Dusto Transit van Trout

Art meets fish, meets van, meets artist, it is about that simple.

Le Pêcheur Gareth Watkins

I don't know why I should like this film. It is in French with French subtitles a language which while beautiful reminds me of my French teacher at school who was a twat. It is pole fishing which is something I enjoyed as a teenager up until the point when a git on a bike ran over the back sections destroying them and finally fishing for carp or pigs with fins. But with all that said, there is just a beautiful measured pace to the film and something that goes beyond mere attention to detail it is an attention to what is beautiful in those details.We just need to convince the film maker Gareth Watkins to get him self a lure rod or meet some people who know how to use them.

Rinaldi Studio, A lure without hooks

I want one, I don't care if it will catch fish or even if it is designed to, it is just cool.

This an image from a new book from Michael Rinaldi who is better known for how to books on model tank making and finishing, but in this book he is concentrating on a fish shaped submersible model. After a bit of digging it turns out the model was designed by Michael Fichtenmayer an america model making fanatic. He named it, FichtenFoo's Fantastical Fish-Shaped Submersible, which I kind of think sums it up. Check out his blog for more bonkers ideas that should have fish hooks attached http://fichtenfoo.net/blog/ and also the book people http://www.rinaldistudiopress.com/

Totally Awesome Pike Art with Dusto

This a video from my favorite Youtube fishing show, The one, the only, Totally Awesome Fishing Show.

A wood lobster

It is hard to explain, or understand the level of craftsmanship in this piece and i have watched it a couple of hundred times


Wood spiny lobster from 3ga9 on Vimeo.

Making DIY Injection Molds For Soft Plastic Fishing Lures

In the tackle shop they are talking about the next life, this apparently is not a new online experience but reincarnation. They have covered slavery, the ‘three seats of power’ and whether the council can ban you from their premises. I unfortunately have arrived mid flow and the conversation looks to building momentum rather than waning. Paul who is sat next to me passes me the Angler’s Mail to show a giant pike that was taken from a river and then goes on to tell me about his last fishing trip with another Paul and momentarily I feel like I have joined a club of Pauls.   

My visit to the tackle shop has little to do with buying anything substantial, just to pick up some bits and pieces, wire crimps, swivels and whatever shiny bits take my fancy. By the time the shop owner has called for a time out in the ongoing debate my mind has been blanked by talk of the Illuminati. I buy some things and leave them to their talk; well at least it has killed some time while my video uploads.

Mackerel Fishing With Homemade Feather Rigs

There are those rare times when I am fishing that a fear creeps in. It is not the fear of going home empty handed but the fear that it is all a dream and in a moment the lap of the water and the tension on line will fade and I will wake up in an office with only the hum of copier machine for company.  

How To Make A Balsa Crankbait Part 2

I took my little crankbaits for a testing session at one of my favorite lakes, what I hadn’t figured was that while I have been away from fishing the rain has also managed to hold off and the lake had shrunk a little. Not being a very deep lake to start with its shallow margins which reach a way out into the lake had become very shallow; down to inches in places. The cold had also kept the weed growth down leaving any would be pike practically naked if it had chosen to leave deeper water.

Well it was water and water is a good place to test lures. The crankbaits surprised me casting cleanly with only the occasional tumble and reaching distances I had not expected. Even as the wind began gusting enough to push up some waves I had no problems cutting in. The retrieve really threw up some god vibrations although the waves made it a little hard to check out the action and once again they ran straight out of the box without any tuning.  Despite the obvious lack of fish I was happy, well who wouldn't be stood in water holding a fishing rod and casting homemade lures. I hung around for stupidly long period of time before realizing I could safely walk out in my wellington boots and nearly reach the distance of casts. 

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…

Mackerel Feather Rigs Revisited

I have been back over some old ground, creating some more mackerel rig videos but I felt the original needed some improvements. Hopefully the addition of new patterns and videos will make the process of tying your own a little easier and maybe I can move on to breaking some new ground or at least get out fishing.

Stop Press. 

Depressingly the Marine Stewardship Council have taken mackerel off the ‘fish to eat list’ due to the threat of overfishing to its breeding stock in the north east Atlantic. 

How To Make A Spinnerbait

The latest little project, a spinnerbait.

Spinnerbait Drawing by Paul Adams

Making a Spinnerbait Materials and Tools by Paul Adams

How To Make A Jig Spinner OR Spinnerbait Arm

More Lead Free Madness, with a jig spinner or spinnerbait arm.







Jig Spinner Tools and Materials

How To Make Lead Free Jig Heads

With a free day on my hands I went to check out a new pond. One of the guys who fishes at my local lake had recommended it as a pike hot spot but warned that it was a bit snaggy. Why is it that fishermen are prone to extremes when it comes to the truth? The lake was a lot more than snaggy it was at best a drowned forest where someone had dumped large amounts of scrap metal. My loses were limited to a couple of jigs and an old balsa prototype that had caught fish in other locations. Lucky I managed to land three replacements, a Mepps spinner,an impossibly small crank bait and a Yo-zuri Crystsal Minnow 130f.  

I left after an hour or so, nobody else was catching fish and I wished I had brought a little dingy to collect the other ten lures I had seen hanging in the branches of partially submerged shrubs. Back at the local lake I hooked on the Yo-zuri out of curiosity. I can only remember buying one hard bodied fishing lure in my life and that was hand made from H+M lures, a thing of beauty that I packed away for the move down from Scotland and that was the last I saw of it.

The Yo-zuri felt like it could do the business there seemed nothing wasted in its design. It flew well though not to any greater distances than I was used or with  any more finesse but I loved its pulsing wobble a thing I recognised from own pine minnows being that they are a little longer than the balsa.  Most of all I liked the way it tangled in the trace when I threw the  usual sloppy cast or slapped it into the water, proof that no matter how good the lure or how long the designer has worked on it still has to be tested on idiots. 

Annoyingly I caught a small pike that saved the day from a blank but part of me wished I had caught it on one of my own lures. Fighting the darkness I slipped on my weight shifting Phox Minnow and threw it across the lake, it felt like coming home.  

How to tie Mackerel feather rigs (Sabiki rigs) PT2

How To Tie Mackerel Feather Rigs (Sabiki Rigs) PT1

Here goes a bit of illustration to go with the  Youtube Video I made earlier this year.

Foiled Again

Image Above: Phox Minnow meets Aluminium Foil, waiting for some coats of Epoxy

I had spent the morning playing around with finishes on the weight shifting minnows, starting with foil and epoxy resin. Having finally come to the end of messing with their guts I thought it was about time I looked at some alternatives to my standard paint job. I have a love hate relationship with foil and fishing lures, I love the results but I hate the finicky nature of the material; I have suffered too many bad foil days. With the lures turning on the drying rack while the epoxy cured I set off for the lake knowing full well that almost all of its surface was covered with a thin sheet of ice.

The small patch of water that remained open was basking in the long rays of winter sunlight.  I felt warm in that superficial way that allows the coldness to creep into your bones un-detected until the only remedy is whisky and a roaring fire.

I flicked jig heads and threw lures into the stillness of the afternoon as dog walkers eyed me suspiciously judging me for my addiction as they would the alcoholics and drug users who also frequent the place.  Sometimes I understand that to be happy I need only a fishing rod and bucket of water to aim at.

After half an hour another fisherman ventured down the path towards the lake sporting a collection of plastic bags, a net and a handful of rods. He asked if he could set up next to me and being that the ice had reduced the options of where to fish down to a choice between which side of me and that I have never laid claim to any section of back I said yes.

So I threw some more lures and we talked about fishing here and in Australia from where he had escaped. He tossed a dead bait out and then set up a float rod to pick off any roach that were brave enough to head out from under the ice. He offered me mackerel as bait so I made up a trace and sent it out past the reeds.

It was hard waiting as the sun began to drop taking the temperature with it, a passing lady asked if we had seen her missing dog, a small grey terrier. My new fishing partner asked for the dog’s name and she replied “Woolfy”, without acknowledging the irony. When the wait got a little too long I decided to have a go at twitching the mackerel on a slow retrieve. After a few casts my retrieve was ended by a large swirl in the water; the bait bore the marks of a pike a little beyond the hooks. We speculated that the pike was probably full after snaffling Woofly down.

On the edge of darkness the ice began to set up on the clear water and I found I was now casting onto fishmonger’s slabs that had drifted from the main sheet; it was time to look for whiskey and fire. 

Image Below: Fishing on the edge of ice

New Homes for Old Lures

Image: A little fellow caught on a Jig Head.

God it is cold.  I am bandaged into my clothes with various bits of fishing tackle slipped in between the layers of cloth and still the bits that remain exposed ache in the cutting wind.  I have taken one small pike at the other end of the lake with a resin jig head but the centre section of water has been covered by the lines of a small group of carp anglers.  A couple of weeks ago I woke one of their brethren who had been camped out overnight by snagging one of his lines and setting off his bait alarm. His face said it all, woken from dreams of sumo sized carp only to find a sumo sized pike angler looking a little more than embarrassed.  

I have learnt my lesson and I am fishing out of harm’s way in amongst the snags at the shallow end of the lake. So far it has been one fish and two lost resin jig heads.  I clip on the long cast balsa minnow and watch it sail through the cross wind; it runs a little shallow for cold winter days and I still nervous of losing it having neglected making a few spares.

There is a call from across the lake and I briefly wonder whether I have hitched up another line. One of the carp lads is asking if I have a spare fishing lure. I tell him to come over and start routing through my bag and its collection of old prototypes and reject lures. I pull out an early version of the pine wobbler that has a slightly shorter lip. Its centre hook is missing; probably taken to use on another lure. I replace the hook and tell him I’ll just test it as I can’t remember if it’s any good despite the fact it still has some pike teeth ebbed in it. It swims with a wide wobble but it I am still not sure about it, so I give him a later version which has also seen a few battles and he thanks me and wanders back. He has fished here long enough to know I make the lures myself.

I keep the pine lure on the line and give it a few casts but it is difficult to handle after the precision of the weight shifting balsa lure.  A badly aimed shot lands it amongst the reed stems at the water’s edge but it swims free and a pike grabs it within an arm’s length. It is only small thing but the fight draws the carp angler back over. I unhook the pike in my hands and with a bit of fumble it leaps back into the water.  

I unclip the lure and hand it over to the carp angler before packing up. It might not be the prettiest thing I have ever made but then there are lots of shiny new lures hanging in shops and none of them have ever caught a fish. The tally stands after two hours at two pike, two jig heads lost and two minnows with a new home which all leaves me a little more space in the tackle bag.  

A long cast into the soup

Image Above: The Prototype, magnetic weight shift balsa minnow lure

I knew I should I have stayed at home before I set off. It had been raining hard for almost a day and a half before the weather broke and a weak sun managed to hollow a disc in the clouds. The lake water had turned the colour of strong milky tea, the kind of tea you would accept only in politeness while looking for a plant pot to tip it in. Normally when the lake colours some visibility remains even if it is reduced to a few feet but today I could have been dropping my lures into molten lead.

I had come to test a new lure which in fairness is not the same thing as fishing although catching a fish while not pursuing them is always a bonus. The lure was a Phox Minnow with a new magnetic weight shifting system. I wasn’t looking for distance particularly but to reduce or even eliminate the tumbling that normally plagues lightweight lures on the cast.

                I don’t have a great record with prototype lures I have a tendency to test them to their limits and then a little beyond so there is always a little trepidation when tying on a new crash test dummy. Rigged and ready I found a nice open area of bank and swung the rod, there was a sharp click as the internal weights shifted and then the lure sailed out over the lake. There was no tumbled or spin just a long arcing flight with the line pealing out like a vapour trail, I half expected a thud and then the rumble of a distant explosion as the lure touched down.

I am not used to early success so I casted again and again, and then some more, and then a bit more and again and then after I had decide to leave I stayed and casted some more. The lure worked again and again and despite the water being a slightly wetter variety of mud and the chances of catching a fish being slim to nothing I was enjoying myself.

I eventually left the lake and made the short walk up the embankment to the canal. By comparison the water looked almost pristine but in reality visibility was only a little over eighteen inches. There was another problem to contend with; the wind had stripped the last of the autumn leaves from the bankside trees and they hung in the slow moving water suspend like mines. I wasted too long collecting flora.

Later I clipped on a spinner bait in the hopes of avoiding the leaves and maybe luring out a pike by vibration rather than sight. Instead I moved from flora to collecting the kind things that canals are more famous for holding. A brief but not exhaustive list of my haul follows: A complete open golf umbrella, a hood from a jacket, a pair of trousers, part of a pair of jeans, an Asda plastic bag, a Tesco plastic bag, a cloth draw string P.E. bag (haven’t seen one for years), part of a rod case, a long piece of what looked like video tape. Eventually a pike made a feeble strike as the spinner passed  but it missed and rolled at the surface before returning into the murk.

Shifting a bit of weight

Image Above: Phox Minnow with internal magnetic weight shift tube.

Some bits and bobs of pipe finally turned up with this afternoon’s post and I got to mess around trying to put together a weight shifting tube for the Phox Minnow. Like most lightweight balsa lures the Phox suffers from a bit of tumble on the cast, so I decided a while ago to design a magnetic weight shift. At the first opportunity after dinner I quickly bent up a new wire configuration to incorporate the tube and then carved out a balsa body. Externally the lure will look exactly the same it is only internally that things have changed. There are four balls, one external to the tube then a magnet, plastic spacer and another three balls which will hopefully pull away from the magnet with the force of the cast and then roll back when the lure dives to be held in place until the next cast.

This is all untried as far as this lure goes but fingers crossed I should get to try it out in water  in a couple of days. 

Thank You Mr Bettell

Image Above: Pike on a homemade jig head

Image Below Right: Polyurethane jig heads and spinner bait (note the missing point on the last jig)

Image Bottom: Bungee sacrificed in the pursuit of pike 

Blanking once is bad enough but to blank twice in a row is a bit of a confidence breaker and when it’s your own lures on the end of the line, well it doesn’t get any worse. I have a list of familiar doubts for these occasions but with pike I take comfort in the fact that I have only been fishing for this species since February this year a little less than tenth months. My previous pike experience was a couple of fishing trips to a gravel pit about five years ago; even then I was fishing with homemade lures and enjoyed some success.  I still have a lot to learn and winter is proving to be a harder master than I anticipated.  

                

I suppose things have slowed down and I have still been fishing as if the sun was still cracking the flags. Pike like most fish get a bit lethargic in the cold and without that extra kick of solar energy heating things up chasing down every plug that rattles past them can not only be costly but just plain impossible.  Most of my lures require some speed to create action or in the case of floating/diving lures to dive down to the fish. Slowing things down requires something else; a lure that has action, depth and moves slowly enough to annoy the pike for a little longer. Looking for a bit of inspiration I turned to the late Charlie Bettell’s book entitled, ‘The Art of Lure Fishing’. Amongst the anecdotes and fisherman’s tales he gives some sound advice on using lures that run a little slower and deeper like spoons trailed behind weights, spinner baits and jig heads (my current favourite).

So last night I got the polyurethane resin out again and cast half a dozen jig heads from some recent moulds I had made. Taking Mr Bettell’s advice I knocked up my first spinner bait with a blade cut from a scrap copper fire surround. To dress the jigs I got the feathers and flash out, added some brass jingle bells (nearly Christmas) before butchering a bungee elastic to make rubber skirts. Finishing touches came by way of my sister who is helping to sort out a friend’s fashion design studio by getting rid of off-cuts. I managed to retrieve to pieces of stretchy fabric one with a glow in the dark coating and another with fine silver scales, these had come from an outfit she made for a guest on ‘Top Of The Pops’ ; a television program I watched almost religiously until its demise.

It was a cold start at the lake but the spinner bait was a revelation the blade turned even on the slowest of retrieves and as it pulsed the feathered tail gave a mesmeric wiggle. Following Mr Bettell’s instruction I bounced it off the bottom and as if by magic its design kept it almost snag free. I worked the lake but nothing was in the mood and not having  brought my wellingtons I didn't fancy dampening my feet to get over to the island and the sunlit shallows to see if anything had come to warm up. I went through all my jig heads giving each a try and retrieving them in slow bounces until I had an almost mental picture of the bottom of the lake. Finally I pulled out my bungee corded friend and sent it across the lake. Within a few casts I had hooked a jack and despite the cold it set off at a pace for a patch of shallow water a little further down the lake.  I was just about to jump into the shallows when I remembered my lack of boots and quickly walked the fish to a place I where the bank was low enough for me to unhook it while it was still in the water.  As if to pour scorn on my lethargic pike theory it bolted like a torpedo.

I moved further up the lake and within five minutes was into something a little larger that set my drag ticking like a bomb. On my knees at the bank I reached down to turn the hook again and release the fish without lifting her but the barb wasn't going to come back through so  I got the snips out closed my eyes and let the point and barb ping over my head. I felt a momentary pang of disappointment realising that was the end of my jig but feeling the pike surge out from my gentle tail pulls more than made up for it.