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Topwater Caranx Ignobilis: Giant Trevally (GT) => Tackle & Techniques => Topic started by: Angus Hulme on June 03, 2008, 02:42:28 PM
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Can someone tell me why a lot of the medium to large GT poppers have a weight in the tail? Is it to aid in casting distance and trajectory, or is it to make the lure sit tail down in the water at rest? Or does it improve the lures action?
The reason I ask this question is because I am starting to make a few poppers for a Whitsunday trip later in the year, and I don't know whether to incorporate the tail weights or not. We will be running braid no heavier than 60 pound so I assume casting distance won't be a problem whatever weight the poppers will be.
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nobody got any ideas? :-\
The small poppers I've made in the past have had no weight in the tail and they sit flatter on the water as a result. Would a lure that sits flatter on the water be more realistic or would it not really matter?
Thanks in advance guys
Cheers
Angus
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In my opinion it helps for casting distance and when ripping the popper through the water to stop it cartwheeling . WHen sitting still in the water, the heavier rear means that the popper sits more vertically so when you pull, the cup digs in rather than skittering giving you a bigger bloop....my thoughts only though....
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Andrew is right - it is for balancing. The weight at the tail helps when casting as it prevents spinning in the air and when retrieving, it perovides that weight to assist you in getting a bloop than cartwheeling or pulling the lures completely out of the water.
The right weight in the rear is very important in ensuring the lure works effectively.
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thanks fellas, your responses are much appreciated. I will now set to work creating poppers with the tail weights incorporated.
I tried to scan the 1st lure I've made with this method, but it didn't work too well. The timber body of this lure is about 5-6 inches long, and then a couple of inches of tail dressing will make it look bigger than it really is. Hope that will work.
Cheers
Angus
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How many grams is your popper?
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wouldn't have a clue Andrew....I don't have any scales to weigh the lures. What would you suggest would be about right if I want to fish 50 pound braid? Or is it the rod that defines what the lure weight should be? In that case, I'll probably be using a 15-24kg T-curve.
Thanks
Angus
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The rod defines which lure I use. On the heavier outfits you cant cast the light lures or work them correctly, and on the light outfits the same occurs if it is overloaded.
Halcos (the medium size) weigh in at about 60grams or so, the haymaker at 110g I think.
The T curve 15-24kg has a casting weight range of 40-100grams. Im not sure what the best weight is for that rod, but would guess somewhere in the midrange of 60-70g wold let you load the rod up and cast effectively.
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G'day fellas,
further to the above discussion.......below are some lures I have constructed with the use of my wood lathe. Feel free to comment on whether these should catch GTs. I have done extensive pool testing and a little bit of open water casting just to see what actions will suit each lure. They look pretty good at low and high speed, and the fizz and bloop is there in large doses, which I assume is what the GTs want?
Also, I have thrown some VMC 3x extra strong trebles on them and wonder if they will be up to the task. I plan to use about 50 pound braid so figured that the more expensive Owner trebles were a bit over the top at this stage, but honestly, I'm open to suggestions. Would single hooks be worth thinking about, and if so, what would be your recommendations?
Thanks
Angus
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Wow, they look really good ! Nice job there..I'm definitely not posting up a pic of my home made skipping popper....
Im not a GT expert , but most of the guys upgrade their terminals to some of the Owner ST66 type trebles which are alot stronger, or use singles like jobu's and sj41's etc. Im not sure if the VMCs are up to the task.
What strength wire is put through the popper? Do you know the rough weight of them ?
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Hi Andrew, thanks for the comments. I have found a welding supplier who sells 1 metre lengths of 316 stainless wire in either 1.2 or 1.6 mm gauge. With this batch of lures, I have used the 1.2 mm stuff, but I wonder whether I should upgrade next time to the 1.6 mm wire? Don't know whether big fish could rip open the eyelets or bend the wire to a fatigue situation with the lighter wire, but the problem is that the heavier wire will be harder to bend and work into loops and stuff.
I don't really know how heavy the lures are but would guess around 100 grams. The timber I used was pencil cedar, which is light, but pretty tight grained. My next batch will be heavier as they will have several coats of 2 part epoxy resin.
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100 grams is a good weight for all round use, though the larger poppers come in at 150-200grams.
I have no idea how strong that wire is...best bet is to tie one end to rope that you hold onto, the other to a scale tied off to something solid and have someone see what the needle hits when you give it a yank and apply solid pressure. Drag settings I would guess would be up to 15kg for large GTs that I have read, but the spike from the hit will be more . So if the lures can survive that then you have a good chance.I cant comment to much on overall pressures with GTs, but hopefully the others have more knowledge on that.
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Angus - Great work mate, very cool to see some home made lures...
As a newbie and very keen wood turner, I just inherited a pretty serious lathe from my old man who passed away recently was a serious turner, I would love to see a step by step of your process as I too am very keen to get into making my own poppers and stickbaits on the lathe, especially considering the prices of commercial lures and the sate of the South African currency.....
Any chance you could shoot a step by step on your process of building?
Cheers and congrats on some fine looking poppers..
Andre
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Hi Andre, glad you like them mate. The interesting thing is that I am a genuine newbie myself, and the modest level I have got to with lure turning has been through self-taught result of trial and error (lots of the error part!). So I don't know if I would be the man to guide anyone.....It would be a case of the blind leading the blind. ;) I am still very much in experimentation mode myself, particularly with the sealing and clear coating stages.
Also, i don't have a digital camera (pics above were taken on a borrowed camera), so couldn't really take pics as I went through the process, and regarding these lure-making techniques, a picture really is worth a thousand words.
Anyway, I will say that it sounds like you have inherited a fine piece of wood working machinery from your old man (sorry to hear of your loss there Andre....that's never easy), so it would be remiss of you not to learn how to use the lathe, especially if it saves you a buck or 50! Plus, the pleasure of tempting fish into eating one's own creations is a pretty big motivator personally. I have had 2 homemade lures eaten by big GT's, and while neither fish was landed due to inadequate tackle combinations, the seed of excitement was planted when the bucket mouth inhaled that 1st hand carved offering. :)
I could try an explain what I do in the manufacturing process, but it wouldn't be nearly as helpful without accompanying photos. But I'm happy to help if I can.
Thanks mate
Angus
PS. Andrew, good tip there on the scale tests.....have been trying to work out how to test the strength of the wire and connections. I could do a few 'surge' tests as well, to see if the sudden pressure makes any difference too. :-\ Thanks mate.
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Hi Angus,
Thanks so much for your reply mate, and great to hear that you just took the bull by the horns so to speak, and just went ahead with trial and error to get some really great results...
As two fairly new turners, I'd like to stay in touch and perhaps together we can share results and insights and techniques... two heads are always better than one so they say...
But unfortunately, my lathe is not with me at the moment.... I still have to get back up to my folks house and go through and catalouge my Dad's work shop and then ship everything down here... Thankfully the old man was meticulous about everything, so it should make the job a little easier, despite the emotional side of things...
I've spent a fair amount of time on the lathe, especially over the last 6 months before my old man succumbed finally to cancer ( Sunscreen people, its more important than fishing hooks!!! ) so I have a fair knowledge of turning and I turned a few rough stickbait bodies which I need to finish....
But I will hopefully have the lathe set up here in a few months time and get cracking into the late hours of the night on some poppers and stick baits.... having grown up a fly fisherman, tying my own flies and have big fish eat the, I really love that feeling of catching on a self made creation... my biggest GT on fly was a 32 kilo Seychelles beast taken on the flats on a self tied fly... great feeling and would love to replicate that with a popper...
Will stay in touch and keep the developments and resluts coming...
Thanks for your time,
Andre
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Oh hell,keep spooner away from that lathe can just emagine what popper he would desighn.have a few nylon profiles for poppers i made for guys at bassas you can get them if you keen worked deadly
cheers mark
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Mark - Must defintely pop round and see you before I go to Baz.... the trip is up in the air right now as I can't seem to change my ticket back from the UK as the flighst are all CHOKKA BLOCK and the Baz dates have moved a week early.... right now I'm just hoping and trying to scramble a open seat.. hold thumbs!
As to Spooner getting near a lathe.... the poppers would have horns and teeth and talons probably if that hooligan had anything to say about it!!!! ;D
I'll chat to ya later today,
Cheers
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Angus,
The pic of the three poppers you posted, I can see the middle one dying around a fusilier school!
The tail weight is for balance.
Balance to prevent tumbling 'in flight' during a cast.
Balance to prevent the lure tumbling when ripping it to make it bloop.
Also, the shape of the lure + the angle at which is sits in the water 'statically' can affect how well it will 'pop'.
I'd go for around 45 degrees fully rigged with rings & hooks, though some shapes have a hydrodynamic effect that can make them freaks!
Play in the pool...play with the G's...they're your customers!!!
I even mucked around years ago with heavy gal wire run up through hypalon with an appropriate ball sinker as 'ballast.
The fish loved them more than I did...it was the 'pre-braid' 10kg mono days....not the best thing to use on Break Sea Spit!!!!
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G'day Aaron, thanks for that mate, yeah I specifically painted that one to represent a fusilier. Where we go each year in the Whitsundays, the schools of vivid-blue coloured fusiliers with the bright yellow tails are normally prominent, so my rocket science degree tells me these will be the areas to throw the lure. ;) All the big spaniards we've caught, have come off these fusilier schools, so it follows that the GTs will be close by too? I hope so, anyway.
My next test will be to come up with a more convincing finishing scheme (kind of like the Nomad/Blackjack lures, but I'll never get that good!). This will involve some sort of holographic foil, which I have tracked down. It's fiddly but will be worth it if i can get it right.
Yeah, I am starting to get a better grasp on how the lures should be weighted. Backing off the tail weight just a bit should bring that resting angle to about 45 degrees i think. Good tips mate.
Cheers
Angus
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Angus,
No problems! Glad to help.
You are right about the fusiliers. The G's love them with a passion!
Having spent a fair bit of time wide of the Whitsundays to the Ribbons of Cooktown,once you found fusiliers, you found fish.
The lures that were colourd more to represent a fusilier got knocked off more regularly, especially if the water wasn't 'soup'.
In 'soup' that occurs around the spring tides, colour wasn't as important as contrast.
Also, stick to wood as the main buiding material. Some of the Japanese stuff is pretty rare, though it has the best bouyancy and wear n tear characteristics for a guy building stuff on a lathe at home.
The wood to use...is the wood you can get and afford! Though I'd advise against balsa unless you are willing to 'layer' the heck out of it to have the layers grains oppose each other...it's a very time consuming process which is avoided by even using cedars or beech...let alone 'exotics'.
Queensland Sassafras anyone??
Aaron.
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The wood to use...is the wood you can get and afford!
too right, I have learned this fact very quickly Aaron. Some timbers seem to blunt the tools in a flash, while others that are softer, tend to splinter and not sand very well. It is part of the extensive learning curve I suppose. :-\ And the better known carving timbers like beech and jelutong seem impossible to find. The best I've found thus far is pencil cedar, which might actually not even be a true cedar. Confusing for a newbie, i tell ya!
Will keep those colour suggestions of yours in mind too, I know that when the big tides are running around the islands, the water can turn milky pretty quickly, due to runoff from the fine sand/mud flats nearby. The main thing for me will be to have a wide range of lure colours on hand at all times. :)