Posted 5/6/2008 7:40 PM (#316926) Subject: On the Swimbait bandwagon....
Posts: 137
.....and might be getting off at the first stop, lol. Just finished my first swimbait, and oh, what a pain in the arse. All that messing with the joints and the weighting and the painting each part and then coating it all without sealing the joints together. This stuff is for the birds, lol. It came out good and I just tossed it in the river to see what it would do and sure enough, it swims. Might need to get a pounder rod to throw it because it is so heavy, but it works. It started off as a giant jerkbait that I had planned to try out, but I weighted it and coated it and tried it out as one piece first to see what it would do and it had a cool action, but not exactly a jerkbait, more of a giant wobbling topwater lure. So I bit the bullet (although I would kind of liked to have used it for a while the way it was) and cut it into pieces and tried out the old swimbait thing. I'm amazed that it works, frankly. Don't know if it will catch anything, nor do I know if I'll fish with it much, but we'll see. If I do catch a fish on it, it will certainly hold up, as I used heavy duty steel roof fasteners as pins in the joints. There is no way those are going to break and they are well epoxied in the bait. So there you have it. Now I might just make me a giant crankbait or something, lol. I put a reel in the picture for reference, but to let you know the size on it, it is 12 inches from nose to tail.
Posted 5/6/2008 9:08 PM (#316944 - in reply to #316926) Subject: Re: On the Swimbait bandwagon....
Posts: 221
Location: ohio
nice job toad,
I'll have my lures done in a week ( or two) and get them up for you guy's to see.
tomcat
Posted 5/7/2008 6:44 AM (#316991 - in reply to #316926) Subject: RE: On the Swimbait bandwagon....
that is toadily awesome! man..some of this stuff you make Toad is out of this world! nice job on the high quality bait..looks super tasty!!!!!!!good luck
tomcat
Posted 5/9/2008 7:28 PM (#317480 - in reply to #317135) Subject: Re: On the Swimbait bandwagon....
Posts: 137
Thanks guys, glad you like it. We'll see how she does tomorrow on the waters. And glad you saw it Don, I tried to have it ready to show you a couple of weeks ago at the gathering, but I messed up the tail and couldn't finish it in time. Glad I did though, the new tail is much better. I used some clear fairly firm rubber and it flexes just enough in the water.
I'll also be throwing that new topwater hoosier handmade I got from you this winter. Can't wait to see how it does, now that the topwater bite is on.
Posted 5/18/2008 7:11 PM (#318604 - in reply to #317480) Subject: Re: On the Swimbait bandwagon....
Posts: 137
Well, we took my new lure out and filmed it this weekend to let you guys see how it runs. Works pretty good, but the underwater video was wild. I didn't realize it would sound like a clunky clacky mechanical fish underwater. Weird. Not sure if it sounds exactly tasty, but who am I to know what a fish wants? I'm just happy it doesn't sink upside down. I didn't notice while we were filming but the tail screw eye must have loosened itself while I was casting it this weekend. So the tail is a little bent in the underwater film, but I can fix that. It was the only screw eye I didn't epoxy in, because I messed up the tail and re-thought how I was going to do it and didn't want to mess with coating the joint itself again and trying to keep it from bonding to itself. I didn't think it would make a difference if I just screwed it back in when I re-attached it because there were no hooks attached to it. Woops. It never pays to cut corners I guess.
Shad1.JPG (90KB - 144 downloads)
