Hand pour tips

[Spencer_518]

I see a lot of wake baits and glides people are making but is anyone playing around with soft plastic hand poured baits or plastic swimbaits in general? I’ve been messing around with making a hand poured soft plastic swimbait for a few months now and really struggling with the tail section and getting a bait to swim is the hardest part for me. 
 

any tips? Thanks SU! 

[WaterWolf44]

I did a little bit of hand pouring. It is kind of tricky it does take a steady hand pouring the tail just right so make sure your plastic is hot enough so it's almost like a thin syrup. Keep doing it and tweaking your plastic mixtures and your colorings and Glitters

[WaterWolf44]

Oh and one more thing try pouring your tail first when the plastic is at its hottest. Over a short. Of time the plastic will thicken up. It's much easier to pour the body with thicker consistency plastic than the tail

[Spencer_518]

21 minutes ago, WaterWolf44 said:

Oh and one more thing try pouring your tail first when the plastic is at its hottest. Over a short. Of time the plastic will thicken up. It's much easier to pour the body with thicker consistency plastic than the tail

My main issues are the actual tail design. I’m struggling to get good swimming action out of my tails. I keep trying to reference to other paddle tails but something just isn’t right. Got a master in the silicone tonight and will try to pour one in the morning 

[danthefisherman]

Sharing a picture might help us help you. Also a description of what the tail is doing that you don't like (i.e. not catching enough water, too rigid with little action, too soft with no thump, etc). I've only ever seen one soft swimbait project through to completion (mainly because I have no confidence throwing soft baits), but it swam ok. I've found that the base of the tail and hardness of the plastic can make a huge difference in the swim.

[Spencer_518]

On 1/28/2021 at 11:26 PM, danthefisherman said:

Sharing a picture might help us help you. Also a description of what the tail is doing that you don't like (i.e. not catching enough water, too rigid with little action, too soft with no thump, etc). I've only ever seen one soft swimbait project through to completion (mainly because I have no confidence throwing soft baits), but it swam ok. I've found that the base of the tail and hardness of the plastic can make a huge difference in the swim.

[Spencer_518]

This is where I am at on my latest project. Actually really surprised on the tail action. I am going to scale down the body because this thing is pretty thick. Weighing in at 4.2oz. 

[Alex Burton]

One thing that I do is put all of my bait designs into a CAD program for cnc machining, I then export the design and put it into a fluid dynamics simulator. Over complicated but it works 95% of the time. One thing that can really help is a thin head and a thick tail, this helps so the head does not push all the water away from the tail creating a low pressure zone (or high current)around the tail affecting the action. If you can get the tail in the right place so that when the head of the bait pushes the water out when it comes back in it hits the tail. Hope this helps.