smalljaw67

Try these. - Leland Lures Trout Magnet 1.5" Trout Float 4 Slotted Floats Multi Color - Walmart.com I like them for 1/32oz and 1/16oz crappie jigs. The best part is the floats are slotted and have a hole in the peg. It allows you to add a float to your line without having to take the bait off and then retie. The hole in the line peg also allows you to thread your line through it and use it as a slip float.

I agree with Bluebasser86, clear water with sunny skies. Why it may seem a little different the color is what I would call a natural color. When I fish for crappie I also catch some bluegill and sometimes they are dark. Some are almost black while others have a metallic blue or purple tint.

Go to ebay or some other site and see if you can find a Mann's Waker or Waker Elite. I was down to 2 baits and called Mann's and was able to get some old stock they had. That is hands down the best wake bait I ever used. You can burn it and it will only dive about 3 inches, and you don't have to hold your rod high. I like the Storm Arashi wake crank as well but it does best at slower speeds.

Mann's Baby X, it is a Baby 1-minus with a straight square bill and runs between 2' - 2.5' depending on the line. Grey ghost and bluegill have been really good producers and I use them a lot. Baby X (mannsbait.com)

It is all about profile. Buzz cut, crop top, or spider cut, which ever you prefer but it is done for profile purposes. I read an article somewhere about Jim Eakins and why his jig had the skirt cut like that. He said it was like that to resemble a crawfish tail and to hide the outline of the jig head. These were originally made for fishing clear water so the profile was really important.

The Eagle Claw 500BP (Lil Nasty) works well, so does the Mustad 32500 skipjack and the Victory 11149. All of those are sickle hooks, the Mustad has a little heavier wire than the Eagle Claw or Victory and when using smaller light wire hooks you don't need to do a big hook set, the sharp hooks penetrate with just some pressure. If you want a round bend you can use an Eagle Claw 570BP, Mustad 32746, the VMC 9147, or most other 90 degree hooks.

I remember taking my father-in-law on a smallmouth trip and breaking out the Sluggo. I just got a 42 piece kit I ordered from the Cabela's catalog and was ready for a good day. I had fished them once before and had an idea that they would be good for smallmouth the same way they worked on largemouth. Yeah, I knew it would be good but not THAT good!!! By the end of our day every Sluggo we had was laying on the floor of the boat. We were using a cigarette lighter to repair tears and holes in order to get an extra cast or two out of them. My father-in-law looked me straight in the eye and said that he never had a day that good, 137 smallmouth with a dozen or so in the 4lb range and the vast majority were keepers. He said, "if you would have told me you caught that many fish on that stupid looking piece of plastic without witnessing it firsthand, I would have called you a liar." Two days after that trip we made about 50 phone calls to find more Sluggos and ended up driving 107 miles one way in order to buy more of them.

I throw a lot of Bomber cranks. I love the Fat Free Shad and I catch a lot of fish on the Square A. I also have a good stash of Bomber 4A, 6A, and 7A cranks along with some Flat As and Deep Flat As. They aren't just collecting dust in my boxes either, those baits are all in my regular rotation.

The instructions on jig armor paint is confusing. It says " Do not use a torch or heat gun to cure". I can assure you I cure my jigs in an oven at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. What the instructions are saying is not to CURE the baits with a torch or heat gun and I agree with that. It doesn't say not to paint them using one of those options. I use a torch and heat the jig to paint it and then hang on a rack in an oven. Cure time as I stated before is 15 minutes at 350 degrees. So in my oven, it takes 4 minutes for the oven to hit the set temperature. Then an additional 2 minutes for all the jigs to reach 350 degrees and that is when the time begins. That means I put my jigs on the rack and place them in the oven for a total time of 21 minutes but the time the jigs are actually at 350 degrees is 15 minutes.

Allen, palmering is just fly tyers terminology for wrapping a feather around the hook.

If you are stacking the marabou get the extra select plumes. They are more expensive but worth it. When I palmer the marabou I prefer blood quill and I like Hareline strung blood quill marabou. They have very consistent color and quality. No matter who you get it from there is always going to be 20% - 25% of it that won't be any good, we call this "drop". Wapsi marabou has been really bad for me, I was getting 40% to 50% drop per package. No before you throw away any marabou, a lot of it can be fixed. Take a soft bristle toothbrush and you can actually brush out matted fibers and make the plume perfect.

I prefer to palmer the marabou because it seems the marabou has more movement tied like that. I still stack it when I want to use two colors of marabou but keep them separate.

I love my LC Pointer 100s and 78s as they catch fish but they aren't my favorites. For the favorites I have 2, the trusty old X-Rap and the Smithwick Suspending Rattlin' Rogue. They don't get a lot of hype but they do catch a lot of fish!!

Bdnoble84, there is stuff call lateral scale and if you go to fly tyers dungeon they have their own brands of flash. Could it possibly be lumaflex? There are a ton of different products out there but nothing really secret so take a look and you may be able to find it.

What is tough about that is a lot of anglers call Flashabou and Krystal flash tinsel. Christmas tree tinsel also works but it isn't the same as Flashabou.

In the 80's there was a weedless crank and I can't remember who made it. I believe it was called the X1 or something like that. EDIT: I found it, the Fishin' Delite lipless weedless crankbait - DISCONTINUED FISHIN' DELITE Weedless Lipless Crankbait 3/4 OUNCE FISHING LURE | eBay

Late fall/early winter is where a seasonal color is dominant in my waters. When the water temp falls into the low to mid 40s it has an effect on minnow forage. They get what we call "thermal shock" and will show hues of blue/green or purple. Smoke purple, smoke purple chartreuse and smoke purple copper are all effective during this time.

Colors and hooks are the difference.

Mann's Waker and Waker Elite. The best crankbait style wake bait ever made!!!! They made a baby waker as well but the regular one was a big body bait. It was the size of the regular Mann's 1 minus and not the baby or mid 1 minus but the big one. What made it so good is you could burn it and it would only dive 3", the ones made today will dive a foot or two like a regular shallow diving crankbait.

From the video I watched on the chicken jig and I believe I know what it might be. I believe they are using a synthetic material called strung fuzzy fiber. Hareline Strung Fuzzy Fiber | J. Stockard Fly Fishing (jsflyfishing.com) I don't think it is made with EP fibers because the cost alone isn't really good when you consider how much material is on 1 jig. EP fibers are like double the cost of strung fuzzy fiber and there is a lot of material on 1 jig.

Most hooks are bent out on the hook set. The force of the hook set causes the hook to flex at the point and that is when the hook begins to bend. If you are bending hooks then you are at fault, not the hook. It means you are using tackle that is too heavy for what you are doing. I've landed countless numbers of 5lb smallmouth on 1/16oz hair jigs with a size #2 hook and never came close to having the hook bend out. The secret is balanced tackle, using the right rod, proper line size, and the right hook to match the tackle you are using.

The reducer pins won't work. The slot on the 1/8oz is made for an FG-12 weed guard which is 5/64" in diameter or .078". Go here - PTFE Wire | Contenti - and order the .078" and then cut it into 1.5" - 2" pins. This stuff is the same as Teflon, but Teflon is a brand name so they just call it what it is. You can either make pins or get the smaller weed guards and cast them in but I prefer to use the pins.

I like 3.5" but when the water temp dips below 40 degrees I go with a 2.75" tube. Right now smoke/purple is the color you want.

100% agree!!!! I have used both and I seem to have more success with the 90 degree. A 60 degree is great for dragging a tube but as papajoe222 mentioned the spiral action you get on the fall mostly disappears.

There is no standard. I learned that a long time ago when ordering blades from Stamina/LPO. When the place was called Stamina they carried Worth blades. After they became LPO they began carrying Lakeland brand blades. I remember being short 12 blades and so I order some #4 and #5 willows. When the blades arrived the #4s were about the same but the #5s were much larger than mine, a full 1/2 size. I called LPO and they explained that they went to Lakeland. They also told me to keep the #5s and they would send me some #4.5s which were the same as my Worth #5 willow blades.