Over this winter (2009), we have toyed around with the idea of making our own muskie spinners for trolling for 'skies. We obtained one of the cheaper wire formers and got to work.
We also wanted to come up with a design that allowed us to easily swap out the blades of the spinners. So, what we did was was basically cut our spinners into two halves using a Sampo Swivel.
This is our first design, so who know how it will preform.
In this first image, you can see the two halves. The front/blade half is 3.5" long. It has tandem #6 Willowleaf, a nickle body spacer, and a Sampo Swivel. The end of the Sampo is positioned so that it will line up with the ends of the blades. The back/body half is 5" long. It has one squid body with an lead egg sinker inside of it, and a larger treble hook with split ring placed at the end. We will probable double up on the squid bodies in the next design for a little more body bulk.
The second image shows the two parts assembled. All you have to do is attach the Sampo to the head of the body. A normal spinner is very rigid along the entire length of the bait. This blade/body design makes for some flex points (and a spin point @ the swivel), so we really need to run some test to see how it will pull. The entire length of this spinner shown is 8".
We will post more info on this design after we do some testing.