A good mate of mine has been making some really nice timber lures. He mostly fishes the salt, and has been braining pelagics, GT's etc on his Indo surfing/fishing trips, with his trolling lures and poppers.
He asked me a few weeks ago about lures for bass, and i put in a request for some surface stickbaits. I showed him my fav lure, which is now discontinued. and asked him to do his version of it. Basically a stick bait that is a little shorter and thicker in profile, more cigar rather than pencil shaped. And for it to sit flat, rather than tail down at rest.
He popped around this arv with some prototypes, and we went out for a dusk flick. They need some fine tuning, but for first drafts they performed great. Only stayed connected to the one fish, but had plenty of other interest.
He was pretty stoked with how feisty bass are, as he really didn't rate fresh water fishing. Now he's frothing to make more lures, and get out and nail a few bass. Gotta love surface bassin'.