I used to just toss out the broken bills on my Rapals Shad Raps. Until one day, one of my favorite discontinued color pattern took one fish too many and one rock too many. The bill on it broke cleany off. I still fished it, as it was the hot pattern of the day, but without the bill on it was utterly useless.
I had then decided to doctor it on the spot with a colorado blade attached to the front of the lure. It was horrendous, but it did create a surface wake that called the attention of a few bass. Wasn't good enough so I resorted to the either of two methods at the moment. The first was a simple attachment of an inline spinner to the front, but I've already got plenty of inline minnow spinners. So I decided that perhaps a spinning blade attached to the rear of the lure? On this particular day, the river bass were keying in on the front of the lure. The blade at the front made them miss out on the hook. Doctored it again with a spinning blade on the rear and I was back in business, only different. Sure enough it worked. I got a subtle surface waking lure that worked out in its own accord. All of this due to on old splitring-swivel-splitring concept from other lures.
The prototype Shad Rap on that fateful day.
It's been years since that day, but thinking of those times and having a few more slightly damaged bills of Shad Raps says, just do it. So I've cut off the remaining bills and made like modifications to a few more Shad Raps that otherwise would just be collecting dusts. I haven't given these other lures a real test run, but they'll have a special job coming around spring for some white bass action.
Some more Shad Raps with the same modification concept.