Creeper Tuning

[50inchpig]

Got the holcombe creeper when Sportsmans went out of business, it obviously needs some tuning - what's the first thing you usually start messing with on creepers to get them to run right? I guess it's probably all about the wings, just haven't had time to mess around with it.

[JRedig]

Well, what do you consider to be "right"?

For myself, I tune the wings forward or backward depending on how fast I want to fish it and the sound i'm going for. I've found it's important that they have the same/similar degree of bend to them, otherwise it's hard to get the "right" sound.

I've got one that I pitch in daylight that's got the wings bent forward more and fishes faster and another with them almost straight out the side for night fishing and really slow deep plopping noise.

I've also messed with weighting them, the right amount of forward weight gives a really deep sound, but you gotta play with each one for what you want.

[castmaster]

if its the sound you want to change bending the top edge of the wing forward or backward will increase/decrease the amount of "cup" to the wing. If you want to increase/decrease the speed at which it creeps you can do that by adjusting the bend on the tab at back of wing. Bending it inward, meaning the wing comes away from body a lesser distance, will produce a faster creep where bending it outward will allow the wing to swing open more(further from body) and give a slower creep.

At one time I had a tuning instruction sheet made up for customers, if I can find it I'll either post of send it in an email.

Is pretty important to have the wigs at the same "attitude" in cup and degree of opening or else the lure wont work. If the bait is spinning instead of creeping you'll need to play with the "cupping" by bending the top edge up or down. For example if the lure is rolling/spinning in a clockwise manner you'll want to decrease the amount of cupping on the left hand wing(when looking at it from the nose) by bending the top edge upwards. Make small adjustments until you have it working properly.

[nater]

thanks for the info castmaster, good stuff. I threw my creeper I picked up over the winter for the first time and it had a decent but slight "plop" and crawled across the water. It had issues when I would be moving to fast and end up pulling it to its left slightly. It would hang up. Probably just a speed thing though.

I'll have to experiment with the wings and different tuning, should be fun to customize. If you find the tuning instructions I'd be happy to put them to use. [email protected]