July 20, 2022

The Crappie Kicker

Last year I was introduced to Crappie fishing by a fellow bait maker Crappiehyjinx who I met through a secret bait trade guild on Instagram.  Mike was gracious enough to take me out on his boat and put me on some big fish. Now I’ve caught a few crappie over the years but nothing like what Mike catches. (check out his Instagram if your into Crappie or his website if you’re looking for some baits). I caught several 13.5″ and my now PB 14″ Crappie that day and after that I was hooked. (no pun intended .. but yeah)  He also introduced me to Garmin chart plotters and I picked myself up a Garmin 93Sv this year and it has really improved my catching (especially finding the Crappies) so I figured I try to make my own crappie bait.  I wanted something that would kind of work like a jig, could also be swam, but be weird at the same time so went with three leg kicker design kind of like my Triple Tail Grub.

The first version was just pretty basic because I wanted to try something different with the mold.

I’m trying a two piece mold but with an insert so I can still get a three leg design.

This is how it should work with the plug separating the legs while still allowing it to be removed from the mold.

The single cavity printed test mold.

The plug.

This is how the plug fits in the mold.

This is the first test bait and everything seemed to work but the dimensions on the plug were a little tight so it needed to be removed with pliers.

I also designed up a 4 cavity mold but will have to circle back around to this later…..

I wasn’t overly impressed by the bait body so I went back and designed something similar to my NED Hex Wriggler for Version 2.

I also added some legs up front for more action and they will also act as vents for the mold.

Just to get some baits ready I also went with a three piece mold like on my Triple Tail grub but may still go back to the two piece design once the bait is finalized because the three piece mold design tends to flash a lot after continued use.

The three printed pieces of the new mold are ready to go at this point.

The mold is held together with simple pipe clamps.

I did design a simple base to make things safer to inject but haven’t printed it yet.

The first injection went well with only minimal flashing (so far).

After a little clean up they look pretty good so far.

I have high hope for these already.

I have even higher hopes after rigging them up in the test tank.

Front View

Rear View

Quick video of the jigging action…. still need to test it out swimming.

If I use a bunch more clamps and angle them with the screw hitting the table top I probably won’t need to print the base after all… plus this should help with any flashing problems too.

The flashing looks better… now I just have to see if it holds up well to a few dozen more injections.

Even before testing I changed a few subtle things in the design… little thicker feet and added balls to the front legs.

Well it works… This was the first cast with the new bait on a new rod and a new reel….

… and this was the second cast.

Nothing to get excited about but any fish while testing is a good sign.

I only caught one Crappie this day but I’ll keep at it.

Again nothing huge but this is pretty average crappie for this lake.

As for the bait… I was kind of disappointed with the swimming action as the legs really didn’t kick too much but it does have a good subtle action on the drop (as seen in this 4 second video) and with a stiffer plastic the legs spread back out when the bait stops.  I’m going to make some changes and try again.

I’m going to try a version with the feet turned around… maybe this way they will have a better kicking action. I think maybe the feet where just hitting each other in the other version, with the feet in this orientation hopefully they will kick away from each other.

to be continued.

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