Dressing up Spinnerbaits

Once upon a time, I added a stinger to a zonker spinnerbait and good things happened. The outcome took me by surprise and ever since, I've been contemplating other ways to change things up and add flexibility.

I believe my spinnerbait success with big trout in fast water chutes were because the stinger had a white pvc tube that had an enticing side to side motion while the spinnerbait's weight and action hovered in the strong current.

Big fish lurking in the oxygen rich current took notice and came out to get it. This started me thinking deep thoughts.

Although that example was with 1oz zonker bait, I wanted something that could work on the big guns - the 2oz+ closed loop spinnerbaits - suitable for Muskie and Saltwater species. Also the bigger muskie and Salmon spinners that used the same silicon skirts.

I came up with a 35# cable attached bucktail and then decided to pimp it out with a spinner blade and a couple beads. Here's a few lined up for inspection.

Bucktail Skirt Chasers

The first adaptations were cable connected with pressed sleeves and were there to stay. That seemed like a decent idea, until I wanted to swap out a skirt.

The same dilema occurred on the big spinners. I needed a way to swap skirts - either by preference or because of wear. Big fish teeth are tough on silicon. I had to make the stingers removable in order to change a skirt. Eureka! If they were removable, they became accessories you could remove, change or swap out.

To make them removable I had two choices - splitrings or something else. Splitrings were the most apparent choice, but splitrings can be a pain, literally - when using them with sharp hooks in cramped quarters, you can pierce a finger or thumb. I opted for duolock clasps.

I've started using them for hook attachments on the big spinners as well.

This has several advantages. First you can swap out hooks based on your preference. Next, you can remove the duolock and now change silicon skirts on the big spinners and spinnerbaits with little difficulty. Finally, if you need to cut loose a hook on a stressed out fish, you can easily cut the duolock.

Removing a hook from a splitring or cutting a big treble is tricky, cutting a duolock is less hectic.

Notice the example above went a step further and uses a .041in short shaft wire between the duolock and treble. The wire connector can be cut and avoid messing with the duolock.

The juries still out on their performance but I'm pretty stoked with the improvement and its resulting flexibility. Suddenly, you can easily accessorize and tranform both the spinners and spinnerbaits with changible extensions using duolock clasps. Open, Swap, Close. Fresh new look.

Granted these are big baits for big species and at the moment I haven't tried to adapt the idea on smaller tackle, but stay tuned.

Here's a few pictures. Mix and match parts scattered around the table. 1oz Double blade spinner in the center. Skirts, hooks, blades, bucktails and skirt chasers ring the center.

Because the spinner didn't have a permanent hook attachment, I was able to slide a new skirt over the tail loop and skirt mount without any problem.

Now added the duolock clasp to finish hooking the spinner up.

Added a #2/0 treble and a skirt chaser and closed the duolock.

Changed my mind and put a different stinger on it.

Here's a video using a spinnerbait in a similar build and transform operation.

Pretty easy to interchange parts to get new interesting looking creations - FrankenSpinners!

Ben and I will be fishing these to get the kinks out of them, but I expect I'll put a few out in the webstore afterwards.

Stop by Fish Creek Spinners Web Store and checkout it's new format!

I'm interested in your comments and observations if using duolock clasps for other purposes. Feel free to comment to blog or drop me an email to fishcreekspinners@gmail.com