A new twist to the Diner Shiner

[ctom]

Most of my walleye fishing is done by casting and I’ve grown to like jigs that seem to swim rather than hop. It’s hard to get most jigs with 90 degree hooks to emulate swimming, so I got to tinkering this afternoon and came up with the Diner Shiner sporting a 60 degree hook. I did 10 with a flat eye and another 10 with a conventional eye. I think the conventional eye best suits me. I am also going to do a few more tomorrow using a 30 degree hook and moving the eye even further forward.

The modification to the mold is really simple and took more time to get the tools together than making the actual modification.

The jigs on the left side of the picture are the flat eyes with a #800 keeper wire. The hooks are 4/0, 32978 Mustafa, item #4534 in the catalog. Those on the right use a #7161 VMC, size 4/0, item # 8007 in the catalog.



I’m pretty sure that these pictured will do what I want to achieve but the 30 degree hooks might do it better so I have to try

Before I paint these guys I’m going down to the river behind our house and give them a dip test using a Quakin’ Shad. More here after the dunk.

[Apdriver]

I missed this in new topics. I really like my Diner Shiner for both Largemouth and Smallmouth. Do you mind showing us the mods on your mold? It seems that 30 degree hook would be quite a bit more snagless fishing rock.

[ctom]

A friend has the mold right now. When he's finished with it I'll get some pics.

I have since moved the hook further forward so it comes out the nose end of the head, but otherwise the heads look like these. I used JBWeld high temp putty to close off the original hook eye cavity, but it could be left alone and simply use a hobby knife to cut the lead flash off. I used the conventional hook on the right to imprint the mold, then used a drill and small bit to create 1/8" deep cavity for the flat eye hook eye. Once the holes were drilled, I laid the hooks in place one at a time and closed to mold tightly and gave a swat with a small hammer to imprint the shank where it exits the nose end to the hole. Pretty simple.