Finding lure actions that catch fish

[SenkoSam]

I started out as a live bait angler but after watching fishing shows and reading magazine articles about fishing lures - no more float & worms or minnows. Bass fishing was a step up to using more types of lures. I never considered that lures represented anything to fish including plastic worms and caught bass on crankbaits, spinnerbaits, skirted jigs and trailers, spoons, surface lures, just to name a few. Even started making my own skirted lures using different color skirts and trailers.
 
A new world of fishing opened up a few years ago when I started making soft plastic lures and started modifying them as you've seen in some of my posts. Molded lures are fine but that's only one shape and size per mold plus how many lures do I need of one shape before I get bored, regardless of how well it catches fish?  Enter soft plastic modifications or hybrids if you will.
 
Catching fish on modified lures is a whole new challenge to catching fish and emphasizes lure action and whatever enhances that action such as specific retrieves. If I catch fish on newly designed mods, fantastic! I don't care how small the fish as long as it catches over a dozen and the more species the better.
 
Today I saw a young newbie fishing using the wrong rod, reel, lure and line. I rigged a leader of my braid to his old curly monofilament, a light jighead and a small lure to be used under his float. In no time he caught a few sunnies and was thrilled. I had him watch the lure he was using while swimming it in the water and had him pay attention to its action on the slowest retrieve. His style of fishing has changed forever as well as him realizing the importance of lure action.
 
Here are some recent discoveries using parts of molded lures and melting them to other lures using a candle flame and a steady hand:
 
 
 
    

 
The retrieves were different for some of the baits but the actions were different for different shapes. I realize catching large fish is important to most anglers but for me catching fish on lures I modify and test, opens doors to which lure actions-by-design provoke fish to strike. It doesn't matter the size of the fish caught because I can increase the size of the design to provoke larger fish to strike. Of course, the action must be the same as the initial action per the shape discovered that caught many fish. So far I've identified different actions that provoke fish. Here are a few as represented by the above lures:
body waddle
flapping tail (like a flag)
flutter
tail quiver
body darting-with-pauses
body quiver
 
Most or all of the above actions you've seen using plastic worms and sticks, plastic jig trailers, Zara Spooks, curl tail grubs, jerk worms, etc. And no one is saying you shouldn't stick with fewer lures in your arsenal that catch fish, but catching fish on a variety of lures opens your mind to what works, when and where. The whole point of catching fish more often is knowing what works more often and why.

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More examples of small lures catching nice size fish:


...or this 14" bass?

or one that's a bit larger?
 
How about these nice bass caught on the same day using different shapes:
  
...caught along with these 2 and 3 lb pickerel - also on different shapes/ actions:



The key to using small lures is the slow retrieve needed to give fish time to decide to let them pass or attack.

[SenkoSam]

To sum it up, I am a lure-action/ slow-retrieve angler and along with knowing lure size and sometimes color can make all the difference. When fish are hypersensitive, as when fish are in a turned-on school, the range of lures and lure size choices are greater. Finding fish is of course key to catching them and lures do just that. 
Fishfinders - especially sidefinders - indicate if fish are present, even bait fish. No fish shown on the screen in an area usually means few or no fish period - though not always. Example: a few days ago, fish weren't on certain structure types or in deeper water. Casting around the boat in 6' or less found individual fish in the middle of nowhere and before I left, 42 fish were caught.

[wiperhunter2]

I agree with you about the side finder, I use it a lot on shallow water, mainly targeting groups of fish but many a time when we don't see any fish on side scan, we catch a fish. We theorize that they are hugging the bottom so tight that they cast no shaddow or the come in from the side or back out of range of the side finder and follow the bait up to the flig we are using.

I see you were having prpblems with copy and pasting on this post, for some reason this site does not like copy and paste and when I do it I always have to go back and edit to make it come out right, it's a pain.

[SenkoSam]

What I did Curt was do a save-as from IMGUR.com photo storage site, on to my desk top and then do the attachment thing. IMGUR is a pain also in that any photos I add change position on that site making the posted photos disappear because the BBC code posted becomes useless.

Too bad only 10 photos are allowed per post. I added more in the reply.