Crazy Ike

Here's another wiggler. This one modeled after my favorite bass lure. When I was a whipper snapper. The Lazy Ike. The diving bill on this one is made from spawn sack mesh and UV glue, molded on top of a soft transparent plastic materials pouch. Shine the UV LED flashlight from above. Then from below. The only hard part is holding the light from below without looking into the light. Then trim the bill to shape with scissors and toenail clippers. This one is relatively small. Made for a #10 hopper hook.

Crazy Ike

Someone asked me about dimensions. This is a drawing I made for the Lazy-Ike-Like lure. It's not the only way. But this does work for me. It helps to make the bill way too big. Then tune it with a toe nail clipper and a bath tub. Also where in the bill you make a hole for the leader matters a lot. Low down on the bill makes a deeper diver with a tight high-speed wobble. High up on the bill makes a shallower diver with a wide slow-motion wobble. The weight of bead changes action too. Making flures that work is a lot of work. I like making them and boy they sure do work. So for me the time and effort isn't an issue. I do my best to keep it simple, with glue plastic foam. And feathers, etc. I don't make hard-bodied lures with paint jobs. But I do admire them.

I love this forum. You could get tarred and feathered and then burned at the stake for even talking about this stuff in other venues. I like lures and I like fly rods. And here the two sometimes meet. beyondpoppers' lures are very cool too.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWvaOAA5LxA&ab_channel=ColinPittendrigh

Just finished tuning a new batch of wigglers. They're ragged and don't look like a consumer product you'd buy at the store. But they sure do work well. Every one of them. I'm starting to get the hang of this. Polishing their appearance would be the last and most important step from a marketing point of view. But not from a fishing point of view. Fish don't care about beautiful. The tails are stuck together on a few of these only because they're still wet. Fresh back from the testing tub.

They all sink at rest--somewhat like a Countdown Rapala--but they're a lot lighter. My local fly shops all sell big Conehead Woolly Buggers that are heavier than these. Some sink faster than others. I never really know exactly what I'm going to get until I'm finished tuning it. These are all tuned for moving water rather than still. For still water I would have left the bills a bit wider.

On a few of these I experimented with flattened solder for the weight. It took a little more effort to get those tuned. Beads are better because the weight effects the wiggle. So it's more flexible at the tuning stage to be able to

1) trim the bill with scissors or toe nail clippers (if the flure tracks to the right trim the left side of the bill)

2) change the position of the leader exit hole (lower down dives more but wiggles less and versa visa)

3) change the weight up front by changing bead size.



Trying to describe a step-by-step in words would be difficult. But I also spent the last few days setting up a mini-closeup video studio. I've got my fingers crossed--that I'll be able to figure the video puzzle out. The pie slice of fly fishermen who will want to make these is probably small. But if I scale the weight up with more foam and more weight proportionately these should be an interesting development for the hardware guys, because these lures are a lot faster and easier to make than hand carved wooden plugs. I'm not denigrating wooden plug making. Hand carved and hand painted wooden plugs are an art form, as many here on this forum prove repeatedly. But these guys are fast by comparison.

Right now I'm at about 10 minutes start to finish for each one for the making. And another five minutes or so for the tuning. That's more time than a typical fly. But a heck of a lot less time than a traditional hand made crankbait.

With a little tubing built into the underside of a much bigger and heavier plug it wouldn't be hard to trail a treble hook off the rear end. That's not really my thing. But it might be for the wide wide world of hardware fishermen. This will be interesting.

Fly Rod Flure Summary

I'll add another photo at some point. I've definitely learned something and I also think I'm onto something hot. Hot as a pistol. This feels like a throbbing bent rod to me.

I don't know much about bass fishing. I did it as a kid in New Jersey and then moved West and never looked back. Most bass lures float at rest and dive only upon steady retrieve. Some, like Countdown Rapalas sink a little. But not much. You've got to count a long time before they go very far. West Coast Steelheaders pull plugs with large-billed "Hot Shots" that dive well. But they too float at rest. They require an oarsman in a big drift boat to pull back hard on the oars so the downstream current pulls a big lure down. Wiggling as it goes. In that sense, among plug pullers it's the oarsman who's doing most of the fishing.

When I make my flures I (still) never know exactly what I'm going to get. About half of my efforts work right off the vise. Half need considerable tuning in the bath tub. I mentioned a bullet list of tuning techniques above. When I'm done some of my efforts wiggle widely. Some wiggle with a more tight vibration. Some dive better than others. Some dive like daemons but don't wiggle much. Some don't wiggle at all but dive and dart left and right, veering off on long high speed tangents. All are valuable.
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The one trait they all share is sink. They all sink quickly even at rest, because that's what I want. I make them that way. That's what works best for fishing in rivers while wading, walking standing and casting. And for casting toward holding spots from a moving drift boat. Because my flures sink I can cast them upstream and let them drift, gaining depth as they go. Once they get even a bit downstream they begin to move and at that point they still hold their depth--rather than shooting right back up to the surface, as most downstream wet flies do as your line straightens out. And when I'm casting from the front of a moving drift boat, usually casting a bank side holding spots or mid-river seams, they don't shoot back up to the surface when I strip them in.

This is something you cannot buy. There is no sinks-even-at-rest diving wiggling or darting flure for sale anywhere in the world. They're powerful fish-catching machines and the only way to get them is to make them yourself. Floating fly rod divers are for sale. You can still buy small #1 and #2 Flat Fish. But those are floating divers that never gain much depth and they're not easy to cast. Castable diving fly rod wigglers, that sink even at rest you have to make. There is no other way.

The ability to put action on a small streamer-like fly WITHOUT immediately pulling it right back up to the surface is lighting in a bottle. These really are fish-catching little machines. I have access to a small private section of a famous Spring Creek. I won't say where for obvious reasons and I'm not the only one allowed to fish there. Traditional fly fishing is often fabulous there during peak mid-summer hatching events. And in the evenings too. There are some giant fish in that tiny little creek. But in the late afternoons when the bugs aren't hatching or in the Fall when the season's bug events are long gone traditional match-the-hatch fly fishing techniques will leave you empty handed and frustrated.

During those midday slow times, however, I can still wack'em. Big time. With small (very small) down and across streamers. And even better yet with tiny wigglers. Small spring creek wigglers are like a fly fisherman's Kentucky Moonshine on a Friday night. Halford's Ghost