6" Minnow bait, Which action do you like better

[Anzomcik]

I am experimenting with the tie point location on the minnow baits I make. I have been making crank baits for personal use for years, so i make them run how i would like them to run. These baits will be made for the public, so I am looking for public opinions.

These baits are coming out of my production molds, So the blanks will be the same. For anyone who has made a crank bait tie point location can make a huge difference in how the bait will run. There is always a trade off, as you can see in these videos.

In the two videos it is the same bait, i put in two tie points on this blank. These videos were shot in HD so for a clearer video turn up the resolution, bottom right corner of the video.

This was trolled at 3mph, while i did not spend alot of time "tuneing" the bait because i felt it ran well enough for everyone to see the action it trolled. What isnt on the video is this bait "twitched" well when casted. I have played with this bait on an earlier trip and when tuned correct it trolls 5mph well and starts to wonder at that speed as well, then 5.5 it will blow out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTQ6cStcY8s&hd=1



On the other tie point, the bait was not able to run at 3mph, so I backed it off to 2.5mph (at the end of the video i did speed up to almost 3 but it was getting to much for the bait to handle) This setting does not "twitch" well at all because of the long throw of the side to side motion, but looks deadly when slow cranked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufRzzcY0CcQ&hd=1


My question to everyone, which action do you prefer, and why? I think there is a good mix of trollers and casters in this forum. I am looking for feed back so I can have a good direction to get my tooling set up.

Do you like wide slow wobbles, or a faster tighter crank. Thanks

[allegheny river kid]

I like the looks of both of them, personally i like the 2nd a little more then the 1st. It looks like it would be a good bait worked slowly and steadily in cooler water but still have the action to get bit..

[OutdoorEd]

Either one should produce a strike, great action on both. I liked the faster action with less side to side movement. My personal opinon for muskie action.:)

[lowbidder]

To answer the question, I like the slow wobble.

I think it would be cool if you could come up with a way to incorporate both tie points so that the customer could choose how they wanted to work the bait depending on the conditions. Is that possible?

[Anzomcik]

It is possible, but it is a nightmare to tune in. I talk in the post about trying this bait out in a previous outtting. In that trip i played with tuning in the upper tie point (the tight wiggle) It took alot of screwing around to get it to run right perfect, what i ended up doing was having to play with both tie points (this bait has two tie points)

When pulling the bait on the tight wobble tie point the wide wobble tie point acted like a small rudder, so it was a tweek here and a tweek there. I did get it to work but it was not easy. This was on my smaller minnow bait, my larger minnow bait might not be effected as much by the extra gear on its nose... give me some time to play, ill try to make it work.