With the glow pigments being available from Do-It now, here are some tips that I have found useful.
* When its really cold out, keep a few of the glow plastics and glow heads you want to use in ziplocks and stored in a shirt pocket inside your coat. Warm plastic and glow heads charge much better warm than at air temp in the cold.
* Poke a hole in a matchbook cover using a toothpick of a large size paper clip. Place a head or plastic under the cover so that only a small area exposed to that hole will receive the charge. Oten times fish will react to the small dot of glow rather than a large area of glow produced by a whole plastic or a whole head, or both. Remeber that even in relatively clear water the glow will cast an aura around the glowing portion making the bait size look way larger than it is. Glowing big can be ok when the fish are reaction hitting, but if they are studying a bait before hitting small is very often the key on glow.
*Rig up contrasting color, like those shown in Jerry's thread from the other day with Tommy Skarlis. Besides two glow colors in the plastic, rig head colors to contrast with glow bait colors and even glow head colors opposite of the glow plastic colors.
*Get a removable camera flash for charging the glow products or use the natural light of the sun. Those dinky little taser things sold in tackle shops are largely a gimmick in my book. Too many of those things are underpowered to do any serious charging. The longer it takes to make something glow, the more worthless the tasers get. Lining a tuna can with foil, the shiney side showing, will help reflect light all the way around an article needing charging.....hold whatever down in the can suspended and hit it with the flash and you'll get a perfectly charged bait thru and thru.
*Today's plastic packaging can have a lot of uv blocker in them them. Trying to charge any bait inside a plastic anything can prove to be disappointing. If you want to demonstrate the glow capabilities of anything, do it with the item in open air, out of the package. Since long term exposure to sunlight can fry the glow pigments, DO keep your heads and plastics with glow stored in UV stable packaging containing uv blockers and/or in the dark.
* trick on painted jigheads used for panfish and especially crappies is to put a small bubble of super glue on a piece of plastic that can be thrown when you're done. Using a toothpick with the sharp pointed tip knipped off a bit or blunted, dip it in the glue just enough to dot a tiny spot on the sprue end of a painted head, or whichever faces forward when tied on. You'll want a micro-bubble of glue there but not enough to run all over. Now dip that small dot of glue on the head into a tiny pile of your choice of glow pigment color, hang and allow to dry hard. When the glue is hard, knock off any dusting of pigment around the new dot of glow and then just dip the dot into clear vinyl paint far enough to seal it and again hang until dry. Keeping everything held so that the glue stays pointing down after its applied really makes this a clean operation, but for dipping a head into the pigment with glue on it, be sure to pour a small amount of the powder out on a piece of paper instead of risking dropping a wet jig into the container the pigment comes in. When you're finished, toss the plastic with the glue on it in the trash and simply put a small crease in the paper and pour the un-used pigment back in the container for further adventures.
I've been working with advanced glow pigments such as what Do It offers for several years and all of the above mentioned ideas come from first hand experience.
