Factory Vs Homemade

Questions about Making Your Own Lures

Factory Vs Homemade

Postby bassfighter1 » Sat Jul 26, 2014 10:09 pm

Hey Larry,Which Whopper Plopper Do You Like Useng The Factory Version Or The Homemade Version And What Gave You The Inspiration To Make It.
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Re: Factory Vs Homemade

Postby dahlberg » Sun Jul 27, 2014 8:18 am

I like them both. Factory version casts farther, homemade floats a little higher. Both catch fish the same.
When I was a kid we used a lure called a MudPuppy that had a rotating tail. The "body" of the tail was a buoyant wood but the tail itself was made of soft thin metal and was imbedded into a slot. The way it came pre bent from the factory it made a flip flip kind of sound. I found that by bending it a certain way I could get a more hollow pop sound and it caught significantly more fish. The problem was the tail having both a slot and hole bored thru it, plus two pins to hold the metal, was very vulnerable to cracking. Not to mention would change its' as repeated casting and landing, hitting objects or getting bit would bend the metal.
I'd written to the company about getting repair parts and got no reply. So, I continued to repair broken tails which had been discarded by my dad and began to experiment by pulling the metal out farther from the slot and found that increasing the surface area slightly make a big difference. I was about 12 years old.
Turn the clock ahead about 40 years or so. I meet a young very talented angler named Josh Stevenson. He loves throwing topwater and at that time fished mostly creepers and topraiders. We fished together for his fish and hit it off.
I say to him,"Josh, long ago I did quite an extensive study of plopper type lures and I have some ideas and have been thinking for several years about making one. I have some 80 durometer rubber that should make a perfect tail. So I made a couple with about 5x the surface area of the original mudpuppy and cast the shape so it would make a big plop rather than a small plip, and the next day and gave him one. I made it out of skulpy molded around a hollow brass tube. I pretty much knew what I wanted and the first shape came out perfect. Made a mold from hs3 for the tail and body using a zig zag lure as a master that happened to be the same diameter as a tea bottle cap which I used to center the hardware.
We caught 43 muskies on it in the next thirty days or so. Some of them were on tape and we recorded it and it got on TV.
That's about it.
talked to chris and bobby lane the bass guys at icast. they are absolutely crushing big largemouth on it.
best
L
Larry Dahlberg
The Hunt For Big Fish
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