Snake showed us some nice plastics yesterday that came out of the small fry molds. Thats one of my favorite baits in the 1.75" blocks. I was playing with mine too last night trying to get a river crappie box put together with more natural looking baits. These are now in the box......
I like less bold colors on the river crappies when casting is the method used to get to them. I have seven colors really nice shad-appearing baits now that don't put your eyes out when you look at them in the sun.
The hand poured bellies are a thinned out pearl with some assorted glitters and just a mere hint of turquoise hi lite. The top colors started off as a super thin smoke, then color added. The purple was given a lift by a drop of red transparent in the 4 ounce batch and then finished off with some violet hi lites. The blue began with the same thin smoke and got a drop each of turquoise and electric blue plus two drops of transparent blue and a pinch of blue hilites. Purple, garnet and blue glitter warmed up both color.
CTom, those are some good looking baits...
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This green one is where this current run of plastics got its hold.
As far as natural goes, this one is just about it for me.
Lots of the crappie forage up here and especially in the Mississippi River appears almost transparent and the portion of those food fishes that doesn't seem clear always has some kind of translucent color to it. The water color has a great deal to determine what that translucent color will come off as so I like to have an assortment of colors to "match the hatch" so to speak.
Keith Pace, aka Microspoons, does a superior job of getting transparent colors to come alive and I really like his theory of designing colors that let natural light flow thru the baits and work off each other as well as the glitters and hi lites each color carries. To me, this idea is the best approach to mimicing those translucent baitfish we have up here. A person does need to carry an assortment of colors though so different water colors and daytime weather fluctuations can be adjusted to. All around, I think this green backed one is about as natural appearing as it can get. I strung one on a jig the day I shot them and tossed it in the river behind the house for a half hour and got a crappie and a walleye. It looked like food to me when it was in the water and apparently the fish thought so too.
you're sure making me jealous yes I think you should make your plastic baits is close to natural food is possible you might say it is like tying flies you are making a pattern that is hatching out on the water about 20 years ago we were messing around with some plastics and I made the color you might say it looked like baby pooh-poohed anyway in the slew where I was fishing the crappie were not conceding anything so I decided to try one of those plastic baits out sure enough they get it right and left apparently it resembled the attached it was going on in the slew essay like they were a yellow belly catfish something like that but they sure did eat it up.
www.bobsjigs.com
I think that blue one would kill them here where I live. We do real well on a blue ice and that resembles it
Man I love those colors Ctom. Keep up the good work.CF
The Original Woodsgoat Hater
2011 NWR Bash Yellow Perch Champion
I like em!!!!!!! Great job!!!!!!!