Teeny Glide

[Hoosier_Hawgz]

So yesterday after work I thought I would brave the nasty air conditions to see how this bait looked with smaller trebles, because I thought they might be affecting how it swam. I was correct in my assumption that it swam better with smaller trebles on it, but I seemed to have lost some of the twitchiness/dartiness to it. 
 
While swimming it out in the residential pond behind the house it came to a sudden stop. There’s some subsurface grass that extends 10’ or so from the bank, so I thought it had just gotten hung up like it had a couple of times before. Instead a 3.5-4.5 largemouth comes out of the water thrashing its head with the bait in its mouth! The rod I was using to test was too stiff and it threw the bait shortly after hooking up, but not before breaking the tail completely off the bait. I thought maybe it would help out the action in some way but it now swims like the presents my dogs leave for me in the back yard and won’t twitch at all. 

So… Can this be saved by removing the wood that used to be the tail and installing a Lexan one instead? Or is there another material that might help with my journey to make this bait swim and/or twitch?
If you’ve got any ideas at all, throw them in here. I’ll be a guinea pig. 

[danthefisherman]

3 hours ago, Hoosier_Hawgz said:

So yesterday after work I thought I would brave the nasty air conditions to see how this bait looked with smaller trebles, because I thought they might be affecting how it swam. I was correct in my assumption that it swam better with smaller trebles on it, but I seemed to have lost some of the twitchiness/dartiness to it. 
 
While swimming it out in the residential pond behind the house it came to a sudden stop. There’s some subsurface grass that extends 10’ or so from the bank, so I thought it had just gotten hung up like it had a couple of times before. Instead a 3.5-4.5 largemouth comes out of the water thrashing its head with the bait in its mouth! The rod I was using to test was too stiff and it threw the bait shortly after hooking up, but not before breaking the tail completely off the bait. I thought maybe it would help out the action in some way but it now swims like the presents my dogs leave for me in the back yard and won’t twitch at all. 

So… Can this be saved by removing the wood that used to be the tail and installing a Lexan one instead? Or is there another material that might help with my journey to make this bait swim and/or twitch?
If you’ve got any ideas at all, throw them in here. I’ll be a guinea pig. 

Love it when you get that first bite! Now that the fish has done the dirty work for you, I would certainly remove the rest of the tail and cut a slot to house a urethane or silicone tail. I was going to mention this before but saw you had already done the work of carving a hard tail.

Semi-soft tails have a few good benefits over hard tails:

1. Won’t break when impacted

2. Easily replaceable

3. Often produces a “smoother” swim

Hard tails have their own pros, but I almost always default to a soft tail nowadays.

[danthefisherman]

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Edited June 29, 2023 by danthefisherman

[Hoosier_Hawgz]

21 hours ago, danthefisherman said:

Love it when you get that first bite! Now that the fish has done the dirty work for you, I would certainly remove the rest of the tail and cut a slot to house a urethane or silicone tail. I was going to mention this before but saw you had already done the work of carving a hard tail.

Semi-soft tails have a few good benefits over hard tails:

1. Won’t break when impacted

2. Easily replaceable

3. Often produces a “smoother” swim

Hard tails have their own pros, but I almost always default to a soft tail nowadays.

Thanks Dan, I appreciate the words of wisdom! 
 

A silicone or urethane tail might be just what this thing needs to make it do what I want, but I have yet to take the plunge into using those types of materials. Some more Google/YouTube research might be necessary before I feel ready to go down that rabbit hole. 
 

With that being said, I do have some soft plastics laying around that I’ve been hoarding to melt down eventually. Would I be able to melt those down and form up a tail? What are the pros/cons of doing so? 

[danthefisherman]

4 hours ago, Hoosier_Hawgz said:

Thanks Dan, I appreciate the words of wisdom! 
 

A silicone or urethane tail might be just what this thing needs to make it do what I want, but I have yet to take the plunge into using those types of materials. Some more Google/YouTube research might be necessary before I feel ready to go down that rabbit hole. 
 

With that being said, I do have some soft plastics laying around that I’ve been hoarding to melt down eventually. Would I be able to melt those down and form up a tail? What are the pros/cons of doing so? 

You wouldn’t want to use something too soft and soft plastics will react to some clear coats, but otherwise it should work. You can always buy a small sample of plastisol hardener as an additive.

[danthefisherman]

Also I think you can probably find some sort of rubber or silicone sheet at Home Depot or another hardware store. Might be worth picking up a small sample to mess around with.

[Big Epp]

I've heard of people cutting silicon baking sheets.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Big Epp

[Hoosier_Hawgz]

@Big Epp @danthefisherman thank you both for your responses. Since I’m still trying to get this finished sooner rather than later, I thought I would give the melted soft plastic tail a try. It’s super duper rough and won’t be the finished tail that’s installed on it, but I just wanted to see how well I could make it work. 
 

It turns out it didn’t work too shabby! I had a prior bite from one a bit bigger than this but whiffed it on the hookset. It doesn’t swim how I had envisioned it would, but as far as a twitch bait goes it looks fantastic. It can just about suspend in place while darting from side-to-side without any of the rolling or nosing up that it had previously. Also, as much as it pains me to admit, I think 90% of my previous problems with this bait were my fault. I’ve never fished, let alone owned a glide bait before, so learning how to fish this effectively has been as much of a learning curve as actually making it has been.
 

Since the bass seem to like it at this point, I’m going to come up with a better soft plastic tail and finally break out my airbrush for the first time on a bait. 
 

The next week or two are about to get very interesting! 

 

[Hoosier_Hawgz]

Well folks, it’s finished!