An extensive experimental study of the transverse modal field characteristics of mircrobend arc-induced long-period fiber gratings is presented. A wavelength scanning of the near-field intensity pattern inside each loss band in the transmission spectrum, shows a clear asymmetry in the transverse intensity distribution resulting from the fabrication method. This asymmetry reflects as a 10.7dB difference in the notch depths for two orthogonal polarizations. Though a one year study, it was found that that environmental conditions during fabrication strongly affects the gratings characteristics. The best performance was obtained during the autumn season, where microbend arc-induced long-period fiber gratings produce wavelength filters with short lengths (between 10 and 30 periods for depths in excess of 20dB) and the insertion loss may be as low as 0.12dB.