After-Christmas Sales For Tying Materials

Keep your eyes open for bargains on tying materials from after-Christmas sales.  I found some fine tinsel to use as flashabou on small jigs and floral wire for tied-in weed guards.  A silver craft fur stocking will provide a lot of tail material for many crappie, trout, and bass jigs.

Spinnerbait Modification

Replaced my spinnerbait's crane swivel with a knurled screw clasp.  The clasp will allow me to change blades by replacing the threaded barrel section with another having a different blade attached to its split ring.  This gives me a quick change option for switching blades.

Three different sizes of Colorado blades, in gold and silver colors, are pictured above.  I plan to powder paint several more of them with additional colors and to add a few willow leaf blades to my set.

Spinnerbait

Materials:

•  Eagle Claw 249WA-3/0 Weedless Hook
•  Hammered-silver no. 3 Colorado blade, 2 split rings, and crane swivel
•  Coats & Clark Trilobal Polyester Machine Embroidery Thread 40-wt. - electric green
•  Caron Glimmer Chenille Yarn  - apple
•  Loctite Super Glue Gel
•  Bullet Weights Rubber Grip Sinker - 1/16 ounce
•  Clear Nail Polish
•  FeatherCraft FlyFishing 3/16" 3D Holo-Silver Eyes
•  Hareline Dubbin, Inc. Baitfish Emulator Flash - fluorescent chartreuse
•  Michaels Bright Wonder Beads - fluorescent yellow

Lizard

This one's 7.5 inches long. Perhaps a smaller one should be tied for smallmouth bass, of maybe 4-5 inches in length. I'm hopeful that its tail floats well. The combination of dumbbell with googly eyes provides similar advantages to fishing a lightweight football jig. This could be fished as a 'bed dragger' for some in largemouth bass circles.

Materials:

• Gamakatsu 02412 Octopus Hook 2/0
• UTC Ultra Thread 210 denier - red
• 7/32" dumbbell eyes - unpainted
• Googly eyes - 4 mm diameter
• Lion Brand Suede Yarn - olive
• Pony beads - olive shades
• Craft fur - olive gray
• Loctite Super Glue Gel - amazing stuff
• Clear nail polish
• 0.3 mm 7-strand beading wire for guard
• Elastic cord - black
• Latigo lace

Recent Ties In Between The Holidays

Here are some 1/8-ounce jigs I've tied recently for winter finesse fishing. Their trailers are made of suede leather with a 'chunk' portion consisting of sandwiched craft foam. I'm hoping to fish these soon as I've been successful with similar baits for cold weather largemouth bass.

The top jig is tied with craft fur. The other two are tied with kid goat hair, which I've never used before, and red flashabou. Kid goat hair is somewhat slick, but it's relatively soft and manageable. The combination of black and red colors (black neon) are popular in my area.

These are hair jigs tied with hair from deer hide (not cut from bucktail). Used a hair stacker for my first time to even the hairs prior to tying these. Their suede leather trailers will darken when wet and feature orange and brown foam chunks as well. I may add a touch of orange-colored glitter or fabric paint to their tips at a later time.

These are bucktails, with their hair cut from the base of the tail.

 More jigs tied with the hair from deer hide. I'm a fan of olive and red flake color.

 
This one's going to get a workout this spring. Its tail is very buoyant. I'll use a slip sinker or bull shot ahead of its eye to fish it.