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| Well, winter is almost upon us. That means it is almost Tinkering Season!
Curious if all the time, effort, and money (not all experiments work) is really worth it. Do you think lure modifications really make a difference to the fish.... or is it simply added confidence that MAY make them more productive.
jlong |
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| yes,I think it helps alot.I wont say what mod i did to a 6" jake but i had one that never caught a fish and I changed a couple things now its my big fish bait in the summer time.I think mods change the characteristics of the original bait.Adding weight taking away weight color,and it adds a whole new meaning to density and performance.Its that little something that were all looking for. |
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| jlong,
I am curious about your workshop....[;)]
Does your wife call it "Home improvement" or "Bait improvement"
No really.....I think improving, hooks, split rings, adding wieght and changing color gives us a chance to go back and use the old baits again. The baits we fix or adjust are bait we are not pitching. In the winter we see them hanging and get ideas. We put them back in the front line and put them back in the zone.
I have many baits that took me two or three years to really start using them with confidence, sometimes its just a minor adjustment.
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| I won't tell you what my wife calls it! Let's just say it ain't necessarily complementary!! But once she nails a ski on one of my modified lures she'll sing another tune!!!
Actually, I'm just kidding - she doesn't say anything about it at all. She knows it's my hobby and I'm having fun and that's fine by her. She hasn't caught a musky yet, but she's giving it her best and I'm sure she will.
As for mods, I don't really do that much to really modify them. I'll put split rings on lures which don't come with them or replace rings that I think are suspect. I weight many (most) of my lures with Fudally weight systems, "T" all front trebles, and adjust metal lips and tails to obatain prime depth and wobble or adjust line-tie eyes to achieve the same thing. Guess you could say I don't really modify baits, I merely adjust them. Don't know that it ups my strike success but it sure does help the confidence level.
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| whatever you wish to call it, I love it! Nothing beats tinkering with baits, looking at the chewed ones and remenissing the good times you had while using it, looking at the ones that only have hook wear and wondering why it didn't produce, changing baits like weighting them, bending tails on suicks and bobbie baits to achieve a weird action that may just produce more fish, ... |
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| Yes to both of your questions.
Tinkering with the bait often will inprove the action and can give you somthing differant that might help in catching you a fish. Secondly, if oit helps you catch fish, it will give you confidance! |
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| No no and no again. I don't tinker and will have a couple hundread fish visit my boat this year alone. Hell I could probably get away with one make of spinnerbaits,jerkbaits and crankbaits and still catch a tonne of fish. Heck I was doing it before I got into guiding and now I have 5 boxes full of all kind of lures but most my fish come on a certain few.
Some lures need to have split rings or hooks upsized for simple reasons but thats not tinkering. [:sun:] |
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| Tinkering is a form of learning. Some stuff works and some stuff don't. It's amazing the action you can get from baits you may not even like if you just make some changes. You don't even have to cut or permanently do something to a bait to make it change drastically.[:)] |
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| Oh yes, I find that I have improved my catching percentages with tinkering with original equipment.Fish always want something different, they may be hitting these some of baits because they just plain and simply aggrivate in to bititng.Don't get me wroung I still throw lots of original stuff but at times it takes something a little different to get them going.
D'arcy Finlan |
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