Pumpkinseeds

I’ve been sneaking over to Foster before the sun gets up and the world is half tolerable for the last couple mornings to fish trout. Weds and Thrus both were fished with spinners and both of those days i caught a couple trout and a couple crappies. While unhooking the crappies on both days they spit out their last meal and it looked more like a winter meal than a summer one. Small pumpkinseed sunfish were the mainstays of the content that the fish spit our. By small, I am talking about sunnies about 2/3 to an inch in length. That got my plastic brain working and here’s what I came up with.

These guys were made by applying the orange plastic in the bottom of the belly cavity using a dip stick, then hand pouring the transparent belly color in using a modified spoon. The top color was shot in over the top after the blocks were closed. They are finished with the eyes and a clear top dip down to the start of the tail.

A similar bait was done a while back but only had a throat dot of orange and the belly color carries just a hint of yellow in these.

I hung one of these on a jig and made my short jaunty this am and had pretty decent luck on both the trout and the crappies. I only fished about 40 minutes today before the bugs and humidity chased me off the shore but in that time I managed 10 fish with one rainbow running right up to 19 inches.

By the time I got that bow landed it had 42 pounds of slop weeds added to the bulk on the end of the line. The reservoirs are getting almost impossible to fish without being ON the water. The trout were tough on my little plastic, tearing out one of the eyes, but it still can be fished. I’ll find out what the plastic’s limits are in the morning. lol

Those look incredible Tom. Have been able to get out and test them yet?

I did real well using one this morning. Bugs and humidity chased my butt home before I could wear the bait out.

Tom, I have seen many plastics you have made and posted on here you sell these things?
Brian

http://crappietomtackle.com/

Have you ever tried putting them in with gulp minnow fry or leeches to add some sent? Just curious to see if your plastic would hold up.

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Have you ever tried putting them in with gulp minnow fry or leeches to add some sent? Just curious to see if your plastic would hold up.

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Putting any plastic that is not water soluable in the gulp solution or any other doesn’t accomplish much.The pvc plastic used in plastic baits will not absorb the scent so any that does find its way to the water will simply rinse of in a cast or two.

Pretty nice baits Tom, ever think about putting a small bill on the bottom front to make them wobble, could you cut a piece of thin plastic and alter the mould to hold it, nice baits!

I have some of those add-on discs from Today’s Tackle that I have put on jigs to make them swim. They work, just not all the time or with all plastics. They would work nice with this one.

Tom ,what name are you calling these thing ?

I needed to squirt a few baits for a person based on the green-backed pumpkinseed shown above as well as a couple other colors he wanted.

The chartreuse-back and smoke-back are both nice colors too. In the sun that smoke one really lights up nice.

This one shows a smoke over pearl and smoke over chartreuse. The smoke over a pearl white lower belly is absolutely the most realistic bait I have done thus far but it has some competition in the following pic.

The above picture is a baby bass back over the pearl lower belly. While this one is an eye catcher that smoke over the pearl is nothing short of dynamic.