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Posts: 179
Location: Wisconsin | I have been playing around with building a glide bait. I know a lot of them are weighted. What is the thinking behind where to put weight and how much.
Thanks for any help. |
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Posts: 531
Location: Hugo, MN | Gliders are pretty tough to weight just right. Slightly tail heavy seems to work best for me, and I don't like them to sink TOO fast. The shape of the lure is also important in respect to how the water flows over and under the bait. If the water flows more under the bait it will keep the nose up, fighting gravity. Look at several glide baits next time you're at a bait shop and draw an imaginary line from the line tie to the tail hook. You'll notice a pattern. |
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Posts: 268
| this has always worked good for me. take your glider after you seal the wood , add all of your hardware (screw eyes,split rings and hooks )Now fill a large container with water big enough to contain your bait. drop in and grasp lure lightly by the sides and find it's balance point, mark this spot on the belly and this is where to drill your weight hole. i usually use a 3/8 spur bit and drill about 3/4 to 1 inch deep. fill this hole with melted lead and test in water for sink rate, you don't want it to sink like a rock, almost neutral in the water or even a little on the light side. because your clear coat will add weight to your finished bait, especially if you use etec. every bait will be different on the amount of weight as with any wood, but that is the fun and challenge of lure making. play with different shapes and sizes and have fun with it. any questions feel free to drop me a line. Rod |
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Posts: 531
Location: Hugo, MN | Rod makes a good point about the clearcoat adding weight. Envirotex has a specific gravity of 1.20, which means it's 20% heavier than an equal volume of water, so it will sink. I like to add quite a bit of clear, thus I like my gliders to be neutrally bouyant or so without hooks. Between the added paint, clearcoat, hooks and splitrings, I get the sink rate I'm looking for when it's all done. |
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Posts: 1141
Location: NorthCentral WI | I agree that is a good, really key point for your first lures. I know the first gliders I made I weighted and tested in a pan of water as described. Got them weighted to a slow sink rate. Then once I added the clearcoat, hooks, and split rings, they dropped like a rock. Neutrally buoyant like Knooter said is what you're looking for on gliders anyways. Same is true with crankbaits and everything else really too. Even topwaters I've made I had weighted perfect to sit low in the water then after clear and hooks almost the whole lure is underwater. I've learned for topwaters anyways to weight them more like a jackpot so the majority of the blank is on top of the water, then after clear and hooks they ride lower like a weagle. I was even thinking about adding a couple coats of clear to my jackpots to get them to run lower. |
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Posts: 179
Location: Wisconsin | Right now with hooks, split rings and a tail on it fall perfectly flat. But when you twitch it the nose seem to drive up instead of staying flat. |
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Posts: 216
Location: Middletown, Ohio | While on the subject of weighting glide baits, does the location of the weight determine how far the bait will glide from side to side ? Does putting one heavy weight in the center (balance point) of the bait work better than putting 2 weights in it (one on each end of the bait) instead ? Any insight would be appreciated.
Mark |
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Posts: 531
Location: Hugo, MN | I like putting weight in the front and back of the bait. It seems to work better on the gliders I've made. I've seen them both ways though. |
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Posts: 941
Location: Freedom, WI | It could be weighting or which way do you have the tail attached? Up or down, if it is a large stiffer tail it is a big rudder. Pointed up could cause it to glide upward if not compensated for internally with weight. |
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