Ludovic Auzou

For one Frenchman homemade fishing lures are not the kind of things carved out a piece of cedar with a favourite knife. Ludovic Auzou has taken his passion for making lures into the world of 3D modelling and cnc machining injection moulds.  His soft and hard plastic lures would not look out of place amongst the expensive imports on a tackle shop display. As the world moves towards making these technologies more accessible to the man in the street, it still takes an unusual talent and a great deal of work to be able to create lures of this calibre.

Hopefully his shop will follow soon, and we can all get our hands on them, in the mean time there is no charge for staring.

Viva la France

Making a Spybait fishing lure from PVC foam board

I am not sure that spybaits should work, well catch fish I mean. Apart from the slight flicker of the rotating blades they do bugger all and after spending a great deal of time getting lures to make some kind of dying minnow performance it can be a bit unnerving. Spybaits supposedly stem from Japanese bass fishermen hacking shop bought lures by removing the lip and adding props, but rather than floating like traditional prop baits spybaits sink and run almost silently. Not having bass population within a thousand miles of home I took my little creation out piking.


It has to be said they do cast like rockets but with little or no resistance on the retrieve It feels a little like pulling a fly though the water rather than a lure. I am used to feeling the head tug of minnows or the deep vibrations of a spinner through the braid, but with a spybait when fish hit it is a bit of a shock with just a bang out of nowhere. So with a few fish caught under my belt I suppose I have to admit they they work but like any new lure it is going to take me some time to figure out just when or even where to use them.

  Spybait Fishing Lure Drawings and Teplates

Making a Spybait Tool Sand Materials

The Handmade Fisherman

I have finally made a start on building my new website, “The Handmade Fisherman” hopefully this will be a base for visitors to land on and explore. At the moment it seems still like I have a couple of thousand things to deal with before everything is up and running and I can get back to making some videos let alone doing some fishing.

I also did a bit more experimenting with my real minnow, adding another hook hanger and a diving lip. I may get chance for a couple of testing sessions next week, it swims great in the bath but that is never a judge of how it will work out in the real world. Weight wise I have ordered some tungsten 4mm fly tying beads which I think will work out better than lead free shot I am using at the moment. Carving the balsa is still a bit of pig so I made up a face out of layered paper covered with foil, this feels like cheating a bit. Another great thing I discovered about working on something this small is when I go back to making larger lures like the crank bait the feel massive by comparison. 

x-rays

A few of the classics given the CAD treatment, Crank Bait, Deep Diving Crank, Stick Bait and Wiggler

The X-rays came back this morning and the diagnosis was better than I expected; it seems I am not going to die just yet but I have managed to get a good dose of pneumonia. In the delirium of the warm waiting room I imagined the doctor placing the x-ray on the light box and telling me that the problem was I had the bone structure of a fish. So I have been in bed for what seems like an eternity designing some new lures and drawing up some classics I haven’t the energy to build, but most of all dreaming of fishing and deep pools of water. Bed sores aside I have now accumulated a long list of ideas for new videos for when I recover and then hopefully I will be busy long enough to fill out an average lifespan.

I will be back soon…

Carving Balsa Lures

Image Above: A Roach Fishing Lure Prototype

After all the recent float fishing for natural prey subjects to turn into lures I have started on my Roach prototype. I began with a drawing taken from a photograph of a fish I caught but once I began carving the balsa the experience of handling real fish took over.  Again it is made in two halves with the wire and weights hidden in the centre.  Still in the early stages but I cannot wait to catch my first pike on this.