Day of the Zonker

I was sitting around waiting for the Bronco's to play at 2:30 pm MT and decided to do some prep work for this seasons Transformer spinners.

Here's a few pictures from this mornings industry - Hiding hooks with industry..

Setup - Skirt tool, Skirt bands, Zonker hides, #6 3x trebles, Hair cut shears

I found that a fly tying scissors just didn't cut it. Some of the Magnum strips off a old buck rabbit's neck can be mighty tough! I use the heavier shears, to get quicker cleaner cuts.

The skirt tool is a handy and inexpensive addition to any tackle junkies tool arsenal. Skirt bands have other interesting uses as well. I use them on open loop spinner baits to keep the leader from slipping up out of the loop. Even started putting them on some of the new display pegs during transport.

In this application, the tool provides a quick attachment of the zonker to the hook and avoids hundreds of wraps, half hitches and a good amount of buck hair aggravation!

Slide the bands over the needle nose, remove it and ready for action

Snip, Snip, Snip goes the scissors and pinch the 1 inch zonker into the three treble troughs

Use a twisting slide into the sleeve to get the zonker to behave. Then  'carefully' push a band  off the tube over the zonker

They bushel quick. You'll likely do some trimming above the zonker when it comes time to put them on a spinner.

Blaze Orange zonker banded treble hooks

Red ones

Crayfish 

Fluorescent Yellow

Plenty more to make

Fun, Fun, Fun

And some tri-colors

Anyways, I put a small buck tail from a batch Ben tied on the first prototypes and really liked the drag a dressed hook provided in combination with the June Bug blade. The first few were twisted on.

At first, I was going to use buck tails to dress them out, but tying them for smaller spinners was tedious and they're expensive to buy. I still use buck tail on some of larger spinners.

Tying for your own use, in small numbers, no problem. You can definitely get some awesome custom multi-color buck tails in your favorite colors if you tie your own.

Small steps and incremental cost improvements.

The prototypes turned the corner from tied bucktail to banded zonker. Because the zonker had such variety on color choices, I decided to use the slip R bend on the treble hook to enable swaps on the colors and hook replacement as needed. You can also substitute single hooks for trebles, add weedless hooks or barbless, depending on regulations on your favorite waters.

Here's a few pictures of the Transformers as being sold around the country today.

Here's a link to the Medium Spinners category web page 

FCS Medium Spinners page

and the Transformer web store detail for more pictures June Bug Transformers

The Bronco's won. Cheers and Happy New Year!

1/5oz Armadillo seeks Angling Adventure

Enjoys time in water and resting on rod guides.
I'm attached to knots and swivels and really love pictures with fish.

Attracted to fishermen that like to walk along the water, enjoy nature and aren't afraid to get their feet wet.

I'm noisy, but hey, a little friction is good, right?

1/5oz Glass Armadillo multi-species fishing spinner - put some on your line!

The 1/5oz Glass Armadillo is a newer design, first built in 2011. Lots of color choices are provided.

It uses faceted glass body beads and is highly reflective on sunny days in clear waters. Fish notice and chase these glass spinners. Fish Creek Spinners 1/5oz Glass Armadillos use #5 Fluted Indiana blades. Friction discs protect the glass beads and contact the fluted blades during rotation, causing noise and vibration. Check the underside of the blade after a period of use, and you'll notice the contact wear lines match the disc spacing, regardless of no contact at rest.

These spinners catch all species of trout, and any fish that strikes spinners.

You can listen to the sound differences between Glass and Metal Armadillos on the Noise page. Scroll down to find the Glass Armadillo.

FCS Angler Interface - New Look and Feel

Website traffic has slowed down, page rank took a dive, and Google's been tweeking the index algorithms. Time to rethink the web site format. 

A word to the wise - refresh your cache to pick up changes.

I've always known I had too much info on a page. The whole 'above the fold' deal. Most of the good stuff was not visible on entry - hidden treasures never seen.

With this as marching orders, the web site content and navigation has changed and will be changing again as my inclination rises to the challenge.

In doing so, I think it's worth some time to point out what's changed with some pictures and a few words.

Here's a collection of screenshots with high lights noted by red circles and limited descriptive text.

I hope it's interesting and helpful. Regardless, I still feel compelled to write it down. Persistence is a virtue, right?

First the Home Page

Fish Creek Spinners Home page

Now the high lights

Promotion box Alert shows active promotion codes available in the store. Launches the info when you click it.

Mouseover Pop Ups - larger pictures with short text descriptions and fish caught on each model. Slide the mouse over the spinner grids and see larger images. You'll need to have pop ups enabled to use this function. If it bothers you (and it might be a little too much), turn on the pop up blocker on your browser when you see them show up.

Fish Creek Spinners Home page Mouseover Pop ups

New pages listed by size and new individual model pages. The size page summarizes each model, the individual pages have links into that model in the web store, and grids showing fish pictures by model.

Fish Creek Spinners Small Spinner category page

When a size category page launches, the spinners models for the category will be listed in on the left side navigation stack.

Spinner model Detail page

Each Spinner Model has detail page (or will once I'm finished). Each model has a description and a grid showing a picture, with fish species pictures returned by FCS customers. Each small picture can be clicked to expand it picture on the upper right side. The left side picture has a link to the model in the web store.

Fish Creek Spinners Nitromite model detail page

Medium sized models category page

The size category's models are listed for selection in the left navigation stack. Each size category page has a grid at the top with it's primary models pictures. Each picture has a mouseover pop up that expands into a larger photo. The pop up blocker needs to be disabled if you wish to see these. 

Fish Creek Spinners Medium size model category page

Metal Armadillo Medium Spinner detail page

 A grid with each spinners picture and fish photo's caught on the model and links into the web store; one as text and one on the upper right spinner picture.

Fish Creek Spinners Medium size model category page

Large Spinner size category model page

By now you've figured out each Model category and each Model detail pages have similar formats, and I'm about done. Oh yeah, one more thing.

Fish Creek Spinners Large size Category Page

Need picture link

Fish Creek Spinners Need A Picture challenge

If you come across entries in the model detail pages that are text only, these link to the Fish Photo page that describes how you can get free spinners by sending in fish pictures caught on Fish Creek Spinners. Think about it...

That's about all I have to help describe the new website changes. We still have the fish species pages and pages on type classes of tackle - Spinnerbaits, Walleye bait rigs, and trolling cowbells. Either on the home page navigation or on the left navigation in the web store.

Hmmm, one last comment. Because content is changing frequently, your launch may not look like these because an older version is being selected from your browser cache. I suggest doing a browser refresh to rebuild the cache and pick up new content changes.

Here's a link to get you started - Fish Creek Spinners home page

This got pretty big and I still have to do the document the web store, oh well, think that will be  another post. 

Cheers and Merry Christmas!

Seasons Greetings!

Seasons Greetings from Fish Creek Spinners!

and a Happy New Year to all of you

From all of us!