first thought of the idea and experimented with it, but may have kept it to myself at that time. I am very impressed that you arrived at the graphs independently, good engineering mind. Simple harmonic motion is always on an architect’s mind when designing tall thin structures or long bridges. There have been famous disasters due to combinations of SHM and vortex shedding. I do think that the double sinusoidal action has a chance of an explanation for your tail-spin lure, but not the Bass-Oreno, that is more likely caused by my definition of hunting, the lip passing 90° on the retrieve. On the tail-spin, the two actions are quite separated. Here is a video of a lure that I was experimenting with called ‘Big Ed’. It is a soft bait with a bulbous nose and a tail boot. The large sinusoidal motion is too slow to be assigned regular vortex shedding and so I am inclined to think that a complex sinusoidal action is going on. See what you think. Dave

Oh yes, that hunting action is the business. Thanks for posting the vids. Dave

It is a bit more complex than that. I have had 15Kg line snapped while trying to hold a freshly hooked 3Kg fish away from an obstacle. Smaller fish have snapped my line when I have struck too aggressively. Hitting a deep bodied fish is like hitting a brick wall. It only takes a millisecond for a limit to be breached for a failure to occur. Dave

RPM - good post, yes, good description of my method. I have discussed the double lip idea with a few members so forgive me for not recalling specifics. AZSouth - the best way to manage videos is to upload onto YouTube, then use the link YouTube will give you and paste into your TU post. This way you are not using up TUs limited resources. Dave

AZSouth - the best way to think about the rules; consider the purpose posting an image. Are you trying to clarify a technique, explain a feature or some other construction OR are you just trying to get feedback on your latest paint job. I love the construction; whipping on the extra eye, very smooth. Loving the story of how you arrived at the idea and the work you did to explore the idea. I would say 'Share of the Year' and we are only in April. Carbite - I have an idea about what is happening. The lip has a different frequency to the blade. Occasionally the 'pull' of front and rear aligns causing a change in direction. I worked on this idea about 14 years ago when I built bodies with two different width lips, front and back. The idea did not work because the water flow is a single, connected phenomenon and cannot be considered as two separate systems. I have a video of two lures swimming side-by-side, the lures always swim in sync with each other. This is complex fluid dynamics, but we can see it happen. I would love to see some video of the tail spinner lure Here is the video: Dave

Very interesting. You should have posted them on this thread, they are informative and relevant to the subject. Dave

Big Epp - Yes, that's the haywire. If I were to fit a haywire eye, I would bend the last 1/8" double. I am saying I prefer the barrel, I am NOT saying the haywire is no good. I have tested both well beyond BIG fish loading and the haywire did pull out of the epoxy, but we are talking about a 55Lb static load for 2 hours. Hand winding is fine, nut I did build a tool for winding barrel twists. There is a video of it somewhere. Dave

Agreed, hunting is a very different thing. Dave

Agreed. Dave

Unfortunately, at least using my hunting theory, the hunt is limited to shallow swimmers. I do not know what the depth limit is because none of the waters that I fish are deeper than 4'. Dave

I am sure some companies could build hunters, but it is a known fact that many of the famous hunter baits were build accidents. You might have to buy a dozen baits to get a couple that hunt as you want. There were discussions here on TU if you search back to the beginning. When I joined TU in 2007, no one knew what caused a lure to waggle. If you search for the word vortex, you will not find anything before 2007 in the context of lure movement. Yes, you might call these industry secrets but you would be wrong, people back then did not know the secrets of what made the lures do what they did, they just did! If a company did know the engineering behind the movement then they kept it very quiet. Dave

I have built both, but as I am only building for my own use, I see no point in through wire. Having said that, when I make a new design, I test to destruction well beyond the limits of what the lure will ever face in the water. Yes, I prefer twisted eyes. There is a lot of engineering to twisted eyes. I would NEVER use a plain haywire twist, always a spaced out barrel twist. It is all about the glue surface area. It is the shear strength at the surface of the glue plug multiplied by the surface area that determines the load that the eye will take. The barrel twist makes sure that the wire form will not pull out of the glue plug, the haywire form is too smooth to call secure. Some will argue with me but I have logic and testing on my side. Dave

A point indirectly brought up by @Travis and for that matter, many times in other threads; what is the definition of hunting, when is a hunter not a hunter? Many will argue that a lure that rhythmically and regularly steps from side to side a few inches cannot be defined as a hunter, and only erratic, random stepping of a larger amplitude can truly be defined as a hunter. The fact is that ‘hunting’ is a range of movement that is dependent on velocity. How erratic the hunt, is determined by the stability of the lure design. So, we have a combination of two ranges; speed and stability. The speed range starts with an occasional step from line, perhaps every 4 or 5 waggle cycles. As the speed increases, we extend further into the hunting range and the lure steps every 2 – 3 cycles. As the lure reaches the far end of the hunting range, either the lure blows out or the lure enters porpoise or pitch action mode. The stability is a function or combination of tow eye location and COG location. If the design is closer to instability then the hunting effect will be more dramatic with a wider amplitude. If a lure is very unstable, it will blow out at the first hint of a hunting step. And so, you cannot point to a lure and say ‘this is a hunter and that is not’ because there is no defining ‘line’. If a lure steps out from its retrieval line then it is hunting. Dave

Just because you don't know the answer does not make the question 'stupid', in fact, the opposite is true As for the answer, I think it is side injection. Dave

SlowFISH - great post, it reminded me of the same reasons that I had encountered many years ago when I was traveling this road. Dave

Carbite - Yes, the lure is not going to swim faster than the hunt. Hunters make good erratic twitch baits because they are already on the edge, so it is not just about constant speed. You still have the full armoury of retrieval techniques and strategies available. There are different degrees of hunt, from a slight, regular 6" side to side movement to something wider and more erratic and unpredictable. It is all down to the designer. Dave

As mentioned above, big companies will not take on hunters because of the shear volume of returns from anglers who do not understand hunting and the purpose. They will simply think that the lure is faulty. The only way you might get a BIG company to take on the lure is if you feed it to a lower ranking pro and he starts winning tournaments with your lure. The hard part is getting a pro to believe in your lure, and I believe shallow cranks are not an all year round bait. Dave

A good wife is priceless in this game. I showed Tessa a video of a hunting lure being exercised in the apartment swimming pool. She didn't seem impressed, remaining silent. I played it again and then asked her thoughts. She replied, "Why you put fish in swimming pool, it will die and make water dirty"! Best confirmation of a realistic action ever Dave

I have approached companies with good ideas in the past but they don't even reply. Every shallow crank is capable of hunting, but it is dependent on velocity. The trick is to build a hunter that operates at your required speed. I have published my hunting solution a few years back, I hope for interest's sake that yours is different. You could try the patent route, it is not too expensive to do, but will suck up your life savings while defending the patent. If you don't build and sell the bait and vigorously defend the patient then what is it all for! Keep in mind that if the idea is simple and the lure successful, the Chinese will have it on the market in a couple of months. Also, what ever it is that makes the hunt has to be unique, it cannot be a certain arrangement or configuration of what builders are already doing. You cannot patent a certain lip size on a certain body shape. I would love to see your solution, but I am not going to advise you to go public, I am just outlining your options. Dave

Carbite - your question or statement was reasonable and of no issue. Welcome to TU and I do hope you stick around. You obviously have skills and experience. Dave

Either you learn CAD and design your own bait or you pay a designer to do the job for you. No designer is going to sell you a design unless it is a design that he did for him/her self. The designer is contractually and morally obligated to protect the design work they did for a customer. You may get lucky, but I very much doubt it. Dave

I was first stunned by the question raised by Carbite, but only for a second as I remember asking myself the same question every year. I even ask the selfish question ‘who are all these people that I have never heard of before’. So, this year I decided to do a little research and find out more: Out of the 18 prize winners: 8 new members, joined for the competition. 8 old members, who only use the gallery. 2 general members, Travis and Gekhang. This explains a lot. Gekhang only posts in rod and reel, so the only name that I recognized out of the prize winners was Travis who is an avid contributor. I very rarely go in to the gallery and so did not recognize those names. So, well done the new members and I hope you hang with us. Well done the gallery gang, there is good reason that these members win a lot, they take pride in presentation. Well done to all. I had @Baker as the winner of paint, but had the top-3 in my short list of 6. I had @Luskvillelures as best hard. I didn’t look at the other categories. Dave