# Stubbydude style try



## plugman (Jul 15, 2008)

Tried making a few more baits this week, a couple stubbydude style baits and another small swimmer. With a few helpful tips from Vince, I was on my way.

The swimmer on top is about 3.5" long. It pivots nicely at the head of the bait, but it wants to drift to the right a bit when it's being retrieved. The middle one is made of 3/8" stock, 6" long and a strong 1 1/8" tall. I put a few small splitshot along it's belly to make it sit so that the back of the bait just breaks the water's surface. It has a small rounded lip. It swam with a nice tight wiggle several feet down. I think it's going to make a great herring/smelt bait. The third one is patterned after Vince's Stubbydude, 5/8" stock, 6 1/2" long and 1 5/8" tall, no belly weights with 4/0 VMC 4X hooks. I put a larger/wider rounded lip on it. It sat taller in the water, slightly tail down. Now I know what a nice wobble/roll looks like. It has pogie written all over it! It swims with an incredilbe wake and can be teased to swim slightly sub-surface. I'm torn as to whether to put a few split shot in it's belly up toward the nose to level it out and to get it to swim a bit deeper.


----------



## vc1111 (Apr 13, 2004)

Those are outstanding, Plugman! I've always found that the trickiest part is coming up with the right type lip and placing it in the "sweet spot" on the lure.

Looks like you figured that out right out of the gate. The rounder one is particularly interesting to me.


----------



## plugman (Jul 15, 2008)

There are some incredible examples of work here to study and that helps immensely. What's really interesting for me is to begin to see which body profiles and lip combinations do what in real time, as I have no clue what to expect at the moment. Each one is an adventure! Finding the sweet spot for each lure/lip will take more time, I'm sure. 

I spent the day in the basement whacking away some more. A couple pikie bodies, several jointed swimmers and more "Dudes", as I'm beginning to affectionately call them. I'm going to try upping the width of the body next (keeping the same length) and shift to cutting some metal lips so I can mess with lip angles/profiles more. I have a theory/hypothesis on lip size vs current flow I'd like to try out and the metal lips will make that easier to do. I was testing this weekend in a fairly gentle flow as the moon cycle right now was not conducive to very big tides. By next weekend, with the full moon, there will be bigger tides and more flow. The rounder body tended to roll out as I began to reel it in quickly (hence the split shot theory to help pin the nose down), so I want to try a narrower lip profile to see what happens with more current. Or it might work better as a jerk bait then? Part of the answer may lie in the lip size and angle on the skinnier bait. We'll see....

Cheers,
Plugman


----------



## vc1111 (Apr 13, 2004)

> I'm going to try upping the width of the body next (keeping the same length


Now you're entering the Twilight Zone where the physics get interesting. The math is no longer linear in this zone. But I'll tell you what, you get it right, and the baits can be real fish catching machines. 

I hooked (but lost) another pig on the original prototype Stubbydude yesterday on Pymatuning.


----------



## plugman (Jul 15, 2008)

Physics???? Uh oh.... 
I'll stick with eyeball design.
I like flying blind.


----------

