The Secret Story Behind the Development of ForceMix ~Episode 1~
- R.Nakanishi
- Aug 30, 2019
- 4 min read
The Genesis of the FORCEMIX: Evolving a Slim Jointed Swimbait into a Surface Monster
By: Nakanishi, ADUSTA Lure Designer
Nice to meet you all. I am Nakanishi, the lead lure designer for ADUSTA.
In this new blog series, I want to pull back the curtain on the development history, engineering concepts, and custom tuning secrets of the ADUSTA FORCEMIX—insider design details that we have never shared with the public until now.
For Episode 1, we are going back to the very beginning. Let’s break down the design journey and look at exactly how the FORCEMIX transitioned from a concept on my workbench into a dominant global topwater weapon.
1. Striking the Balance: Bite-Triggering Realism vs. High-Visibility Drawing Power
My home waters are renowned, high-pressure canyon reservoirs located in the Kansai region of Japan. During the summer drawdown, these lakes develop massive, fast-flowing river inflows (backwaters) that stack up numbers of trophy bass, occasionally pumping out true Rokumaru (60cm+/24-inch+) monsters. I also log serious hours around the current seams of Lake Ikehara, Lake Nanashiki, and the major inflowing tributary networks of Lake Biwa. Because my personal fishing style centers heavily around bank-fishing (shoreline angling) in moving water, I frequently encounter situations that demand an ultra-high-appeal presentation.
The development of the FORCEMIX was born directly from these demanding environments. My ultimate objective was to engineer a large-profile lure that wouldn't lose its presence on a wind-chopped, turbulent surface, yet still carried the natural fluid motion and perfect volumetric size to trick highly pressured fish into committing.
2. The Prototype Stage: Formulating the Lip-Equipped Swimbait
Interestingly, the FORCEMIX didn't start its life as a winged crawler. In the initial R&D phase, I began developing it as a slender, lip-equipped jointed swimbait.
My goal was to create a highly manageable big bait that anglers could effortlessly punch into a headwind using standard Medium-Heavy (MH) or Heavy (H) casting rods, while retaining its swimming stability inside heavy river currents. However, every time I validated the prototypes on the water, I felt the presentation lacked the aggressive, boundary-breaking drawing power needed to pull fish from deep cover. This kicked off an exhaustive period of trial and error, testing alternative rigging configurations and joint orientations day after day.
3. The Turning Point: Mounting the Wings
In my frantic search for more drawing power, I even veered off into developing deep-diving, long-billed minnow variants. But when you find yourself lost in the design loop, the golden rule is always to return to your original baseline. I sat down and stripped the project back to its core environmental variables:
Peak Backwater Season: Early summer through autumn.
Target Water Column: Topwater to mid-depth zones.
Re-analyzing these pillars made it clear that I needed to lock this bait into the surface film.
Suddenly, my high-performance reservoir tactics clicked with a new idea: combining a jointed swimbait chassis with custom aluminum crawling wings. This synthesis birthed the official structural footprint of the FORCEMIX.
Our very first functional prototypes were hand-carved from high-density rigid polyurethane foam, featuring a 3-piece multi-jointed body. While the wings delivered exceptional surface commotion, the actual swimming action of the multi-jointed body was almost too natural. In stained water or heavy surface chop, it still lacked the hard lateral displacement required to trigger reaction strikes.
To solve this, I completely overhauled the architecture—reducing it to a 2-piece single-jointed chassis. This design directly transferred the hard kinetic energy of the beating wings into the main body, generating a wide, hard-churning water displacement across the surface tension.
4. Designed for Current Seams vs. Stagnant Water
As the final geometry of the FORCEMIX took shape, its performance parameters were highly specialized. Because our initial concept focused on a steady straight retrieve through fast river channels, backeddies, and pocket water along rocky bluffs, we did not prioritize an ultra-slow startup response.
For anglers targeting stagnant, calm waters that require a dead-slow crawl with subtle wake ripples, our ZACRAWL YAJIROBEE was already the perfect tool due to its bulbous body geometry and extreme rear-ballast distribution. To prevent the two lures from overlapping, I intentionally pushed the FORCEMIX down a separate engineering path, fine-tuning it to hunt inside heavy, moving current.
5. The Pro Staff Breakthrough: Demanding Absolute Versatility
However, as we distributed the advanced prototypes to our global pro staff and field testers for real-world evaluation, the feedback was unanimous: the current configuration was too specialized. To make the FORCEMIX a global success, we needed to inject it with the versatility to perform flawlessly in stagnant water, small ponds, and low-flow reservoir sections.
I immediately went back to the lab to sharpen the bait's kick-start response (immediate wing startup). We manufactured dozens of unique wing configurations, micro-adjusting the surface curvature and entry angles by fractions of a millimeter. After running an intense gauntlet of field trials, we struck the golden ratio—locking in the definitive, high-performance wing configuration found on the retail FORCEMIX today.
6. The Verdict: Unleashing the Beast Worldwide
With the finalized aluminum wings mounted, the FORCEMIX achieved a flawless startup response even on a dead-slow crawl. Instantly, our field-testing network began reporting historic catch results.
The synergy of its massive profile, the sweet metallic "noisy" clack of the oversized aluminum wings, and the organic hydro-acoustic swimming vectors of the soft elastomer tail worked exactly as intended. The bait consistently fooled giants in muddy backwaters, small farm ponds, stagnant canals, and high-pressure public reservoirs—proving its dominance across every major bank-fishing scenario.
ADUSTA FORCEMIX Specs: Length: 205mm (8 inches) | Weight: 43g (1.5 oz)
In our next entry, Episode 2, we will break down the exact engineering concepts behind each individual component of the FORCEMIX balance matrix, and I’ll share some advanced aftermarket tuning tricks to maximize your success on the water.
Stay tuned!
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