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Montana Riverboats

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  1. I've been working on (quick and easy) crankbaits for a long time. I'm making progress. The above lure works. I've made zillions. Many didn't work well at all. I don't claim to have all the answers. Small changes in proportions can make huge differences in the action. That's why they mold the expensive ones. So they always come out the same. The Rapala makers still have to tune their lures in little tubs, before they package them up. There is a video out there on the web somewhere. Quick and easy is important for me because I have such a high failure rate. I mean....once I find a design that works I can reproduce it well enough. But when experimenting with new shapes it's hard to get it right at first. It takes determination. ..........I wrote the following for a fly tying forum a few years ago, in a thread about making small ultra-lightweight flyrod wigglers. Bass and Walleye lures are the same though, I think. Just bigger and heavier. All wigglers (molded factory made Rapalas included) rely on a balance between buoyancy and weight. If you cut a crankbait open with a band saw you'll see the upper rear end of the body is buoyant because it is hollow, or made from wood. But it has weight embedded too, where the weight is further forward and lower down compared to the buoyancy. Buoyancy above. Weight below. I cut the diving bill from the lid of a Costco tomato box. Cut it out too big. Way too big. Rough up the back side with 220 sand paper so glue will work. Cut some closed cell foam into a slightly V-shape. Glue the front V of the body to the bill with CA glue (super glue) or Epoxy. Set it aside. Skewer the rear end of the foam body onto a horizontal needle (needle in the fly tying vise). Use thread to tie on a tail tuft, made from whatever. Marabou. Use a wide-eyed sewing needle to sew a loop of thread into the body so a mini-loop hangs down in the middle of the body. This will be a hook keeper, as pictured. Knot the thread on the top side of the body. Put CA glue on the knot so it doesn't come apart. You're done. You cold add all sorts of adornments. But that's the basic fly. Snell a hook onto some tippet. Thread a bead onto the tippet. Poke the hook into the hook keeper. Thread the tippet up through the hole in the bill. Ooops. I forgot to say make a hole in the middle of the bill. Make two or three and see which one works the best. You can use needle nose pliers to push a fat sewing needle into the bill in order to make the leader hole. tie the front end of the tippet to a barrel swivel. Knot that onto your leader. Go fish. You will need to tune the wiggler. Use toe nail clippers. If it swims to the left trim the right side of the bill. A hole in the bill lower down makes a deeper diver with tight wobble. A hole in the bill higher up makes a shallow diver with slower wider wobble. If you want a slow wide wobble at depth use a bigger bead, or use weight on the leader. Divers that work well in still water generally do not work well in a stiff current. And Versa Visa. They're fun to make. They work well. Fish will swim a long way to attack them.
  2. Fly tying mates with lure making? The diving bill on this one was snipped from a tomato container. It isn't strong enough. They tend to bend and/or break eventually. Especially when it's cold. But it does work. I'm looking around for a good supply of stouter plastic. The body takes about ten minutes. Maybe another 5 minutes or so for the paint job. And then an hour or two for glue to set up and dry. Dives and wiggles like crazy. The position of the leader exit hole determines the action. High up on the diving bill makes a wide slow motion wobbler that doesn't dive deeply. Lower down on the bill makes a tight high speed vibrator that dives surprisingly well. And deeply. These lures (the way this one is made) sinks at rest. You can either add more foam or reduce weight some to make one that suspends or even floats at rest. body: snipped with scissors from soft but buoyant closed cell foam. Slit the underside of the body with a razor blade. weight: 3/8 or 1/2 ounce slip sinker threaded onto plastic tubing and then pressed into the slit in the body foam. Soak the body slit with Super Glue. Hold it together for a 15 seconds or so. diving bill: snipped from plastic sheeting, roughed up with sand paper and glued to the foam with Super Glue. Poke a hole in the bill for a leader. Push the leader tippet through the diving bill hole. Poke the leader through the plastic tubing buried inside the slip sinker, buried inside the body. Press on some adhesive backed eyes. Slobber Super Glue around the eyes to fix them permanently. Mark up the foam with permanent magic markers, which are not permanent. So after making the color job with marking pens slobber on some clear water based fabric cement to fix the colors permanently. Set it aside to dry. Tune the action by trimming the diving bill with diagonal cutters (dikes) or toe nail clippers. If it tracks to the right trim the left side of the bill. If anyone has any ideas about where and how to buy stouter sheet plastic, for making diving bills, I'd love to hear about it. Tomato container diving bills are fine for tiny fly rod trout and pan fish wigglers. But they aren't strong enough for fist sized bass lures. Sheet metal sheers cut through all kinds of plastic. Like sewing scissors on paper.
  3. OK. That makes sense. Gives me something to work on. Molded worm resin does get torn up pretty quickly. Some of the foam-bodied lures I make--on the other hand--are plenty durable. Most of what I make gets snagged and lost long before it comes apart. I won't try to convince anybody. I'll just make what I do and see what happens. I do like to blabber about it, I admit. But nobody has to listen. :=))
  4. It's interesting. There seem to be two cultures here at TU. Many of the Soft Bait posters here are reluctant to spend time remodeling molded lures into plugs (like the Hulagan above)....."I'm too lazy" and "I'd rather just use a jig hook". At the same time many of the Hard Bait posters are perfectly willing to spend days of hard work carving and finishing beautifully-made plugs. My goal is to find a niche in between. I want to hand make animated diving-wigglers with the fastest and easiest techniques not yet invented.
  5. Closed-cell EVA foam (what I have been using) is too light for large plugs. You need some buoyancy though. So for large plugs I've been gluing carved blocks of vinyl worm resin to buoyant foam. Balsa and basswood work well too, but they take too long to carve and shape. With foam and worm resin blocks I can hand snip a lure body in seconds, not days. I gave up on wire for the same reason (rips through foam). You can use thinwall tubing buried inside the foam, to run a 20lb monofilament back to a rear-mounted hook, treble or otherwise (many West Coast salmon fishermen think a large single hook is more reliable than a treble). The tubing is stiff enough to keep the soft lure from collapsing as you reel it back toward the rod. For me there are two design goals/rewards for soft plugs: 1) snip-ably soft means fast and easy to make (compared to wood carving and especially so as compared to injection molding) 2) soft means fish bite down and then hang on and chew, rather than spit. Soft is better. Hard is a fish-catching handicap. For compound material bodies (closed-cell foam glued to heavier worm resin) you can wrap the body with spawn sack and then spray it with 3M contact adhesive, or Duro "All Purpose Spray Adhesive," etc. That way you can build a soft, squishy and yet still durable plug of arbitrary size. Water-based fabric cement might work for laminating spawn sack onto the surface too, but I haven't had time to test that yet.
  6. You're over my head now. That does sound interesting. I need to update the photos. I do have 1/4" thick closed-cell EVA foam in 4 different colors. Water-based fabric cement makes a nice-looking colorable finish. So do various spay adhesives from 3M and other such outfits. Molded foam? Maybe. But all the urethane foams I'm familiar with are open cell, and you do need the buoyancy of closed-cell to make wigglers work. I made a few today with brass weight (instead of lead) buried inside a slit in the foam body. They're starting to look like nice lures.
  7. I'll try that scrounger jig head. Looks interesting. Although I'd probably get more satisfaction making my own. The Hulagan can be rigged to ride hook up too, with hook skewered through the body.
  8. I'm a fly tier and lure maker--which means I like to make things. Football games, for instance, work better for me if I'm in the basement making flies or lures at the same time. Sometimes with the TV turned off and the stereo on. I do understand lazy. But lazy relates more to work rather than to play. No? Also, the Hulagan is a darned good lure. After a certain number of fish caught on a favorite lure you tend to feel depraved and deprived if you don't always have a few in your box. And the Hulagan you cannot buy.
  9. This is a pretty old photograph. But it shows most of the idea. Cut a twister tail on a slant. Sew a hook keeper loop into the body of the grub, or what ever you call it, using thick thread or micro-tubing of some kind. Lock the keeper knot with CA glue. Cut a diving bill from the top of a tomato container. Rough it up with sand paper. Glue it on with CA glue. Snell a hook. Thread the leader through a lead weight and then (from underneath) through a hole in bill. Now you have a crankbait-like twister tail, that wobbles from side to side like a Lazy Ike or a Flat Fish. http://montana-riverboats.com/index.php?fpage=Lure-making/
  10. Water-based fabric cement works like a charm. Tear Mender (or any other such brand) makes a super clear finish. It's as clear as floor finish but it's flexible. You end up with a soft squishy lure with a shiny clear finish. There will be a thousand finishing tricks to learn: how to make colors, finish over air-brushed spots, lateral lines, etc. I've been fishing these lures (as small fly rod lures) for a decade. I've only recently started to make bigger, heavier spin and bait casting versions. They do catch fish. The slick finish (I think) will be more important for catching customers than fish. But it seems to be happening. I did file a provisional patent. But the only way I'll try to profit from this will be by selling instructional DVDs and perhaps a book. I'll post a photo of a slick-finished soft foam bodied crankbait in a few days. But I'm really pleased with fabric cement as a finish.
  11. I tried dipping a foam lure body blank into hot worm resin. Worm resin does not adhere well to closed cell EVA foam. Scratch that idea. But dipping the blank into an open bottle of water based fabric cement (Tear Mender) does seem to make a soft, semi-flexible and shiny-slick finish. A slick surface finish is not necessarily a requirement for catching fish. But it would be a marketing bonus.
  12. http://montana-river...ll-streamer.htm ....you can make these as big and as long as you want.
  13. I like this idea. I write software myself. Even have a project on sourceforge.net But I never thought about applying that to something other than code.
  14. I just called my Philadelphia lawyer. :=)) Here are a few more photo-ideas: http://montana-riverboats.com/index.php?fpage=Lure-making/
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