September

[DockShootinJack]

I have glued them. Unstuck it from my fingers. Dipped it in the water so it wouldn't stick to my fingers again when I grabbed the jighead to shoot it under a dock. Pulled a fish out on the first cast

[DeadlyDan]

Good to hear, Jack.

[SuperDave336]

I would keep doing what you do then add Slab Sauce. It works and hides any offensive smell.

[GrumpyLoomis]

I have used glue but when Do-It introduced me to the coil collar I was sold. I have custom made molds with the coil. I just use it and don't look back. If it is not a coil it is hand tied. I love them both on their days.

[GrumpyLoomis]

Slab sauce on everything but my Vienna sausages.

[Micanopy]

How do you screw the plastics on, with the way the hook is passed through the body?

Also, if the UV on a jig head is charged the evening before the trip, will they loose their charge overnight?

Dan- Grumpy told you right. You just kind of spin the thing on.


I troll my lures and want them to swim just so. A spinning lure will twist up your line, however a spinning lure offers a tantalizing delight to the fish and they will eat it no problems at all. To achieve a spinning lure just let the bait slip down the shank and start trolling. The fish really do like it.

The Screw Lock system really isn’t for folks like you and me what glue our baits on the evening before we go fishing. It is for the normals. The ones that carry a few jig heads with them and root through bags to swap out baits without untying. The way we do it is not that popular I suspect.

I spent some time trying to figure out how to properly attach a bait to the hook. The Screw Lock system does not help you to do this, rather it punishes you for getting things wrong. Amplifies your errors of alignment.

My technique is to lay the bait next to the jig and look at the thing. Sometimes I will trim the nose of a bait to get a different profile. I also use short shank hooks to allow more freedom of movement of the tail section. This also shows me exactly where I want the hook tip to exit.

After that I hold the bait vertically in my left hand, and with the jig in my right hand, head down. I start the procedure by ensuring that the hook tip is entering the bait dead center. It has to be right or the Screw Lock will also enter incorrectly. Then I pull downwards on the jig head trying to stay along the bait’s center line, then exit the tip. Then I look things over. If there is an issue with being straight I can go for the Big Re-Do. Otherwise I slide the bait tight to the Screw Lock.

I started out being gentle with this part, but now just go at it without concern for the bait’s sensitivities. The tail whips around by itself with most of my baits, but some need a little encouragement. Then I look to see if another turn would be helpful or not. If not, then I look the lure over to see which way it needs to be rotated to get a straight alignment. Then I glue the tip of the bait to the head to keep the bait from untwisting itself crooked.

The baits will get shredded, lose their tails, whatever, but will not slip down or get misaligned. They run straight and true just like a minnow swims. Many a good fisherman does none of these things and catch more fish than me. Their lures have no Screw Locks, no keepers, and the bait slides down the shaft, then curls up and spins when they troll them and they catch lots of fish. They don’t seem to care and do just fine.

I also glue all my lures together and show up with ready made items. I use LocTite Super Glue Gel Control in the bottle with the squeeze buttons on the sides. I like to use this on all of my jigs. The ones without keepers, I push the bait away from the head and apply a drop to the hook shank and then slip the bait up tight to the head. This glues inside the bait and secures the head. This will hold a bait just fine and seems to last just fine.

The Screw Lock system is not some wonderful thing that solves everything. Thin little delicate baits don’t appreciate the skewering the coils applies. Finesse baits benefit from a bare shank and some glue. Thicker heavier baits benefit from Screw Lock as that thing grabs and secures them and prevents them from ripping apart.

Send me a PM and I will mail you some jigs with Screw Locks to try before you go wild and order a new mold and stuff. You may not like the system at all. Hard for some to get their heads around it.


You asked if I charge my UV enhanced jig heads. No sir. There is no charging a UV jig head. Think of it like a reflector on a bicycle. If UV light strikes it, it will reflect and in doing so produce a cool color. The molecules dance, much the same way glow in the dark molecules dance. However, unlike glow in the dark, without the light source the effect stops.

I did some research into UV light a while back and posted my results in previous threads. Basically UV light can penetrate water much much deeper than can visible light. It is present all day long, but visible light over powers it and we don’t notice it except for sunburns and such. However, early in the morning, before the Sun’s rays strike us directly, UV light is king for about 30 minutes. After the Sun sets, UV light is king for 30 minutes or so. Its presence is noticable until things get dark again.

Each evening when the Sun sets, there comes a period about a minute in length where the natural colors seem to change. I call it the Magic Time. You have seen this many times but may not have really noticed it. Your skin will kind of glow, and everything takes on a sort of glow. Well this is UV light doing its thing.

Predator fish have eyes that transition between light and dark more quickly than the eyes of baitfish. This translates into an advantage. The fish know this and feed early early, and again as things start to get dark. These times are when UV light is most noticeable. Many creatures use UV enhancements to communicate, find food, and find mates and stuff. Our eyes are not built to accomplish this however. We have filters that protect our corneas from the damaging effects of UV light. They say we cannot see UV light but that is not so. We can experience it just fine. Monet was a famous artist that painted with beautiful colors. His eyes were damaged and his filters were inhibited and he painted what he saw, which was different than what we see.

Most of our florescent colors are also UV reflective. In other words, when struck by a UV light source, they appear to glow. This is why so many people like lures with Chartreuse Yellow, and didn’t even know why the fish seemed to like it so much. Many items in our homes are treated with UV enhancement to trick our eyes. Tide laundry detergent adds “brighteners” to its mixture. They do this to trick us into thinking our white shirts sure do look bright white. No…..they are dingy yellow, but the UV light hits the UV enhancement, the molecules dance and reflect back at out eyes and appears to be bright white. Other colors can also be enhanced to provide reflection.

Stand on your deck and wait while the Sun goes down, wearing a bright white shirt washed in Tide……and at sometime after the Sun has set, that shirt will begin to glow. Black lights enhance UV enhancements and provide the glow we all know.

So in me buying clear powder paint with UV enhancements, I get a minnow looking grey head during bright sunlit days, but those early mornings, and underwater, my lures glow. Applying the paint over bare lead gives me a nice pastel blue glow. Dipping the head into white, then the clear with UV, gives an even brighter effect as the white also helps to reflect. I get a lavender type of glow. Down underwater, the lure still receives UV light, and the visible light is diminished, and I get a lure that glows.

Many really good fishermen swear by UV enhancements, and many of our bait manufacturers add some in without revealing that on the package. They want our eye appeal and they get it with UV enhancement. My wife has an antique collection of dishes called Uranium glassware and that stuff glows with UV light. They are not for eating though, just for looking through.

So experimenting with that glow powder I mentioned to you previously, and with UV powders, your jigs can present differently underwater. They can become more visible in certain circumstances. These are not super cure all effects by any means, but think of them as an enhancement of your presentations. Both will work better than plain paint in some instances, and in others maybe not as well, and still in others nothing much will make a difference.

The main thing I want to get to you is to have some fun while you play around, I mean do serious experimentation and stuff. Read about UV light some and try to get a better understanding of how and why fish use it. Knowing more about your prey item makes you a more efficient predator.

Let us kind of follow along with your experiments, too. My stuff is boring, but yours may excite the collective. Grumpy has already done all of this stuff, and so he probably finds it boring, but others like you and I would have benefitted greatly from what he discovered so long ago. Just follow along asking questions and trying to understand stuff and then one day you will have your very own style, and that will make all the difference.


Oh and applying Slab Sauce to your baits will make them much more appealing. I strongly suggest that you order some from our store here. Look for the dropper bottle not the regular bottle. Easier to apply without making a God awful mess of everything.

[DeadlyDan]

Thanks Micanopy for the detailed info. Will read this reply more than once, there is a lot to digest. This information id very interesting to me.

BTW - I have 4 bottles of Slab Sauce. Use it all the time. I put it on a small eye drop bottle and apply a a dot or two at a time. IMO the spray wasted too much.

[Jamesdean]

Micanopy, very interesting read for sure. I, like Deadly Dan will have to go back and reread it a few times, as well as go back through previous writings and read up on this stuff. your adding that UV enhancement to powder paint, your clear, so I'm assuming it's powder. Hmmm, I'm wondering if it can be mixed with resin before curing...??? It's a thought that will have to be tried. Great read, lots and lots of info. Thank you for the ride, and read.

[Micanopy]

I have these jigs out on my deck just now. Admiring them. As the sky grows darker, they glow brighter. I think they look like they have LED lights attached, not rhinestones. They glow wonderfully well. Several levels above my best powder paints for sure. Bright bright dot against a dark jig body. The dot becomes the focal point, out front leading the way. Very nice effect.

ETSY has a seller that has an even better price than the woman I originally mentioned.

RocKing Rhinestones - look around at his stuff. Offers discounts for larger orders and free shipping if you order the minimum, which isn’t a whole lot to begin with.

The smaller the diameter the less they cost. They have a system for measuring gems.

SS-20 is 5 mm
SS-30 is 6.3 mm

They go as small as 2 mm.

Go in with a buddy and still get 500 of them. LOL

Some have HotFix adhesive and you place a pen-like tool over the gem and the glue on the bottom surface flows and when it cools provides a hot glue-like stick. Avoid those. Get the non hot back as the glue will not work for you.

The gem is clear, with a covering over the bottom. This covering provides all the color, to a clear stone. Like a mirror, you can scrape the back clean and steal the color away.

I like resins, glass, foils, mermaids, neon and several others. The neons will glow the best, and the foils will look the coolest in regular light. $50 gets you more than you will ever use in a lifetime. I like them better than the eyes I make, which are better than the eyes you can buy.

I am sending Deadly a pack of my creations, plus some of my older designs I posted up about here, but before he began reading. He will be a total disaster in no time. LOL. His friends will mumble behind his back. He will spend countless hours laying in bed wondering what-if and how-could ideas. Tossing, turning. He will day dream about jigs, and we…… well we will get to gawk at him.

Surely he will publish as he goes.

[Jamesdean]

Thank you for the info Micanopy...I will for sure be looking at them...