haru834.DIYSINKING PENCIL Lure

This one of series of video from Haru834 one of my favourite youtube lure and video makers. Rather list all the videos here I strongly recommend you check out the rest of his work, there is no language barrier as most are silent films but yet manage to deliver the important information.

Longin Making a Metal Jig

A little video from Longin Lures of Japan giving a glimpe of jig making. Check out their site http://longin.jp/

How to make a Balsa Crankbait

Well it is a start……………………

   I finally edited together my balsa crankbait video. It feels like an age since I started messing around with this little lure and hopefully later this week I will after a long recuperation from my recent illness get a chance to throw it back in some water.  Maybe I will remember how to catch some fish but that is never guaranteed. Part two will be along soon.

  Balsa Crankbait Design and Templates

  Balsa Crankbait Tools and Materials lists

How To Make A Simple Wooden Lure

I padded off down to the lake this afternoon to try out the paint brush handle before the water had a chance to freeze up again. I briefly had the place to myself and threw the new lure without my usual restraint, it flew like a rocket. The hardwood and rear weights kept it on course enabling me to place it rather than hurl it and hope for the best. With the rod tip lowered and a steady jerk on the retrieve I could keep it subsurface gliding and bucking with its silver sides flashing.  I slowed my retrieve and added long pauses so it sank to the bottom and kept some depth. In among the jerks I felt the rumble of a fish but it had gone after putting a couple of bends in the rod. I cast again and again while trying to remember the sequence of tugs and pauses that had triggered the attack. In the end I contented myself with the thought that it would have all been too much to catch a pike on the lure’s first outing, especially in the middle of winter: it didn't stop me vainly casting along the same stretch of water.

When the Essex boys turned up I switched to a lighter drop shot rig and a soft plastic fearing the water would quickly be covered by a web of carp lines.  Moving out of the way while they set up I threw jellies along the reeds. One of the lads asked if I had any old lures going spare so he could do a bit of spinning while waiting on his bait alarm.  I fished out a jig head with a soft plastic lure, but he didn’t seem that impressed so I gave him a Phox Minnow that I had managed to spray up in the style of a multi coloured sock. Although I give away lures a little too regularly I still get that nervous feeling that comes from handing over my work to be judged by someone else.

I moved a little further round the lake and continued my campaign to either catch a fish of freeze to death in the process. Back over the lake my Phox Minnow had claimed its first victim a small pike and I headed over while they waited for me. I waded into the shallows and unhooked it claiming it as my own as I had made the lure and was having no luck myself. I wandered back to the reeds and gave a few half-hearted casts before deciding that despite Christmas winter on the whole is crap, so I packed up and headed home. 

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

Another Pine Minnow Victim

Image Above: The Pine Minnow and its latest victim


It has been a while since I have done any lure fishing for pike and feeling the need to test some hardware I headed for Cheshire with a box of home-made lures. In my absence my favourite lake had become almost choked with summer weed growth and I spent a couple of hours beating path along its banks while collecting samples of the aquatic flora with a selection of lures. Bushwhacking and stalking are not the best bedfellows and I managed to scare up quite a number of frogs in the dense reeds and also the pike that had come to hang under the banks for a free meal.

In the end I found a small stretch of open water and clipped on a pine minnow. I am still in awe of this lure and the deep rumbling wobble that sets up when it’s retrieved. I casted the lure as close to weeds as I dared and then held the rod high for the retrieves to limit the depth of the run. The lure shook its head as the line plotted a regular curve through the surface. Within half a dozen casts a jack emerged from a blanket of weed close in, pushing a wave up it took the lure almost in front of me. He was small enough for me to pluck from the water with only a hand under his chin. As if returning the favour he decided to kick up enough water to half fill one of my wellington boots. The mid treble on the lure looked to be holding his jaw shut and rather than do any more damage I cut the protruding points and barbs with a pair of side cutters I have starting carrying with me. What was left of the hook slipped out easily and the fish took the opportunity scoop a little more water up with its tail before I returned him to the weed.

I soldiered on a little but it was hard to find any open water or bank space. At one point I looked down to my reel and found I had wound in a good clump reed with the line. I hate to say it but, roll on winter piking and clear water.

Old Ghosts

Image Above: Jack Pike caught on a homemade spoon lure.

  The lake was smaller than I remembered, like so much of my childhood world it had shrunk in my absence. There was one other angler perched on a tackle box with his rod on a rest while he smoked. I moved to the far end of the lake partly to put some distance between the splash of my fishing lures and his float but also to explore the small reed beds that fringed this narrow arm of water.  I cast a lure into the dull mudded water and begin the puppet show, retrieving the lure with jerks, twitches and straight runs that make the best of its unnatural wobble. Overhead gulls followed its progress swooping close to the water for a full inspection. 

I have come to catch a fish which for me is something different than going fishing, but there are other reasons. I have one fishing rod, a bait caster reel, scissors, a mat for unhooking, forceps, a camera with a broken screen, a mobile phone that has been partially gnawed by mice and four homemade spoon lures. I tell myself I am just fishing light, keeping mobile and agile. The lake sits in the rude green of a city centre park, the foot traffic is manly dog walkers and commuters but when the morning rush is over the benches fill with drunks and the skeletal faces of heroin addicts. Even the dogs grow meaner as jack russells give way to mastiffs and leads to chains and studded collars.

I work the banks and the reed beds, my lure flies almost effortlessly on long casts and if I side swing it bounces like skimmed stone whiffling out into the surface.  Close in there is a boil of water as the long flash of pike rolls in the depths. It has missed the lure, I cast again and again but the pike has given up or moved on.  I take my cue and make my way around to where lake widens fanning out casts to cover as much water as possible. When the near bank is exhausted I make my way through a shallow spit of mud onto what should be an island.

I fished here once as a kid with a friend and some other lads, the sons of a friend of his mother’s. They were older than us, teenagers that new things and smoked when they could lift cigarettes from their parents unguarded packets. Circumstances threw us in together and we set up here on the island to fish amongst the mud and old crisp packets in warmth of a summer evening. I don’t remember us catching much but my friend and the lads had other ideas. We got into some bullshit game of hide and seek, but it was about one thing only getting me away from my fishing tackle. When the game was over my tackle box was empty. Every last fishing float, weight and hook, things I had collected, things I had stared at for weeks in the glass cabinets of tackle shop until pocket money or Christmas money had liberated them.  They knew what they had done, my friend knew what they had done but they bullshitted their way out of it. It wasn’t the fishing tackle that hurt the most but being the one, that kid. I never saw much of that friend again, one of the lads I saw years later and it looked as if heroin had had the best of him. I suppose I learnt that stuff in tackle boxes doesn`t catch fish only the thing on the end of my line.   

Not much has changed here, the lampposts carry police warnings strapped to them and am I travelling light should history repeat itself.

I leave the island and return to the beginning, the reed beds and this time the pike hits its target and I land a Jack that looks a little over three pounds. It’s perfect, each scale placed on its flanks with care and bound in flashes of colour that melt away as rolls in the weak sunlight.  

The lure works and I pack up.

Image Below: Warning Signs

I am getting there

Image above: Handmade spoon lures, cast in Polyurethane, through wired and weighted, covered with textured foil, airbrushed and just awaiting a coat or two of Epoxy.

  This is it, the first day of producing fishing lures that will hopefully end up for sale.  I have spent the last three weeks preparing and making enough mistakes to have probably learnt something. If I had known how hard it was going to be and how much I would have to learn I am not entirely sure I would have started down this route. That said it has been fun so far, hopefully if I can sell them I may avoid getting a proper job and spend every Monday morning at the water’s edge and the rest of the week making lures. 

The Last Fish Supper

Image Above:  The last fishing lures I have made on the island. (foil covered cast polyurethane)

I have three days left on the island, three days to finish packing and leave. This afternoon I put away my fishing rods, oiled the reels, boxed them and then Filleted and cooked the coley I caught on Friday.

The plan for the rest of the afternoon was to take a trailer load of boxes off the island by tractor at low tide. Fortunately the cold weather had killed the tractor’s battery. Finding myself at a loose end I went for a walk up to the highpoint of the island. The Sun had just begun to set out over the ocean and was running shards of light from a low cloud base onto the distant reefs that crowd the Duhb Artach lighthouse.

Closer to the island’s shores smaller islets and reefs filled out the view like a living map. I traced out the familiar routes taken on fishing trips between marks. I suppose I learnt to fish here in these waters and when I wasn’t fishing I learnt to make things that caught fish. I tied my first mackerel rigs with feathers plucked from the carcass of a whooper swan that had been brought down by the island’s power lines. My fishing weights came from scrap lead gutters, my floats old corks and garden canes, fishing spoons made from cutlery and wobblers carved from old pine bed heads.  

And beside the fish and the tackle, there were the people who I dragged out to sea. Jefferson a Brazilian who had spent too long in Italy and ran on espressos and cigarettes, talked twenty to the dozen and was incompressible in four languages. His verbal circus only subsided while he peed over the side, which he swore was a proven way of attracting fish if combined with the magic words ‘here fishy, fishy’.

Anna a performance poet, playwright, international aid worker and when she needed the money a nanny. Every fishing trip was a humiliation as she generally caught more and larger fish that the rest of the male members of the crew.  

Orlando, an Austrian pastry chef who said he would come fishing if I would “shut up” while in the boat.

 Martin who I lied to, we hit a shoal of large coal fish and filled a fish basket, then a rod broke under the strain and then a reel and we hauled up the lines by hand until the anchor hold was full of fish, and I told him it was like this every time I went fishing.

Val an accidental fishing buddy, who while enjoying a spin round the island had to watch me gut twenty mackerel, a horrific sight normally but especially if you are a vegan Buddhist.

Rupert who threw up his dinner through his nose, wiped his face and continued fishing.

PJ (he knows who he is) who took me on my first fishing trips when I came to the island. His voyages were epic every rock and islet peppered with a commentary that was not constrained by mere fact, but included ship wrecks, tales of nuns from Iona who had buried treasure and fish so large  that they had required industrial lifting gear.  Conger hypnotizing was just one of his minor side-lines.

Alberto, a true Italian from a mountain valley so deep that the sun visited its murky depths for only two hours a day giving him an unnatural fear of sunburn. When we caught mackerel he called them by their scientific name repeating the word Scomber and I assumed he had science background until I later discovered the Italians had largely invented Latin.

Louis my oldest son and king of the mackerel bashers who following in his father’s footsteps hacked into his fringe with a pair of nail scissors and used the trimmings to tie his own lure. Charlotte, my daughter who was present when I hauled up my largest Pollock.

My wife, who screamed so loudly and for so long when she hooked her first fish that I had to prise the fishing rod from her grip and land it myself.

Image Below: Sheep Island (soay), sound of Iona

Foil, fimo, felt tips and fish

Image Right: Coal Fish on another home made Lure

After four years, my time on the island is coming to an end and there are still so many fish I never got to catch.  

 Overnight the wind along with the swell dropped until a stillness settled over the bay and Sound. Just after nine I padded up the street to collect Ryan who despite the prospect of holding a fishing rod while being sat in a boat on the North Atlantic, was in bed. I encouraged his would-be mother in-law and girlfriend to eject him using any means necessary before stomping off to the pier to sort out the boat and tackle. I don’t understand the idea of being late for fishing, every minute spent in bed is a minute stolen from the possibilities afforded by a fishing rod.

I checked the fuel, started the engine before stringing lines through rod eyes while I waited. Ryan finally made it to the pier and we headed out into the soup.  Our first mark was a small reef that had just become visible on the falling tide. I was fishing with another prototype made from Fimo (polymer clay, see pre. Post), and a little nervous, wondering if all the energy I had invested in the lure would bring any reward now I was out on the water.  First cast and a fish takes it, shit I was happy even after it threw the hook close to the boat. Second cast and this time it came home with a decent sized coal fish, at this point I didn`t care about the rest of the trip and to be honest it was not the best fishing trip on record.  Foil, Fimo, felt tips, wire, a bit of weight and a hook. 

Image below: Looking Back to Jura from the Sound of Iona

Foil and Felt Tips

Image Above: Foil covered salmon parr lures (Prototype)

I am little further down the road with my new lures; the next steps are finish and texture. So I got the tin foil out and began experimenting embossing patterns on it and then laying it over the lures, the above image shows the results so far. For colour I used some permanent makers rather than get the airbrush out just yet. Hopefully over the next week I will experiment with the airbrush and post the final versions on my blog. 

A lure in a storm

Image Above: Foiled diving lure

A bit of a storm blew in on Thursday and after demolishing half the trees in the island’s small wood and knocking out the power supply it blew its self out. The power took a little longer to return and earlier this evening I spent a couple of hours tying feather rigs under the light of a head torch. In the meantime I managed to finish another diving lure and attempted to take it for a testing session but the boat’s engine is running a little off beat at the moment. I carved the lure from pine and then foiled it and coated it with epoxy. It runs at about a couple of feet below the surface on moderate retrieve and casts very smoothly.

Image above: Drying Floats

I got back to bit of sliding float making using balsa wood that I had bought to make lures. It is a bit easier to work with than cork but still needs a lot of finishing with sand paper. The centres are once again of hollow cane and the heads have been airbrushed and then silver foil added. The foil really helps locating the float when the tide takes it some some distance especially in large waves.