My DIY Projects and Great Adventures

Attachment 408225

By far the toughest aspect of making these is getting the plastic bait threaded on straight. Every so often I make a perfect one, but most are off a little. i think they look great and cannot wait to dangle these behind the boat.

1/16th ounce, 1/0 Victory hook, Slab Curly bait glued to a threaded hook shank. These will ride high and near the surface just behind the boat a little ways. That Slab Curly is an awesome bait and has very quickly become my favorite. Similar to a grub, but slightly different action. Some of my grubs have the pull off tail feature, as do my Stroll’Rs. These stay hitched pretty good.

Now to make some in the 3/16th size for close combat purposes.

You have got it going on. Keep thinking and tinkering. I like where you are going. You are making me do some wondering are a few ideas but it mostly deals with colors.

you seem to have caught one quite well and seem to being doing very well for yourself, congrats

personal opinion here, if it was me i longline at speeds of 1.0- .08, you stated your going 1.3-1.6, thats crankbait speed, ever thought of trying those? i'm hearing that your fish are shallow, personally i'd be pulling at 1.0 mph with some 1/32, maybe even 1.2 with a 1/32 and some 1/24ths. also i see you have discovered the blade craze, you ought to check out southercrappierods.com and look at his spinnie minnie, trust me on this one! and if and when you talk to ol' ed tell him i sent ya

also i think you out to try some paddletail plastics against your curlytails

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Originally Posted by gobbler

you seem to have caught one quite well and seem to being doing very well for yourself, congrats

personal opinion here, if it was me i longline at speeds of 1.0- .08, you stated your going 1.3-1.6, thats crankbait speed, ever thought of trying those? i'm hearing that your fish are shallow, personally i'd be pulling at 1.0 mph with some 1/32, maybe even 1.2 with a 1/32 and some 1/24ths. also i see you have discovered the blade craze, you ought to check out southercrappierods.com and look at his spinnie minnie, trust me on this one! and if and when you talk to ol' ed tell him i sent ya

also i think you out to try some paddletail plastics against your curlytails

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Thank you very much, and congratulations to you too sir. I heard that you did rather well in the tournament. I will take your advice and slow down and use some of the lighter weights and I have a few paddle tails to try as well. Again thank you for being so nice to me.

Attachment 408244

3/16th oz, 3” curly tail grub.

Attachment 408246

Hey GOBBLER……here are some I made right after I read your post !!!

1/32nd ounce, size #1 hook, bladed paddle tails in a few of my favorite colors. I bet them devils will like these. LOL


Mostly my issues revolve around finding the fish. Seems once I am over and amongst them I get bites pretty fast and furious on all my offerings. Those lulls in between bites is what is waisting all of my time. Once beyond the school I am just another man riding around in his boat. Being able to keep my lures in close to the boat allows me to circle back around and sometimes I will pick up a fish or two doing that.


I am thinking that most all of my lures will work just fine, if I can get them in front of the fish.


The lake where I am fishing lately has a mud bottom and the fish stomachs seem to be pretty much empty. It may be that they are starving to death and so desperate that they just don’t care anymore what they eat. They are not skinny fish so I imagine they are managing to get something every so often. Probably eating lake fly larva and pupae. Lots of lake flies there.

My crappie friends tell me that these fish have “turned on” for some reason. They cannot tell me why though. I asked about the other lakes and they got this sour puss look on their faces and said they will be fishing at this lake for a while longer. Although I remember him telling me that this lake was no good and that he hadn’t fished it in years. That was some months back. I told him I was catching fish there and soon after that he started showing up. Then all these others started showing up. Before that I was pretty much the only guy out there, drifting around in the middle. There are always a few guys fishing the weeds. My friend likes to chase the hot bite it seems and I too get a little excited when I get a tip, but really, I was never good at chasing around like that.

Two kinds of fishermen. There are those that fish like pelicans and those that fish like herons. Pelicans fly all around, going to the fish. Herons find a good spot and setup on it and wait for the fish to come to them. I am more of a mixture of the two in that I fish where I want the fish to be, not necessarily where the hot bites is supposed to be today. Where they caught them yesterday. The old “should have been here yesterday” treatment. I hate that.

Busy making up my “Go To” box. I am assembling the jigs that I will wish to drag around behind me. I keep a little box up front with me and the bigger boxes in the back just in case I go crazy or something. Limiting my selection keeps me in focus a little better with the real task at hand- finding the stupid fish. Before I was swapping out jigs thinking a change in color would save my day. Changing what I am doing does more to help than changing my colors. I have pretty much four major variations.

Chartreuse yellow and lime green ( John Deere )
Chartreuse yellow and as a blaze hot orange as I can get
Chartreuse yellow and pink/purple
Natural silvers and whites

I have my spinners in the box and there are plenty of those already, so I am now going to start making my non spinner blade jigs. These jigs do very well and most times outperform the bladed jigs. Not sure why but some days they want a blade, but most days they don’t. Always handy to have, but I swap them out pretty quick if they are not getting consumed at an acceptable rate. I do however like to keep one heavy with large blades right in tight behind the boat for those big devils that come along every so often. I sacrifice that rod in exchange for a chance at a big fish.

If we only knew what fish wanted and why

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Originally Posted by DockShootinJack

If we only knew what fish wanted and why

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Then maybe there would be no fish left. But I agree.

Attachment 408268

1/16th ounce Bat Jig, size #2 Do-It Whacky Hook, Slab Curly glued onto a thread wrap. I really like the way the jig head matches up with the plastic bait. Looks more like a Shad to me that any other curly tailed bait out there. These will have an amazing action just under the surface, maybe a foot deep. Seven of my very best colors. I made two of each, and these will be in my Go-To box.

I like to think about things before I go and rig jigs on my poles according to my plan. Thinking…..2 heavy weight spinner type jigs, and 2 lightweight non-spinner, and 2 heavy weight non-spinner.

I was playing around with two rod holders in the garage and can see how these could be mounted on the sides in the front, and run along the sides of the boat to the point where the rod tip would be away about two feet. Horizontal more or less to the water. This would fish two jigs in a vacant area and they can be extremely close to the boat. I do not think these will foul with the others. Just need to mount the bases and test them out.

Read a little about Power Trolling and read about Tight Lining and of course Spider rigging. these two poles would be like an amalgamation of styles. Be an odd bird for sure but right now the fish are hot for a jig next to the hull. They ain’t line shy and they ain’t large boat thing shy either. Maybe later on I will need to drop my lines back further, but I may not ever have to. Possible that the fish can be caught consistently in this manner.

I am sure there are other ways to fish for them that are not readily spoken of.