Bluegill Swimbait-FINISHED

[.dsaavedra.]

here is a small swimbait i modeled after a Giron:

since i took the photo, i have made the line tie and hook hanger, epoxied in all the hardware, poured lead in the belly for weight, and sealed the lure. tomorrow morning i will test the lure in the bathtub to see if its got some good action.

[njbasser]

I would eat it if i were a fish  

[.dsaavedra.]

WOOPS!

totally forgot that i need to make fins for this!

[Hookemdown.]

Looks good.  Are you going to foil it?

You really need to get a job or a girlfriend.  In your case, a GF is out of the question, so get a job!  You're starting to make me look bad. ;D

[=Matt 5.0=]

Someone's addicted....

[.dsaavedra.]

Looks good. Are you going to foil it?

You really need to get a job or a girlfriend. In your case, a GF is out of the question, so get a job! You're starting to make me look bad. ;D

;D

you're lucky i can take a good joke

i am VERY addicted. making swimbaits is a good productive way to pass the time during the summer. cant wait to catch some fish on them!

oh, and no im not gonna foil it. i will be painting this one.

[Castamasta]

hey desaavedra do you just drill a small hole in the wood to attatch the metal joints into the wood and then epoxy them? i want to get into making my own lures

[.dsaavedra.]

yep, thats all i do.

i take 19guage stainless steel wire and bend a piece thats about 2" long around a nail. then i chuck the loose ends in a drill and slowly twist the wire around the nail. it makes a nice twisted loop. you can see these better in my other swimbait thread (a swimbait in the making).

well i just tested this lure out in the bath tub and it doesnt swim :'(

BUT!

it still has CRAZY action. the lure weighs about 3/4oz (definitley doesnt need any heavy gear) slowly sinks, and when it reaches the bottom, it sits upright on its hooks! on a straight retrieve, nothing happens, but give it a tiny twitch and it shoots off to one direction and bends at the joint. give it a series of twitches and it just dances all over the place. it walks the dog pretty good. i think this bait is gonna be killer for bed fish especially.

this bait was very easy to make. it would only take me about 3 days to make one, and it wouldnt be too hard to make 3 at a time...

maybe i could make these for production

[WTRDOG]

If the fish don't like it,you could always use it for a ping pong paddle.

[.dsaavedra.]

here is the painted bait. i am going to put epoxy on it in a few minutes.

[.dsaavedra.]

well i put the epoxy on and everything was going fine until about halfway through the tail piece and then i dropped the bait on my arm! now i have a bunch of epoxy on my arm that won't come off, and the finish is kind of rough on one side of the bait. i did my best to smooth it out, but it is still a little bit rough.

[Hookemdown.]

What did you use for the eye?

[.dsaavedra.]

that eye gave me some trouble.

on my last bait, i painted a small black dot on some foil tape and then put a blob of hotglue over it so that the foil reflected through the hotglue and there was a black dot as the pupil. this worked great.

on this one, i tried something different. i painted a green circle, then a red circle, then a black circle. then i put the hotglue over it. but the paint stuck to the hot glue and peeled off of the foil. i couldnt figure this out.

then i realized what was wrong. on the first bait, the hotglue made contact with the foil itself, so it held strong. on this one, the hotglue was only in contact with paint, so it just lifed the paint off of the foil.

after a little bit of experimenting, i came up with the idea of just putting a blob of hotglue on black construction paper and using super glue to bond it to the lure. i tried it and it worked great and that is what i used on my lure.

[.dsaavedra.]

here are the finished pics:

[Sam]

Where are the fins?

[SoCalRob]

That bait looks great man! Now go use it and report how it works.

[-HAWK-]

Interesting bait, im anxious to see if you have any luck with that.

[.dsaavedra.]

Sam, i decided not to add fins for fear that it would stabilize the lure and make it not swim.

UPDATE!!!!!

i took the lure out to the farm pond earlier, and it turns out that this lure swims awesome! i just couldn't get the speed required in the bath tub. included is a video of the swimming action. it also still has great twitching action, and still stands on its hooks. video to come soon 8-)

i was twitching this lure close to shore and just as i was about to pull it out of the water for my next cast, a good sized bass just blew up on it! but didnt get any hooks :'( then a few casts later i was twitchin it in the shallows and a slightly smaller bass took a smack at it but didnt get any hooks. it was awesome to see the two fish hit.

then i caught three more bass on it! i will make a thread in the my outings section.

i am one HAPPY kid right now! ;D

[.dsaavedra.]

video of the killer swimming action  8-)

[-HAWK-]

Awesome very cool!

[Castamasta]

that thing has some nice action!

[.dsaavedra.]

photobucket really distorted the video. it made it very grainy and difficult to see the lure.

you can see the lure much better on the video i have on my computer.

the lure swims with an aggressive, exaggerated, S motion.