Reel Repair by Alan Tani

Made more "mojarra ghost" colors:



The top four are white and blue and the bottom five are white and chartreuse.

I used the white and chartreuse today at the beach and caught a 16ish" snook and a small jack. I'm going to fish the Indian River Lagoon tomorrow so I may make more junebug color grubs for the dark water.

Only two viable from this batch but I got a nice swimbait out of it. I think the issue is that I'm not heating up the injector properly. I have about an inch of hardened plastisol in my injector at the end of every injection.

I went out wade fishing with a friend of mine this morning. Caught a snook on my mojarra ghost grub using my 704z.



I lost two others and had one chase the lure right up to me.

I use jig with Mister twister curly tail , paddle tail or slug-go style tail never use grub as you have . Early day fishing with plastic worm I save broke up worm mix all color together and pour to a mold made with chop stick press in clay and still catch bass , they eat these for reel as if you don't set hook quick you will hook them in the gut

Quote from: quang tran on May 17, 2026, 06:17:25 PMI use jig with Mister twister curly tail , paddle tail or slug-go style tail never use grub as you have . Early day fishing with plastic worm I save broke up worm mix all color together and pour to a mold made with chop stick press in clay and still catch bass , they eat these for reel as if you don't set hook quick you will hook them in the gut

Are you using the curly tails for sea trout and redfish? I've tried them for snook but haven't had luck with them. My go to has always been paddle tails but I want to branch out. I'll probably get a paddletail mold next, though.

I use curly tail for crappie ,small mouth and walleye , lately I caught few good size sea trout with slug-go tail and surprise they took quite big bait . Paddle tail always been popular for sea trout and red . Never caught any snook . they sell mold for plastic bait too expensive also need few more tool to inject to mold so I never try

came out okay. more chartreuse, less blue, and a lot less glitter next time.

From an artistry perspective, those grubs look very nice.  But don't be afraid to throw the rejects when none else is looking 

I think that  there are two paths we can take in our choices in lure making.  One path is fishing effectiveness, the other is artistry.  There is some overlap, but the longer I keep doing it the more that I find that one tends to get in the way of the other  At least for me.

Don't want to get us off topic again, but snook fit a evolutionary visual niche that favors general sensitivity over acuity and color vision, and giving up some ability to clearly see objects in relative motion.

In this stituation, light vs dark matters.  Flash vs dull matters. General size and shape can  matter a lot. The color of the water the fish hunts in is a good clue about where spectral sensitivity is strongest (which colors it can see best or even at all).

I used to read up up a bit on each species that I target, but now realize that the same general rules apply, and it is not too tricky to be mostly right by looking at the environment and target prey.   You can do the same for the species that you target.

-J

I slammed a yellowtail with one of Dave's swimbaits (smaller, not like what he has) on a Long Range when we nipped into the coast by Natividad.  Still have it; held up great.  I need to use it this June even though I take too much gear... - john

Hey Dave, have you made any good snook baits? I know they're far away, but I also know that you've visited.

Yes, I'm throwing all of these. I mostly fish inlets for snook at night and use chartreuse and blue flair hawks. I want grubs and flukes in this color scheme as it's what I've caught the majority of my big snook on at night. Chartreuse/blue and junebug at night, natural colors during the day is usually what I do.

Quote from: JasonGotaProblem on May 21, 2026, 05:35:36 AMHey Dave, have you made any good snook baits? I know they're far away, but I also know that you've visited.

I can count the number of snook that I have caught with one hand.  All in the Caribbean/ Central American Atlantic coast.  All on flies, and nothing impressive.  There are some very small populations of snook in Baja on both the Pacific and Sea of Cortez sides. I once saw a large one hanging out near an arroyo mouth, and caught a juvenile  in a bait net, but I mostly want to leave them alone, and haven't tried to specifically target them.

I have more experience with barramundi in Australia.  They look like a larger, fatter snook, and occupy the same niche with the same kind of behaviors.  Again, almost exclusively on flies.   What I have learned on the fly side, is they will engage when the fly is moving, but tend to bite on the pauses.   This is especially true for the big  ones when they are hanging out in the mangroves.   

I also fished with a guide named Paul Dolan (real intersting guy), who had a very interesting fly pattern for laid up barramundi in impoundments.  It had a planing action, but planed upward instead of downward.  You toss the fly into cover, let it sink, and give it a good tug or two.  The barramundi would bite as it planed and wiggled upward. I suspect this matches a now-or-never fleeing baitfish  profile.

Something like the flair hawk has very little action and gets its bites mostly from being roughly the right size and shape, possibly having the right pressure waves for the snooks lateral line, and most of all, being able to fish tight to a snagged or weedy bottom.   Rule #1 of lure selection:  choose something that you can get in front of the fishes face.  Size/profile comes next, and then action.  At the very end of the train is color, but that is what fishermen tend to care about most.

So I suspect there are some interesting lure designs to try for snook, especially for specific local situations.  In general, the world doesn't need more new fishing lures, so the most benefit for me comes from what I learn about how lures work and how fish behave.  This stuff can usually be applied to using existing products.

Quote from: Jighead on May 21, 2026, 05:54:43 AMYes, I'm throwing all of these. I mostly fish inlets for snook at night and use chartreuse and blue flair hawks. I want grubs and flukes in this color scheme as it's what I've caught the majority of my big snook on at night. Chartreuse/blue and junebug at night, natural colors during the day is usually what I do.

Not picking on you, but whenever I bring the discussion  to how unimportant color is, the discussion always veers back to what the favorite colors are.

The combination of lighwave frequency  transmissibility in water, the amount and type of light available during feeding time, the amounts and types of snook cone (color specific, high acuity) cells, the extension of rod cells during prime feed in times, the natural selection towards sensitivity over acuity etc., means that cone cells and therefore color vision probably plays a very limited role in snook predatory behavior. 

Sometimes a color works for a different reason than we think (junebug is probably perceived the same as black- strong contrast when looking upward - as purples are way out of the range of snook color perception), and sometimes it is just bias, where we favor a color scheme that here caught fish on in the past, but the actual sample size and controls are wholly inadequate for making a very strong conclusion. So if a color appears to work for you, it might be worth keeping this in mind.

Check out this thread:
https://alantani.com/index.php/topic,38610.msg455218.html#msg455218

When presented with a bunch of science that pretty much concludes that this group of species  (tunas, wahoos, marlin) are effectively colorblind, the conversation keeps going back to what people's favorite colors are. I couldn't stop them.   

There is a bunch more interesting stuff that I have learned about fish vision that is very useful and probably more relevant (acuity vs sensitivity, image enhancement, flicker fusion frequency).  I am bursting at the seams to share it, but frankly don't have the patience to go through it all in a  fishing forum because as a group, we are hostile to information that challenges what we have been telling each other and reading in the fishing rags for so long.  Plus it is impossible to keep the discussion on track.

Hope this helps,

-J

Quote from: jurelometer on May 21, 2026, 05:31:51 PM

Quote from: JasonGotaProblem on May 21, 2026, 05:35:36 AMHey Dave, have you made any good snook baits? I know they're far away, but I also know that you've visited.

I can count the number of snook that I have caught with one hand.  All in the Caribbean/ Central American Atlantic coast.  All on flies, and nothing impressive.  There are some very small populations of snook in Baja on both the Pacific and Sea of Cortez sides. I once saw a large one hanging out near an arroyo mouth, and caught a juvenile  in a bait net, but I mostly want to leave them alone, and haven't tried to specifically target them.

I have more experience with barramundi in Australia.  They look like a larger, fatter snook, and occupy the same niche with the same kind of behaviors.  Again, almost exclusively on flies.   What I have learned on the fly side, is they will engage when the fly is moving, but tend to bite on the pauses.   This is especially true for the big  ones when they are hanging out in the mangroves.   

I also fished with a guide named Paul Dolan (real intersting guy), who had a very interesting fly pattern for laid up barramundi in impoundments.  It had a planing action, but planed upward instead of downward.  You toss the fly into cover, let it sink, and give it a good tug or two.  The barramundi would bite as it planed and wiggled upward. I suspect this matches a now-or-never fleeing baitfish  profile.

Something like the flair hawk has very little action and gets its bites mostly from being roughly the right size and shape, possibly having the right pressure waves for the snooks lateral line, and most of all, being able to fish tight to a snagged or weedy bottom.   Rule #1 of lure selection:  choose something that you can get in front of the fishes face.  Size/profile comes next, and then action.  At the very end of the train is color, but that is what fishermen tend to care about most.

So I suspect there are some interesting lure designs to try for snook, especially for specific local situations.  In general, the world doesn't need more new fishing lures, so the most benefit for me comes from what I learn about how lures work and how fish behave.  This stuff can usually be applied to using existing products.

Quote from: Jighead on May 21, 2026, 05:54:43 AMYes, I'm throwing all of these. I mostly fish inlets for snook at night and use chartreuse and blue flair hawks. I want grubs and flukes in this color scheme as it's what I've caught the majority of my big snook on at night. Chartreuse/blue and junebug at night, natural colors during the day is usually what I do.

Not picking on you, but whenever I bring the discussion  to how unimportant color is, the discussion always veers back to what the favorite colors are.

The combination of lighwave frequency  transmissibility in water, the amount and type of light available during feeding time, the amounts and types of snook cone (color specific, high acuity) cells, the extension of rod cells during prime feed in times, the natural selection towards sensitivity over acuity etc., means that cone cells and therefore color vision probably plays a very limited role in snook predatory behavior. 

Sometimes a color works for a different reason than we think (junebug is probably perceived the same as black- strong contrast when looking upward - as purples are way out of the range of snook color perception), and sometimes it is just bias, where we favor a color scheme that here caught fish on in the past, but the actual sample size and controls are wholly inadequate for making a very strong conclusion. So if a color appears to work for you, it might be worth keeping this in mind.

Check out this thread:
https://alantani.com/index.php/topic,38610.msg455218.html#msg455218

When presented with a bunch of science that pretty much concludes that this group of species  (tunas, wahoos, marlin) are effectively colorblind, the conversation keeps going back to what people's favorite colors are. I couldn't stop them.   

There is a bunch more interesting stuff that I have learned about fish vision that is very useful and probably more relevant (acuity vs sensitivity, image enhancement, flicker fusion frequency).  I am bursting at the seams to share it, but frankly don't have the patience to go through it all in a  fishing forum because as a group, we are hostile to information that challenges what we have been telling each other and reading in the fishing rags for so long.  Plus it is impossible to keep the discussion on track.

Hope this helps,

-J

I don't mean this to be rude or hostile, I'm just not interested in the science behind it. A bottle of colorant is $5-6 and will last months. I've caught dozens of snook, many small, many overslot, and would prefer to spend an extra $5 on colors that have been catching them for 80-100 years, whether it be to increase the chance of them hitting the lure or for my own personal enjoyment.

Quote from: Jighead on May 21, 2026, 08:56:56 PMI don't mean this to be rude or hostile, I'm just not interested in the science behind it. A bottle of colorant is $5-6 and will last months. I've caught dozens of snook, many small, many overslot, and would prefer to spend an extra $5 on colors that have been catching them for 80-100 years, whether it be to increase the chance of them hitting the lure or for my own personal enjoyment.

Perfectly reasonable approach.  Nobody gets to tell you how you should enjoy your fishing.

And as bit of a confession, I probably have over 30 different powder coating colors for my metal lures- so I also get the personal enjoyment part. But for me, I mostly enjoy the learning aspect of fishing and gear making.  The extra success that comes from leveraging the science is just a bonus. But that is me.

Please keep posting your pours and trip reports!

-J

my first batch of flukes. they have some dents but they'll get the job done for sure. going to make another batch using the leftover dark colors i have for night fishing.