Ah yes, iron at cachuma... Brian #2 just about kicked me off of his boat permanently after that day. For some reason he didn't like it when I'd bomb a Tady 45 onto every piece of cover within a 1/2 mile radius... It looked good, and it would probably get bit in the right conditions, but it would be a tough one to use with any consistancy I think. It looked really good when you're run it up on top and the ass end of it would skim the surface like the tail of a slammer. I believe II sharp makes a bleeding mackerel that looks a lot like a rainbow trout. If you were to be serious about it, I'd at least get the right color...

Confidence is an issue in every aspect of fishing. No matter what you're fishing with, you won't catch as many fish if you can't visualize the fish biting it, know what your bait is doing, and believe in the bait you're throwing. It usually gets to a point where you know you're going to get bit well before the fish touches your bait. Sometimes even before you cast. Weird stuff, but I know it's happened to folks besides myself. It just comes from having confidence in what you're doing. It's really tough to have that kind of confidence from reading the boards or throwing a plug with bad action a couple times. You really have to find that magic plug that kicks right or sits the right way in the water or whatever. I'd reccommend buying another slammer in the hopes that you'll get a better one. If not, stick with the better of the two and you'll probably still catch a few fish on it. Once you get addicted to trout plug fishing, buy another slammer or two and eventually you'll come across the one that you'll always fish and the fish seem to key in on. As for the rest of them, the only real thing you can do to alter the action is mess with the bill. If you're ballzy enough, try sanding the bill down or rounding the corners, or messing with the shape of it and hope that it helps the action. You'll find out that the more and more you get into fishing trout plugs, the more and more plugs you'll accumulate for no apparent reason. One day you'll realize you have like 12 plugs, and you only use one or two. That's when I'd really reccommend screwing around with the other plugs, or tying on those ones to throw into stuff you wouldn't normally throw or whatever. All part of the game.
-Brian