A-40 and 2 Conrad Sr.

[surfstix1963]

Heres a few I have been working on for awhile it's a little bit of a slow go these days.The A-40 is just shy of 3 oz. and the conrads are 4.6 oz.

[Monty]

Great looking plugs (size in Rip-Plugger territory).
As always I like the colors you use.
I have really never fished a Conrad, I have a couple, just have not used them yet.
From what I understand, they are the deep diving metal lip swimmers?

[surfstix1963]

Thanks Monty heres some info. Danny named the Conrad after Conrad Malicoat of Cape Cod. Conrad originally asked Danny to make it. He wanted something heavier to cast with conventional tackle to get the distance to fish the Second Rip at P-Town. That had to be in the late fifties or early sixties. Over time, Danny made at least three sizes of Conrads. This is the largest and heaviest of the three sizes. It accounted for a lot of large-sized bass in its day. The Conrad was the deepest swimming of all Danny's plugs on a cast and retrieve (as opposed to trolling). A very slow action was required to get them deep and to keep them down. If you retrieved too fast, it would upset the balance of action. Super slow would cause a wide, rolling sweep from side to side that accounted for some very large bass.
The Herring color shown here has a light blue back, pink lateral line and white belly. As far as I know, the Herring was a defining color by Danny. What I mean is that Danny was the first I am aware of to have this color plug. That may not be factual, there may have been this Herring plug pattern prior to Danny making them, but I had never seen any that preceded Danny's. Over time, I did see other plugs and plug makers subsequently produce herring patterns similar to Danny's, but Danny's was the first I saw. Others often added silver spray lines above or below the pink line. An interesting note is later in his plugmaking days, Danny too began to produce a Herring variant with a silver spray line also. Kind of a case of Danny imitating his own imitators - or something like that. Anyway, this is Danny's original Herring pattern, arguably the pattern most unique if not possibly original (?) to him. If Danny did not originate the Herring pattern, he surely was the one to popularize it, and it remains a common pattern today in surf plugs.
A favorite method of super sharpies was to tie an eelskin completely over the Conrad, bigging up the two belly hooks for swimming stability and leaving off the tail hook. A double length of heavy mono was knotted to the empty tail hook wire to help reduce the eelskin tail (which was left draping several inches longer than the plug) from whipping round and fouling the belly hook on a cast. There were actually few plugs that could readily handle eelskins. The best plugs for skins needed a consistently straight body - not curved, tapered, bulged or elliptical - but ideally straight such as the Conrad body. As shown in the photo at right, you had to file a shallow notch to retain the eelskin in place on a Conrad (then seal the open wood with clear nail polish or whatever). Most guys wouldn't ever make the effort to do this. Yet for those who did, the eelskin cloak accounted for some of the very largest bass caught on Danny's Conrad plugs.
It was preferable to use the blue mullet color plug beneath an eelskin. As the eelskin got shredded and torn up by bass in the process of catching them, the underlying blue mullet color became exposed, yet still complemented the eelskin color, whether the eelskin was rigged inside out (blue pearl white) or not.
.

[nitestrikes]

That was a great bit of early history you shared there, surfstix.

If I might add to that, the Danny that Surfstix is referring to was Danny Pichney, one of the greatest plugmaker legends in the entire history of surf and striped bass fishing. He is one of the originators of what a lot of newer anglers call the metal lipped swimmer. His came tp be known as Danny Pichney plugs, or simply "Dannys" for short. He is also responsible for some sweet jointed eel swimmers.

[speedy]

Heres a few I have been working on for awhile it's a little bit of a slow go these days.The A-40 is just shy of 3 oz. and the conrads are 4.6 oz.

very nice job bro i like the scale great color bro

[fishinmission78]

Cool history lesson, guys. Nice pluggage too surfstix

[speedy]

School...of...COB.!!!!!! Lol

[surfstix1963]

Thanks all I'm getting back to the mancave slow but sure sometimes I tend to push myself to far and have to take a break for a day or so.I have to Thank Fin for the early lesson on Danny's he forwarded it to me good info.

[hookset]

School...of...COB.!!!!!! Lol

School of cob, as in corn-cob mullet?
What did I miss here, is the COB school a good one, or one that I should stay away from, like the school of old men who are 70, who still go out to the dance club at night?
Btw, great colors, surfstix, nice work.

[surfstix1963]

School of cob, as in corn-cob mullet?
What did I miss here, is the COB school a good one, or one that I should stay away from, like the school of old men who are 70, who still go out to the dance club at night?
Btw, great colors, surfstix, nice work.

I kind of named myself cranky ole Bassturd before my last surgery so Speedy uses COB so no one gets offended thats the short version.BTW another thing with metal lips is lose the snaps and either tie direct or use a loop knot to give the plug more freedom of movement.

[surfstix1963]

While we are on the metal lip subject all of them need to be tuned after they are built I'm sure the 1st. way you all know bending the line tie up or down to get it to swim deeper or higher but in some cases the lip itself needs to be adjusted ever so slightly if it is still not swimming correctly not alot it will be small increments because if you go too far you will probably never get the lip back the right way again and the lip will need to be changed but the key consideration is every builder designs their plug to do different things for different conditions shape wise weight wise even sneak a different lip in there I actually just threw the last 2 surfsters in a container of water to see what the difference would be with the lefty lip compared to the surfster lip the lefty made it sit just a 1/4 lower in the front so when it swims I should have more bite as long as the butt don't come out of the water too far.Something else to think about is these lips are getting dropped banged pulled in and out of surf bags this all takes a toll on them so the next time that plug isn't swimming right give it a quick check.