Wow! here's a nice bucketmouth anyone would be willing to brag about. Nice Fish Larry!!!
Another summer largemouth from Ming Lake
MODIFYING JERKBAITS OVER THE WINTER
Many jerkbaits are "floaters" (as opposed to "suspenders").
Rapala Original Minnows, Bomber Long A's, Cordell RedFins,
many Yo-Zuri models are mostly floaters. Floaters rarely get
more than a few feet down. Most of these resist staying even
a few feet down as most rise rapidly when paused even an
instant. Good stuff for the specific times and places when
fish prefer jerkbaits to rise back to the top on the pause.
When the situation calls for it around barely submerged
cover and semi-emergent weedbeds, floaters can be jerked or
ripped up to the edge of cover or weeds, allowed to rise to
the top and then finessed and twitched slowly across the top
of the cover, resuming the underwater jerking and twitching
as the lure comes into the clear again. Strikes often happen
as the lure approaches the far edge of cover, as you
flounder it right over the top, or as the lure comes into
the clear on the near edge of cover.
Shallow suspending jerkbaits - suspending versions of
Smithwick Rogues, Rapala Husky Jerks, Excalibur Long As,
etc. - don't get that much deeper than their "floating"
counterparts. In fact, most ARE their floating counterparts
(or very close remodels) with extra lead strategically added
at the factory. But they do differ from the floaters in that
they tend to hold their mid-shallow depth a few feet down
when you pause them. From Lucky Craft, the Pointer is the
model that stays at the mid-shallow depth as most of the
other brands mentioned in this paragraph. Good stuff for the
specific times and places when fish prefer that, which is
when bass are up on the shallow flats where water depth is
somewhere between 3 and 7 feet deep.
Next in depth, to consistently work deeper than the
above-named lures, you need to drill and add your own weight
(water, splitshot or buckshot), attach adhesive lead dots,
lead strips or wrap lead wire on the hooks of the
above-named models. Rather than you doing that, a
manufacturer may instead lengthen the bill, flatten out its
angle a bit...and what used to resemble a jerkbait starts
looking like a crankbait coming out of the factory. The
Lucky Craft Bevy Shad is an example. The Bevy Shad has a bit
more of a crankbait-like bill and a bit more shad-shaped
(crankbait-shaped?) body than most other thin minnow
jerkbaits. Is the Bevy Shad a jerkbait? A crankbait? Two
baits in one? Disturbing as such questions may be, should we
really care? Does how a lure looks define what it is?...does
the suspension system inside it define it?...or how you fish
it? The Bevy Shad fishes mostly like other jerkbaits, with a
tighter shad-like wiggle, and it holds its depth a couple of
feet below the depth range of most other short-lipped
suspending jerk baits, let's say 4 to 9 feet - other things
like line diameters and casting distance being equal. The
important point is a deeper-suspending jerkbait like the
Bevy Shad gets down "out of the box" and all the work to
make it fish properly with an alluring action is already
done by the expert lure designers at the factory's research
tanks - as opposed to you doctoring lures at home in hopes
to make them do something they were not originally designed
to do. (We'll talk about "doctoring" jerkbaits below.)
The next step away from what we commonly think of as being a
jerkbait is something like the Lucky Craft StaySee. It's got
the thin minnow body that says "jerkbait" but a long thin
bill that seems to say "crankbait". When you pause it, it
will "Stay" still where it is so fish can "See" it - and get
infuriated to strike at it! When you twitch the StaySee, it
has a side-gliding action that fishes like a jerkbait. In
fact, the StaySee's gliding action when you twitch it looks
more like a Suick Thriller muskie glider jerkbait than any
bass lure that comes to mind - except that the StaySee
consistently hunkers down, let's say, from 6 to 12 feet
(depending on line diameter, distance cast, etc.). That's
about the deeper limit of most lures I can think of at the
moment that bass anglers may be willing to say, "Okay,
that's a jerkbait."
Keep in mind, that most jerkbaits on the market today are
not designed to get down deeper like the LuckyCraft Bevy
Shad or StaySee. Maybe this will change inthe next few years
as more advanced versions of jerkbaits similiar to the
LuckyCrafts are brought onto the market. For the time being,
however, many models of jerkbaits will need to be doctored
by the angler who wants to get them deeper. The rest of this
article is about that - modifying jerkbaits on your own -
primarily to get them deeper. Since winter lay-up is coming
soon for many anglers, this may be a good mid-winter project
to keep you involved in fishing. Best of all, your
newly-modified jerkbaits are some of the best tools to use
for early pre-spawn bass when the 2001 season opens!
You will get extra depth from a loaded hard bait. Of course,
you can only do this easily with plastic-walled baits as
opposed to wood. Yes, you can drill wood and load lead plugs
into them too. Problem is, you easily ruin lots of expensive
wood baits during the experimental phase and even on an
ongoing basis. With plastics, if they're loaded wrong, you
can empty them out and start over. It's not so easy to try
again with wood. If you do load wood, best tools become a
drill press table with a bit depth stop on it so you
consistently drill an equal depth into each bait. Next, seal
the bared wood holes by swabbing with a Q-tip dipped in thin
waterproof sealant. If you do not do this, the baits will
becoem water-logged, not swim, and may even split open.
While that's drying, drill a number of holes the exact same
depth into a big block of hard woodlike birch. Melt lead or
tin and pour it into the holes in the birch. While hot,
plane the top of the filled holes flush with a scraping pass
made with any old metal square edge. By making separate
pours of both lead and tin, you can make two "inserts" that
have the same size dimensions but different weights. I've
got it written down somewhere, and don't quote me now, but I
think the ratio's that lead weighs almost twice tin. Ingots
of both lead and tin are often available at plunber's supply
stores. Be careful and be responsible for all precautions
required when dealing with lead or molten metals. When cool,
pry them out, dip the tips in a bit of clear epoxy, and tap
them into the perfectly-fitting holes in the baits. That's
the utmost in repeatabilty for wood bait performance.
It's rare to hear of people loading baits to get better
action from them. In fact, the action becomes muted - more
of a waddle than a wiggle, more of a loping glide than a
gallop - but that's often what people want because loaded
plastic baits are best-used for lethargic or inactive fish,
often in cold water of early spring or late fall. Most of
all, people load hardbaits for the reason to get more depth
from them...and more hunkering down or suspension when
stopped as opposed to bobbing to the top. And of course, the
beneficial side-effect of further casting qualities from
them. On the cast, the load typically piles up in the tail
of the bait, making it more castable. On the retrieve, the
load - often water (some load with black coffee to better
spot leakers) or smallest sizes of birdgun buckshot - moves
all about like loose parcels in the back of a van taking a
curve. The bait's action usually remains symmetrical but
muted - yet sometimes (especially with multi-chambered
loads), the load gives an occasional irregular action which
can be special because it approximates the mindless
dalliance of a real bait better than the mechanical
melodrome of a factory bait.
Another reason to load a harbait is to use it in moving
water. For instance, an unloaded bait can become unbalanced
and spin out in a strong river or brackish tidal flow,
whereas a heavily-loaded bait will remain stable as it
hunkers down and strums downstream on the end of a tight
string.
I make sure that I have the following materials handy when I
load baits: a single edge razor blade or utility knife,
round toothpicks, superglue, nail polish (red, yellow and
green). I also use a Dremel Mototool on slow speed with a
1/32" bit and finally, a syringe with a blunt-edged,
flexible plastic tubing catheter instead of a sharp metal
needle. You can pick up such a syringe at a medical supply
store, or ask your family doctor. Oh yes, I also use a
triple balance beam. The beam balance is not absolutely
necessary, but it does help the process if you intend to
load lots of hardbaits over the long run. As for the baits
you intend to load, it's best to sacrifice one specimen of
each bait to cut straight down the middle into left and
right halves to ensure what chambers are inside. Some
plastics are multi-chambered inside, which opens up a wide
(sometimes too wide) puzzle to ponder...how much to load
into which chamber(s)? Once you are sure what the blueprint
is like inside, it's time to get started! By the way, I
personally do not load plastic baits with buckshot because
it is fairly imprecise to close the wider hole, usually with
a glop of epoxy, some of which can haphazardly cause a few
shot to get glued at the most inappropriate places inside
the bait too! Nevertheless, some people do use buckshot with
fantastic results, so you can decide on your own to try it
or not. One way to eliminate glop is to put a
carefully-sized dollop of epoxy on a piece of electrical
tape. Shake all the buckshot into the tail of the bait, then
position the dollop/tape over the hole in the bait. Tape
down firmly and wait, keeping the tape (or hole) side of the
bait down. When given enough time to dry, remove the tape,
and the exposed epoxy should be more or less straight flush
with the surface of the bait. Dip a dot of color (red,
yellow, or green) to code the load, then seal the entire
epoxy plug and hole area with a generous coat of clear nail
polish.
Very important for loading (getting back to liquid) is that
the drill bit, the syringe catheter, and the round
toothpicks all have to be the same diameter. With
single-chambered baits, I give them a lobotomy by drilling
straight into the top of the bait where its brain would be
if it had one. When you drill a hole into your bait, the
syringe tube should be able to just barely slide inside the
bait's body to give it an injection, and then the round
toothpick gets jammed tightly into the hole. You can snip
the pointy tip off before it goes in, then use a single edge
razor or utility knife to cut the toothpick flush with the
top of the bait and then put a drop of superglue, allowing
it to wick into the wood fibers of the cut toothpick. The
superglue sort of "petrifies" the wood toothpick so the load
cannot evaporate through it over time.
Next, use the different color nail polish to color code your
loads. Red for heavy loads, yellow for medium loads, and
green for light loads. Just a little dab of color on the
toothpick. In this way, when you open your tackle bag to
change baits, you can instantly see the color codes on their
noggins!
To reload or unload your baits, it is just a simple matter
of using something (a 1/32" piece of stainless wire, a thin
nail, a thin icepick) to exert a downward pressure on the
toothpick, thereby pushing it inside of the bait's body. Now
you can reload with a different amount or completely drain
the load, then insert another toothpick. Superglue it in,
use the appropriate color code - or no need to color code at
all if you completely unload it.
How much to load? Pre-drill a few baits, grab toothpicks,
superglue, razor, and syringe. Go down to a dock, long deep
swimming pool or anywhere you can test swim your prototypes.
Fill 'em up a bit, swim 'em, shake 'em out a bit. Use a half
toothpick to temporarily cork and uncork 'em while you go
through this process. Experiment with different loads until
you achieve the desired bait actions. Spend a few hours
getting it right. When you finally get one loaded that looks
good to you, just tap it with a dry toothpick, cut the
toothpick flush, and seal it with a shot of superglue. Keep
in mind you can make up to three different loads for the
same bait model - light, medium and heavy - if need be to
match correspondingly light, medium or heavy wind being cast
against, tide or moving water being fished against, or
simply three increasingly deeper-running variants of the
same hardbait.
Now this is where you need the balance beam. With one, it is
just a simple matter to take the sealed and loaded baits
home, weigh them, and then load all your other baits like so
many tin soldiers so they weigh the identical amounts. Write
the weights down somewhere. Without a balance beam, you have
to keep track of exactly how many cc's you inject into the
baits out on the testing grounds. That can be a bit of a
hassle as you constantly add a little more, a little less to
achieve the desired action. Does such precision matter to
the fish? Perhaps not, but I like to know exactly what kind
of load I've got tied on, and that I can go home and
reproduce it exactly to the gram when I need to make more.
Loosening lips. There is one other modification that you can
perform on plastic lipped baits that may make them special.
You can take some of these baits - melt the lips to make
them temporarily soft and bend them back or up. Bending back
allows you to swim them shallower (sometimes only waking the
surface), more slowly, and usually with a wider snake-like
or twisty-turny wounded wobble. Bending the lip up makes
them dive a bit deeper, some models with a tighter,
struggling movement, other models with a wider, side-to-side
searching type movement.
Ideally, use a reliable hand-held mini-tool torch. You can
use a cigarette lighter at your own discretion,
understanding that cigarette lighters are not exactly safe
tools designed for doing this. Turn the flame way down low,
and hold it near the base of the lip where it joins the body
of the bait. Better to heat it too slowly than too quickly.
This works better on the solid-colored plastics where the
paint is bonded and becomes part of the base plastic. The
chrome-painted ones, or any ones with shrink-adhesive layers
of paint have a tendency to bubble up a bit, and it means
you have to use a higher flame and work faster. Yes, you
will ruin some baits learning how best to heat each
particular model of them. Just heat each bait the best way
based on learned experience, and use a flat stick like a
paint stirrer or straight-edged ruler to slowly bend the lip
back or up a bit. Keep in mind you may not only loosen the
lip, but also some of the glues used to hold some insert
types of lips in place. Obviously, thin sliver-like lips are
more easily bent than thick, heavily-fortified uni-body
lips. These points are usually only concerns during the
experimental phase, and once you're confident of what
modifications you like to make to which baits, it becomes a
matter of heating quick, bending just so, and putting it
into a bowl of cold water to cure for a minute. Then, it's
out to go fishing.
Write all your research down on an notebook because you'll
tend to forget what techniques works best with which baits.
The best place to perform initial experiments is of course,
on the water, if possible. Then you can modify lips between
casts until you get the desired angle. Once something looks
good, save those prototypes to use as benchmarks to guide
you whenever bending the same model in the future.
Of course, you must always be responsible and aware of burn
and fire-preventive safety issues affecting yourself and
others wherever and whenever working in this way - and you
sure want to avoid inhaling any plastic solvent fumes
released during the process.
Hope this gives you some interest in modifying jerkbaits
over the winter! It's rewarding to catch fish on a lure that
you make into a special fish-catcher yourself!
