Macropterus

The back half of a zoom lizard has worked well for me.

Action is an 8/10, paint is a 6/10, if it catches fish I won’t care about either! About 9” and 6.2oz before hardware.

^ that’s all I ask for in this life. But seriously, I can 100% relate. I bought a kayak this summer after years of being bank-bound. The results have been disappointingly eye-opening. So many spots looks fishy to me, so I’m not motivated to stick to any certain piece of cover or structure. The result is too much paddling and not enough fishing.

Thanks for all the tips! Still new to lure making and for the most part woodworking in general.

In case anyone has the same issue, other answers given were: A three layer sandwich. Use a sharp awl to poke a pilot hole 1/8-1/4” so that the eye emerges in the middle. Only use one piece.

Yeah that’ll probably do it 👍

I’m working on 7” glide bait, and I started by gluing two 1” boards together to give me the right thickness and a center line. The issue I’m running into is that the dry glue is pushing the drill bit slightly to one side while I’m drilling for hook hangers and joint hardware. Any solutions out there? I’m sure it doesn’t help that I’m using white pine.

Beautiful fish and no dinks! Congrats on the kid!

Still man, I bet they never sleep with that many offspring all at once. Hormones going crazy AND everything is trying to eat your kids?? Hopefully they have good in-laws.

Even if they’re post spawn, still feel bad for them. I wouldn’t say my wife was thriving after the birth of either of our kids.

Short and fat! Same as most, I’d be happy to catch either of the fish pictured, but the skinny ones make me feel like they weren’t at their full potential. And I would bet that fat fish are happy fish.

It’s a fickle art when I have no idea why what I’m doing isn’t working. I’m a brilliant scientist when I have any sort of pattern going.

A curly-tail grub on a jig head around structure is a good bet if you just want to get bit and don’t want to mess with live bait.

I’ve not had much time this fall to get on the water (two toddlers and a pregnant wife), but I’ve pieced together time to make a swim bait! Pretty much all of my knowledge comes from the Marling Baits YouTube channel. It’s a little rough, but I was looking for proof of concept more than I was looking for a beauty contest winner. It’s a medium sinker and stays stable when I rip it upstream in the creek behind my house.