Muskie Lip ( Bib) , Building Decisions

Where to place the lip, what angle to use, what type and how big or small of a lip are all decisions that should be determined before we start cutting wood. This is with glued in polycarbonate type lips.

If you chose to use a metal screw on lip there is a little more latitude in timing. Even with a metal lip that is going to be installed in a slot, thought preparation in slot placement is necessary. I have not used a lot of screw on metal lips but they definitely have there place and are easy to use. If you think about it ,as you progress there are a lot of little quirks and preferences you will acquire, good and bad.

This is the selection of lips I will be choosing from to go with my bait patterns.   

My picks will all be an 1/8th inch thick. They do offer 1/16" and 3/16" but the selection of styles is limited.  Unless you are cutting your own lips or custom order, I have not found a supplier for thicker lips with a variety of sizes to choose from in small quantities. The lips here are from the Musk Shop. There are metal and square lips also. Hit the link and you will be able to see all. If you find a better source please let us know.

I have made several copies of my patterns and copies of the lips, They are shown in actual size in the catalog. Then I make and cut out hard paper copies to play with. I will figure out how I want a particular bait to act, slot the pattern and see how the lip size and placement looks. Doing this, helps me in the visual aspect.
Once the pattern is selected I pick a lip for the type of action I am looking for. The angle is based off what you have or know. I have come to prefer a 45degree angle with both round and square lips..    

If you are unsure, take a look at your collection of store bought baits. Pull them out of hibernation and lay them out or hang them up. Use a sliding T bevel ( about $8.00 at the Depot) or your kids plastic protractor to find the angles being used. From that you will be able to decide on what angles you want based on knowing the action of the baits. Remember that bible, this is where it comes in use. Hopefully you are making more than one bait, start writing done what you are going to do with each bait. Also think about sinking, floating and neutrally buoyant.  You don't need to know right now but it can help with lip type selection, just make note of your intent.

Get some measurements on the distance from the nose of the bait to the lip. This will give you some benchmarks to refer to as your selection process continues.
Same bait, same lip,same angle with the lip moved forward or backward from the original point will impart a different action. Some times this may be very subtle and others it can be drastic. I think large mass flat sided baits are influenced the most by this.
The large 14" baits we make has a side to side flop, which is awesome but by moving the lip forward a 1/4" to 3/8" it changes the action to a tight figure eight wobble. Same everything except lip placement and you now have two completely different action. Normally, if we are going to change lip placement we only make a few, then see how they work.The lip angle has been tried with 40 degrees and 50 degrees, action was relatively the same and depth changed.

The depth of a lip inserted into the bait should be enough to secure it soundly but not deep enough to split it the first time it hits something. A lip protruding past the sides of a bait acts totally different than one flush to the sides. You really have to play around a little to see what you want to build. With a little practice a couple of errors and you can trim the sides of the lips to be flush with your bait. It's all about lines and accuracy at that point. It is a very doable task, if that is what you are looking for.
Play around with some patterns and lips now, and you won't be spinning your wheels when it's time to build.

This is where I got to with my bait and lip patterns. Mite be some tweaking before wood , but I am ready.
Now to figure out if I am going to do two or four of each. Just another decision!


( Keep it in the water )





 

Musky Baits: Thru Wire Construction

Through Wire or Screw Eyes?

This is one of many questions that need to be answered while preparing for this years Musky Bait Building Bash. Through Wire Construction means, if the bait was shattered by huge a Musky, you would still land the fish because the twisted Through Wire secures the line tie and all the hooks together.
Here is a little history that played part in our decision making.
Frank and I'd met a Canadian resident in Georgian Bay named Blair, who fished primarily with F18 Rapalas because that was all you could purchase in Canada back in 1988.  Blair had a mid 40" class Musky shatter his F18 yet he boated the fish because Rapala F18 balsa wood baits were made with Through Wire Construction.

The reality of most thru wire constructions that I've examined demonstrates some bait makers are using thru wire improperly, and only for the sole purpose of saying the bait has thru wire construction.  I personally see no advantage to thru wire construction with unsecured open tag ends. To me this defeats the whole idea and security of thru wire construction.  The Garage group has been using thru wire construction with twisted tag ends since we started making baits back in 2000. We choose to properly make thru wire secure with twisted ends, or use screw eyes!  Why waste the time if you don't complete the task.  In my mind, the twisted ends of the wire make it,  Solid Thru Wire construction, otherwise it is just wire that can fail.

Don't, take what I am saying the wrong way. There are a lot of great baits and Excellent Lure Builders out there that use this technique without failures. It is a proven application. Thanks "Remey."

My first Muskie was caught on a 6" Crane Bait unmodified, 20lb mono and a spinning reel (with a great drag). It was an unbelievable 30lb 52" fish. The correlation here is, I don't believe Crane uses twisted ends either. Check out the solid thru wire link above and read what Frank was saying about the thru wire process we use.

As we'd posted earlier, last year was our first experience using all screw eye construction. The lure sizes were 5" to 10" rather than the 14" to 18",  and we were looking to expedite the building process. I have used many a bait with screw eyes and to date,  I've never had one come out or break. We used .072 screw eyes. I will say they're OK for five to seven inch baits, but any larger bait, I prefer the .092. The threads of the .072 are minute to say the best and I am not comfortable with how easy I can break them loose. The .092 thread just seems to grab so much better.

Each of these processes has it's advantages and disadvantages. Personally, I need to do what I am comfortable with, good or bad.

Pros of thru wire construction
 A wire line tie is easier to tune than screw eyes.
 Split rings don"t become over sprung.
 With twisted ends, impossible to loose a fish. ( unless they eat your line ) or something else breaks.
 Twisted Thru wire leaves nothing to chance in a bait.
 It's just cool!!

Cons to thru wire construction  
 Thru wire construction adds quite a bit of time to the building process no matter how you do it.
 Thru wire cost more, when you make !0" baits or larger.
 Difficult adding weight once the wires been installed.
 If you have one offs, you are bending wire by hand, no jig.
 Muskie baits need .040 to .051 wire, this can be brutal at times, but much easier than .062

Pros to .092 screw eyes.
 Cost effective.
 Location placement is simple.
 Ideal for adding lead weight to (Jerk Baits, Twitch Baits).
 Time to install is minimal.
 If one does break, you can add another.

Cons to .092 screw eyes.
 They destroy most split rings. (Must use Bucher's or Wolverine's)
 Tuning is one or two attempts, then screw eyes get fatigued.
 Finding quality screw eyes.(most presses leave two indents at the bend in the eye) fatigue, in metal is bad.
 Drill hole, thread screw eye into hole, back screw eye out, add epoxy and then install screw eye. That is 
  my method of installing screw eyes.
 Open eyes are better than closed eye, for constructing jointed baits.

This is intended to give a little insight to one of the many choices we have when building baits. By no means am I trying to bash anybodies work. What works for any one individual is best.

If anyone who uses screw eyes wants to send us a bait to beat up,  please feel free to do so, drop a line and I will give you an address.  Muskie season is getting real close??

Thanks, to Frank on the co-edit..

( Keep it in the water )    

The Start to a Musky bait building Season

Well, If we have our pictures and thoughts. Harper Musky Show Photos and Patterns. We should be well on our way with some designs. I have some from last year and a couple of new ones to add with the batch.
These are in Picasa web albums also. Feel free to use them if you like.
 From Picasa you should be able to re size and use at your discretion. When you re size start by keeping the
aspect ratio the same. I will use one pattern to figure out the settings I am looking for. Once you have a benchmark ,the others go a bit faster. You do need to print them out to see the actual size,

These are just cardboard patterns at this point, if what is here is excepted we will make wood patterns with them. It makes it easier to use in the processes going forward , rather than using the cardboard.
What you see here has been drawn or traced from an existing bait and re sized to what we are looking for
.
 Now I will figure out what kind of lips ( bills ) I want to put in the different shapes of bodies.
You should take some time at this point and decide where and how you are going to use the bait. This will help in deciding what type of lip you are going to use.
Look at your collection of lures , think about what each bait does and  then think about what you want your custom lure to do.
You can make what ever you desire, at this time , we prefer flat sided baits verses rounded. This is just a preference. I will try to get the video we have of our 14" bait and post it. Then you will see why we like flat sides.
After the patterns and lip selection, start thinking about weight. There are choices here, a deep diver you might want a little bit extra or not. I have been trying to get neutrally buoyant and hit it half the time. Lighter is better, something I have yet to learn. I did not get the opportunity to use the The Archimedes dunk test, but I will this year.When I master this technique I will be happy.

Even for a trolling bait , (other than a bottom grinder) I prefer something closer to neutral than not. A trolled bait at rest, just hovering or slowly rising is what I can in vision.

I want to go for about thirty baits this year, well maybe thirty five. You have to keep in mind , not all custom lures survive. Some turn into " Why did I do That" .Bottom line is to have enough to play with when the real fun starts, PAINT. Then grabbing the one , and putting it in the water for the first time. It is truly a thrill, one that I cannot shake to this day . I may be obsessed but I love it.
If you are looking for more info or actual dimensions , drop a comment , we will get back to you. 
 

 ( Keep it in the Water )

Construction basics for Wood Musky Lures - by Frank

I'm going to discuss the process Rick and I've been using to make Crank-baits, Twitch-baits, and Trolling Baits.  I'm hoping this will help Tom, Bryan, and other bait builders understand exactly what we're doing, and additionally,  I hope this will generate new thought and ideas for everyone.  We may have the coolest hobby on the planet, having built Musky-baits that have actually caught Trophy Muskies!!!  This years goals are; to improve the process, expand our finish by air-brushing over Chrome, and hopefully catch a nice Musky!!

Wood:  We've had our best success using Clear/Select Pine which can be purchased at Home Depot, Menard's, etc.  Cedar is also an option - and we've observed that our rattle chambers are noticeably louder in Cedar, which has me considering Cedar for extreme dark water conditions.
  
Planing wood:  The 1"x 3" Select Pine boards are 3/4" thick and we've found that planing the boards to approximately 9/16" provides a superior action when compared to 3/4" thick baits..... And, we can easily work within the 9/16" space, having sufficient room for adding lead weight, thru wire construction or screw eyes, glass eyes and/or rattle chambers. This small task of planing the wood has improved our baits action immensely.

Cutting the slot for the Lip/Diving Bill:  This is the most critical phase of Crank-bait making - cutting the lip slot.  If done incorrectly the bait will never run properly, and correctly means the Lip is a perfect 90 degrees to the bait body.  So, we cut the planed board to a pre determined bait length using a Powered Miter Box (example a 10" bait is cut at 10.5").  We then trace our bait pattern onto the wood keeping the nose or front of the bait closest to the front edge of the board - and the bottom or belly of the bait closest to the bottom edge of the board.  Next we rotate the board (bait belly or bottom up) on the table of a Radial Arm Saw - adjust the stops, and also the squareness to the actual blade of the radial arm saw - adjust the saw blade cutting depth - perform test cuts and evaluate,,,,  -  and then actually slot the baits!!!!      I cannot emphasize enough how important this phase is and we're always open to discovering and learning a more accurate way.

Drilling holes:  The best time to drill holes is while the bait is still within a square or rectangle block form.  We use a Drill Press to drill all holes for installing glass eyes, rattle chambers, weight chambers, and screw eyes.  Again, this is all done while the bait is in block form. 
  
Cutting and Shaping:  The baits shape has already been traced onto the wood, and can now be cutout using a Scroll-saw or Band-saw.  We cut outside the line, and then sand the edges smooth on a Bench Sander having  both a sanding belt and sanding disc with 90 degree table.  The smoother the edges are, the better the outcome of the next step - Router #1.  We use a 1/4" Round Over bit in a Table Mounted Router to round all edges of the bait body.  Rough sand (150 grit) before sealing.

Propionate Wood Sealer:   After all the shaping, drilling, and slotting have been done - we soak the baits in propionate wood sealer for 30 minutes - dry them - scuff them lightly and dip them in Propionate a second time.  If you're using screw eye construction, seal the baits now.  If you're using thru wire construction, seal the baits immediately after you've place the wire within the slot.  Do not fill the wire slot with epoxy until after sealing with Propionate.

Thru Wire Construction:  We use another Table Mounted Router #2 with a 66 kerf  bit to slot the entire length of the bottom/belly of the bait and accept .051 wire. Wires are formed on pre made jigs prior to inserting into the bait.  We've currently made jigs for 10" and 14" baits.  This is also the time to melt and add Lead Weight into the bait.  And also the time to install the Lip/Diving Bill which is the second most critical aspect of Crank-bait making - placing the Lip in the exact center of the Crank-bait body.  The wire slot is later filled with an epoxy (West System - two part mix - resin & slow hardener) and usually requires two applications.  Thru wire construction adds a lot of labor, time, and cost compared to using screw eyes - however thru wire baits are much easier to tune and the wire will never fail.

Screw Eyes:  Using screw eyes simplifies the bait making process substantially.  You simply go from  Propionate Wood  Sealer to installing the Lip/Diving Bill and then install the Screw Eyes with epoxy.

Sanding:  When rough sanding/shaping use 150 grit sand paper, finish sanding use 220 grit sand paper, and after the baits are primed use 400 grit sand paper - I lightly wet sand my baits after they've been primed.

I hope I've provided enough detail to stimulate your thought regarding our method, and other possibilities. We welcome everyone's idea as to how we can improve our process of Garage Bait Building.

Thanks for reading!!

Frank Postal

PS.   Tom, your painting is inspiring to say the least!!!  Thanks for letting us post your pics.

Garage Baits , Musky Lures for 2012

Well the Harper Show has come and gone, Frank and I did manage to make the rounds. As with everything, you could see how the economy has affected our hobby. There were a few cool baits, Cow Girl had some smaller blades and flashabou tails that are ideal for early spring or a smaller presentation, A few of these will be put into the works, they didn't have the colors I wanted in the little ones, so I will buy the flashabou and make our own. There are also a lot of nice soft plastics, I will have to see if that's something I want to try doing. Frank did get a few pics of some nice paint jobs I will also try to do. All in all, it still remains a force in driving me to do and create more, I love it.
So, other than the one offs that I make, I will start my plan for production.
The group baits are usually about a half inch thick and flat sided, no matter what the length is. This is really due to the action on the fourteen and ten inch baits we make and like. Last year was the first time we made smaller and different shaped baits as a group. Al and Mike still have 80 baits unfinished !!
I will start making some new patterns for six and eight inchers and stick with the old tens, twelves and fourteens. Consider what type of lip design is appropriate for each and put my list together. The other consideration will be if I am going to do thru wire or screw in . Might have to fire up the die grinder and do lips and bend wire.
I think there will be a need for more chrome this year, just because it's cool and the paint detail at the end is minimal. That's not to say the prep work for a good chrome job is easy by any standards.There will also be a strong presence of prism tape,  it worked well last year, and has great flash. Saw a lot of it at the show,we made ours in the beginning of 2011? This just goes to prove again, original thought last about three minutes in the fishing world.
As a group, we will set our goals and determine the needs for wood and other supplies and set the wheel in motion.
I did meet Tom and Bryan at the Harper show, two guys who are interested in building some Garage Baits with us this year. Not sure how this will play out , they burn things down for a living??  I am preparing and have ample fire extinguishers on hand.   I would like to share some photos of Tom's paint jobs that he had sent Frank.

To me, this is what it is all about. You take what you have and make it something different. The art of customization. Tom, definitely has a step up on most of us with the ability to paint his thought. I hope that Tom and Bryan do join in this year so there becomes a platform for total creativity.  Looking forward to a interesting spring making Garage Baits.

We have to set a date soon for everyone to meet, and put the list together for new materials. Not sure if Mike and Al need any wood! 



(Keep it in the Water)

Harper Musky Show, Photos and Patterns

This could  possibly be the high-lite for the winter months. The Harper Musky Show ! We go, we look, we buy. For anybody who really hasn't committed to the idea of making there own baits, this is a one stop opportunity .Bring a camera and take some photos of what you like.Doesn't really matter if it is doable or not , take a pic.
What you think isn't workable is as important as what you think is.
 It's the time to let thought be the creator.

 Download your pics to your computer and look at them, decide what you want to create or duplicate.
With a good IMAGE VIEWER there are endless sizes and colors you can view. I have been using some freeware called Irfanview , I like it a lot for what I do. http://www.irfanview.com/ If you do download it check out the plugins they will add to it's ability .
The viewer has an option that allows you to change colors ( within it's spectrum ) to different colors. This comes in handy when you are looking at paint ideas.
Otherwise the re-size photo option lets you re-size your pic to your needs.
Once you make the decision to make something , you now have it in front of you. Re-size it accordingly for the bait you want , and there's your template for cutting.
I should have noted that the 12" and 5" baits in Ricks 2011 baits-finished are photo finished.The small perch and the 12" perch and walleye were finished using a gift wrapping paper with the image printed on it using this program.The opaque color of the paper disappears when cleared, and I just added a little paint.
Even if you are only going to buy, take your camera, take some pics and think about making your own.
As Frank said in an earlier post, There is nothing like catching that fish on a bait you made.I also make all of my leaders. It just makes me feel better.

The time is upon us to plan for next year,make the most of an opportunity to have some fun.
Drop us a line and let us know where you are headed.

The only wrong question , is the one that's not made.


Keep it in the water.

Google Earth. See your favorite spots with satellite imaging.

I had recently put Google Maps on as a page, it should have been Google Earth. I use it to identify fishing spots, it is a great tool for this. Except as it was posted, it did not give all the features. The satellite view is quite impressive for what I was looking at. You can select your own options, like roads, parks, earth and even a different time line, history.
With a lot of the areas, when zoomed in with satellite, you can identify the deep edge on a lot of structure. It also gives GPS coordinates, and you are able to find boat landings and more The more I play around with it the more I like it. If you do not already have it download it for yourself and enjoy

http://www.google.com/earth/download/ge/agree.html


Keep it in the Water.