smalljaw67

You can trim a wire weed guard but then it depends on what type. Single strand wire weed guards you simply trim the end and hit it with a little sandpaper and you are fine. With braided wire you need to seal the end or it will unravel not to mention be very sharp. I trim my wire weed guards to be just a little past the hook point. Then I heat the wire up a little and dip the end in black powder paint. Just the last 1/8" or so I dip and that will seal the end and keep the wire together and give the end a dull point so you or the fish don't get stuck.

It will work but if you aren't getting bit after a bit switch to a spinnerbait. I find that pre-spawn the blade flash of a spinnerbait is tough to beat. When the water temp is under 52 or if the water is really a dirty a bladed jig is the way to go. That is just how I go by selecting which one to use. The thing is no matter what it still takes a little trial and error. As I said, a swim jig will work and will work well but don't be afraid to pick up the spinnerbait, the flash will draw the fish to it which is good when they are scattered.

LPO has a couple different sizes of a bait that is really close to the Keitech if not exact. They are expensive but if you want to make your own Swing Impact Fat this is the route to go. 6921-45 LureCraft 3.8" KT Swim Bait Alum Injection Molds (lurepartsonline.com)

The Don Iovino craw trailers are fantastic!!! Here is another one I've had success with for smallmouth and largemouth in cold water. Conquistador FinessePro Mini Craw Trailer 2.5" 8pk - Tackle Warehouse

The spinnerbait is my favorite lure hands down. I spent a lot of time with them and I can tell you that they don't need to run perfectly flat. They present a big enough target that the fish rarely miss. The thing you want to avoid is having the bait lean to one side or the other. That is usually caused by reeling the bait too fast for the size blades the bait has on. The smaller the blades the faster you can retrieve it without it leaning over. Another reason it doesn't matter if it runs on an angle is because of the way it gets bit. If you ever ran your spinnerbait shallow enough to see it you'll notice 99% of the time the fish will hit the bait from the side and not directly from the back. When I'm slow rolling a bait I can see it so I don't know how they are hitting it but I do know they are hooked the same.

That is one I don't have Allen.

This^^^^!!!!! Color is also different. The smallmouth react to brighter patterns like clown. More natural colors work better for largemouth. When it comes to the Vision 110, French pearl works on both but I catch more smallmouth on the French pear with orange belly and more largemouth on the plain French pearl.

It works but it depends on the swim jig. I make my own 1/4oz northern style swim jig and a 4" easy shiner trailer works well. The other guys have it right, you won't get that roll when using it but the slow kick will get you bites when they don't want anything aggressive.

I like the smaller creature baits myself. When it comes to beaver style baits I always preferred the smallie beaver. Years ago Cabela's had their brand beaver bait called simply a bass beaver. That thing was perfect in size and bulk for a finesse jig trailer and they caught fish!!!

I really like those!!!! What size are they??

I like the Do-it Freestyle Jig for finesse swimbaits. I make them with an Owner 5318 but the Mustad 32746 works as well. The head is actually balanced so you can reel the bait really slow and it will stay level.

I attach the blade to the free end that spins. The stationary end is what gets attached to the wire. There is less resistance that way so the blade will spin faster and spin at slower retrieve speeds. It will work the other way but nowhere near as good. If you are burning a bait the difference might not be very noticeable. Slow rolling is where the big difference is. You will reel the bait faster to get the blade to spin but the added speed also causes the bait to come further off the bottom.

I have approximately 115 to 125 rogues. Now most of them are the original floating rogues but I have 40 suspending rogues exact. My best color is clown and another that actually went by two different names. Log perch and tiger minnow but it seems they changed it up now in a new color called lerch. The floating rogues are killers in the summer, rip them over top of submerged grass and watch out. I have some discontinued colors and then as the floating rogue was being phased out KVD won the 2005 classic, the last time it was a summer event and he won it on a rogue. Not just any rogue but a discontinued model that became in demand and Smithwick brought it back. It was the ARB 1200 series but now they updated the color patterns and use a different numbering system so I don't know what it is in the newer ones.

Contact the guys from Fitt premium lures. Fitt Premium Lures (fittlures.com) They got the business from a guy that use to make a bait called a river dace. It is a dead ringer for the minnows you describe. They don't make them to sell anymore as they were a time consuming process. I know they know how to make them and have the mold. It is the slow season right now so you may be able to persuade them into making you a couple bags.

The floating Smithwick Rogue is one of my favorite summer river baits. It is also deadly over grass flats and rip rap in lakes. You can twitch it and fish it as a topwater, I like the Rapala Original Floater and the Bagley Bang-O-Lure for that kind of presentation. I have the hi-float 110 and you will want to use it anytime you would use a soft jerkbait like a fluke. There are a couple of reasons I will go with the hard floating jerkbait over the soft jerkbait. The first is speed, sometimes the way to get bit is through a rection strike. That means working the bait fast, work a fluke too fast and it will come out of the water. Now sometimes that is a major trigger and you'll get your arm broke doing that. However, more often than not they stop chasing it. The hard jerkbait you rip-rip-rip pause for 2 seconds and repeat, it will open up a door to a new way to generate strikes and a lot of big fish!! The second reason is determing by how the fish are hitting the bait. If you are using a fluke type lure and you are missing strikes it is because of how the fish are hitting it. They often will swipe at it rather than straight up eat the thing. There are times when you can just stop the bait dead after that happen and the fish will come back and get it. Most of the time they don't so you need to do something else. You can either rig the bait with a treble hook or you can use the floating hard jerkbait. There are surprisingly a lot of anglers that continue to use these and the evidence is that they are still producing them. Your floating 110 can be used as a jerkbait or a surface twitch bait, both techniques are deadly when used in the right situations.

I do a lot of river cranking, and I have an arsenal of really good baits. A lot are discontinued so those I won't mention but there are plenty of others. 2 good ones were already mentioned, Bandit 200 and the Rapala DT4. Bomber Square A, Bagley Rattlin' Kill'r B square bill and Rattlin' Honey B. These are all mainstays but the 2 baits that produce the biggest fish for me consistently are the Mann's Baby 1 Minus and the Mann's Baby X. The baby X is just a baby 1 minus with a square bill. The X dives down to 2' - 2.5' but the bill is straight with sharp corners, more of a rectangle if you will. Seriously, draw a rectangle on a piece of paper and that is the bill. That makes it deflect wildly but it rights itself in 2 to 3 cranks if it isn't already in the mouth of a big smallie!!!

I'm a big fan of the smallie beaver!!! I use it as a jig trailer, I will T-Rig it, and I also like to fish it on a football head jig. There is something with the profile of that bait that they just have to bite.

I really like that!!! How big is it?

I love the #5 shad rap from Fall right through Spring. I also use it in the warm water period if the fish are just bumping other cranks. A really good alternative is the Bagley Balsa Shad. I have those in the #5 and #7 and the action is very close to the shad rap.

I got started making spinnerbaits because there was a good model that you could burn without it rolling over. In 1995 most manufacturers used the same size blades and wire for a 1/2oz bait. So if I wanted different I'd have to do it myself. I started out of necessity but it developed into a passion. If you are disciplined and stick to a couple different baits and just a few colors you can save money. It may take a year or 2 to break even but eventually you will save and you will catch more fish. The problem is the real possibility you'll enjoy doing it and actually have fun. If that happens you won't save a dime because your perspective will change. Instead of looking at baits in the Bass Pro Shops catalog, you'll be looking at lure making supplies in the Do-it molds catalog.

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I use 26 gauge wire but it is on the thin side. Most use 22 or 24 gauge wire, I get dyed copper wire from my local craft store. Amazon.com: Pandahall 75.5 Feet Tarnish Resistant Copper Wire 24 Gauge Jewelry Beading Craft Wire for Jewelry Making (Black)

Wintering pools are the place. If you have a small shallow river a wintering pool doesn't have to be super deep. A river that run 3' to 4' deep will have wintering holes that are 6' to 8' deep. You also don't always need to be in the pool, I've caught good smallmouth in 2' of water when the temps were in the mid to upper 30s. All it takes is a sunny day and the shallow water will warm up 2 or 3 degrees especially if the bottom is dark or there are boulders that get a lot of sun. All the areas that will hold fish or have fish move to feed will be areas of slow current, that is the key.

The line is your problem. Fluorocarbon sinks so that isn't helping, also the water temp will play into it. I have regular LC Pointers and they suspend better than most across a wide range of water temps. I have found that over 55 degrees and they will slow sink, if you add fluorocarbon into the mix it will sink even faster.

Allen, I use them all the time. They are 1 7/8" long, the body is 5/16" thick, and 11/16" wide. The legs are 1 1/8" long and 1/16" thick and the body is 3/4" long. I hope this helps.