Last fall fishing, I had some frustrating adrenaline busting bites from many smallmouth bass.  I've never missed the hook set completely on every single bass ever in any outing.  I thought they were hitting and swimming forward with the buzzbait, and I couldn't get a hook set on them.  I was completely wrong after I clearly saw them hitting the lure up close.  They were targetting the front of the lure where there is no hook.  So to remedy this, I have tied a treble to the front of the lure to hang just off the belly of the head.  I've yet to test it to see if the treble will give me the hook up I'm looking for those front lure biting smallmouth bass.

Terminator Tiny Buzzbait with a treble hook tied to the front belly of the lure.

Here's another lure, I've been kind of playing around with.  The idea of a belly spinner blade is not new, but I've kind of had to create my own variation to it with a Salmo Hornet size 3 crank.  I had started with a small colorado spinner blade size 0, but now I've swapped it out to a size 1 willow.  The willow blade is heavier so the lure should stay on the bottom when stopped instead of floating back up.  I've forgotten to bring it out during the last few fishing trips, so it hasn't seen a field test yet with the willow blade.

After just a fish tank test, I've already decided on a few tweaks to the Northland Live Forage Ice lures.

Live Forage Minnow spoon: Swapped hook position and threaded swivel


Moxie Minnow spoon: Added splitring and threaded swivel


Live Forage Minnow Trap: Added splitrings, red hooks, and blade.

Let's see how the first few field tests will come up with....

Live Forage Fish Fry Minnow Trap: modified with splitrings, red hooks, tailspin blade, and bulging expoxy eyes.

Live Forage Fish Fry Spoon and Moxie Minnow modified with splitrings swivels and bulging epoxy eyes.

Salmo Chubby Darters made to look more real with epoxy eyes.

I like your modifications. The addition of the bulging eyes is interesting. I take it you will be jigging with the forage minnow? The placement of the hooks is like it would be for a spoon, which should work well! Do you really feel the added eyes will make a difference? Very interesting, and I look forward to hearing how you make out!

A lot of times when I get fish that just stares at a jig for a long time, I've found that half of the time, the painted eye's work better than a plain signle color jig head. The more realistic the eyes were, in those crucial times, the higher the probability of the fish to bite. In addition flat jigs like Northland Forage Fry jigs, some came with eyes on both side while others only had eyes on the pattern side. I've found that the lures with eyes on both sides had a slightly better bite ratio. So taking that loosely collected data, I'm hoping that it will also apply to the lures I modified as well. Besides, it's more proprotion with fry size lures to have large eyes.