Making A solid Titanium Glide Bait Leader (Trace)

I am in the middle of half a dozen things at the moment project wise so I thought I would just make a simple video in the hopes that it would let people know I am still alive. I have been testing these leaders for just over a year now and I think to be honest I cannot see myself going back to stainless steel other than for special lure rigging like stingers. Sadly for lighter lures these are a little on the heavy side so they tend to kill the action of wobblers but are great for large baits and obviously glide baits.

A Mouth Full Of Crankbait

Image Above: A Pike Breakfasting On My Homemade Crankbait

I arrived at the lake a little after 5:30am and found the carp crew who had been camped out for a couple of days were in the process of landing a lump of a fish. It turned out to be a rather large tench but not a carp and the crew were not happy. I stopped to inquire where their web of lines stretched to so as to avoid setting off another bite alarm and creating some more disappointment for them.

Two days earlier I had been out for an evening’s float fishing session when the crew had turned up carrying all their equipment in a supermarket trolley. Knowing I would be required home they set up around my swim with banks of rods laid out like cannons on the deck of a destroyer. With guns to the left of me and guns to the right, I hung on for an hour and then left them to it.

This morning I had two small patches of water to myself to hunt for pike and fling some new lures and prototypes about. I clipped on a fat head wiggler knowing that this really wasn’t the best location for hurling big bits of wood about. The plug flew but landed with the poise and grace of a scud missile scaring the moorhens and their chicks. I let it swim for a bit and then put it away saving it for a trip to a bigger water and then clipped on a Balsa Crankbait.

Despite the smaller size and lightness the lure flew to almost three quarters of the distance covered by its bigger cousin but also landed with less of a thud. It wasn't long before something was kicking up swirls in pursuit but after a couple of lunges whatever was out there gave up. I moved to my other free stretch of water just as a pike broke the surface in the shallows. Three casts later it had taken my crankbait and when it surfaced the lure was firmly wedged in its jaws. I switched on the mini video camera and then not thinking stupidly landed it in the net instead of picking it out the water from under its chin, instantly the belly hook snagged up and I had two hooks to untangle.

With some minor surgery the hook came out of the fish ok and I slipped him back while I dealt with the bigger problem of the net. When I finally got back off my knees I realized that my little lure had caught its first fish and had the rash to prove it. Unfortunately the video was unusable but I managed to salvage a still from the junk.

After deciding previously to limit myself to one pike per visit to my local water I set about testing some other little creations.  Despite some design successes the lake is the place to come and find flaws and test ideas some of which should of never have left the drawing board but it is often only when I have added water that my failings become apparent. One particular prototype swam off in a direction that almost made me believe it was autonomous. I still have a lot to learn about lures and filming especially in the great outdoors

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

A Tale Of Two Lures

Image above: The first pike of the afternoon.

Image Centre: Hand Carved Balsa Wobbler And Its Bigger Pine Brother

It is late afternoon when I finally make it to the lake. A trip to the tackle shop had delayed my departure. There is seldom a queue at the counter but the shop is home to a collection of anglers who should probably spend a little more time near the water be it soapy or the fishing kind. Today the owner was demonstrating his one and only super power the ability to resist adhesives. The impromptu display began while he was fixing one of his patrons fishing umbrellas with fast setting epoxy. After the epoxy failed to glue his fingers together he produced a tube of super glue and liberally dotted it on his fingertips before pressing them together. True to his word after a minute his fingers came apart with skin intact. I left as one of his other customers who had tried the same trick was realising his piano playing days were over.

The banks are almost unrecognisable a flush of summer growth has filled out the space between the lowest branches of the bankside trees and the tall waterside reeds. I find space and set up the rod and reel where the denser shade of the trees had stolen the light stunting the undergrowth.
The first cast puts my lure deep into the clutches of a weed bed it comes back embedded in a tightly packed ball of green. I cast again and again fanning out to cover the banks and to reach for the centre of the lake but my lure stalls every time as it picks up another beard of weed. I move and start again but it is a similar story. I try a shallow lure and then a surface lure but it makes no difference; with little in the way of open water every retrieve only brings more weed.

The lake is old flood land a product of subsidence and does not fall away to any depth much beyond eight feet. At this end the banks narrow slightly where two small rivers feed in cutting channels some distance over the lake floor. Ultimately the bed load of material carried by the moving water settles out gradually reducing the depth of water until weed begins to fully occupy the water column.

I return to the path and walk the short distance to where the lake begins to spread out to its widest point and the rivers lose their influence. The weed thins its hold on the surface only forming dense drifts in the shallows where a strip occupies just a rod length of water from the bank. I begin the search with a Hybrid Casting Spoon sending it out almost parallel to the bank and retrieving it at speed with a pulsing rod tip so the lure flickers and veers sharply from side to side. With each cast I aim at another mark on the clock until I work my way from ten o’clock through to almost half past two. It is hard to get to grips with the lakes submarine topography without a depth finder and a boat so I cast for coverage hoping to increase the odds of happening on features that hold pike. Often here I have drawn fish out of the middle of the lake casting at twelve o’clock. I run through the clock again varying the retrieve with long pauses to let the spoon drop into the depths.

I draw a blank and move thirty yards and begin again. With my lure out in the depths I catch site of some movement close into the bank on the edge of a reed bed. I retrieve the lure and stop to take a look and way things up, it could have just been a rat slipping into the water or moorhen leaving for the reeds but something nags at me. The reed bed is thirty yards off and skirts a small bay shaded by a scrub willow and stunted hawthorn. In the spring I had watched a small jack pike hang motionless in the shallow water until the clump of my boots had sent it off into deeper water.

Maybe it was just a jack chasing fry or frogs. I unhitch the casting spoon and reach for something a little lighter a new balsa wobbler as yet untried. It is not a radical design I took the basic shape from another of my balsa creations the ‘Montana John’ and rather than rely on a single hook I wired it for two small trebles, bulked out is profile and shifted the position of its internal weight to compensate. This is a completely hand carved lure and although newly finished with glass like coats of epoxy it has spent long enough in my hands for it to feel very familiar like the handle of a well-worn tool. I know it has the lightness of touch to cover the distance on the cast without thumping into the water and spooking whatever awaits it on the edge of the reeds.

I adjust the brake and magnets on my bait caster reel and swing the lure, it lands smoothly a foot or so from its target. As I crank the reel handle the lure springs into life and a wobble sets up before it sinks away into a dive. In less than three cranks of the handle the water irrupts and I am in, the rod is pulled sharply and begins to dance like a wand as a fish struggles with the idea of restraint. It is a short fight although the pike manages a brief but spectacular walk on its tail. I push my net through a gap in the reeds and the fish obliges.

Its body is thick and solid and even under a firm grip it writhes looking for leverage. The hook comes away cleanly and I am left for a moment to admire the fish and lure which is dwarfed as a David by a Goliath. I fumble the return to water which ends with me half launching the pike which recovers almost instantly disappearing to leave to small vortexes as a parting gesture. With the fish gone I gather my kit and head for firmer ground to eat crisps and drink pop and relive the moment.

From here on the bank space is limited by access and cramped by trees to cover the water between access points and would require long casts. Balsa even weighted is not the best material for punching out long casts; I clip on a heavier pine wobbler. Made with a denser Scots pine body larger in size as well as being heavier overall this is a lure to make up some distance. Despite its lack of delicacy the unusual weighting pattern and shear sides create  a violent wobble enough to draw pike in from some distance away even in coloured water. 


Back at the water’s edge I find myself performing contortions to swing the lure out past the weed banks. I work around trees and push through reeds carrying my rod over head like a marine with a rifle. On one small section of open bank I send the lure out past the trees that enclose its other end. The lure runs a good way off from the roots and overhangs but a wave rides out on the back of a pike and I tense waiting for line to straighten under the load. There is no splash just a dull weight that occasionally thuds a little as I draw the fish in. It is smaller than the last one and the hook is deep within the mouth just ahead of its gills which accounts for its reluctance to fight it out. I reach my long nosed pliers inside and the hook comes away with a twist although the wound has trailed blood out through its gills. Once in the water the fish comes alive powering away to recover.



The air has stilled and evening is beginning to settle. Out on the lake the sails of dinghies sag as yachtsmen wait for a breeze to break up the huddle of stalled craft, out of boredom or looking for a competitive edge, some of the younger crews push hands through the water. Under the trees I have become a bait of sorts for the emerging mosquitoes and other insect looking for a feature to patronise.
I pack up slapping at the gaps in my armour and walk back to the car.

Before leaving I sort through my lures pulling out the familiar faces I have carved or cast and then placing them in some kind of order. It seems a long way from business end of selling lures. I wonder about what makes a lure something to be desired - is it its ability to bring home fish, reputation, brand, pro endorsement or just the look of it? I know that for the three to four hours I am out here at the lakeside everything else, work, business, life are wiped and there is only me the water and the fish. What I want from a lure is for it to feel like an extension of myself, sometimes I need range, or the ability fight through a gale, other times the light touch that responds to the crank of the reel handle and twitch of the rod tip like a puppet.

I suppose the business of selling lures is about being part of someone else’s time on the water and that is a big ask.

Image Above Right: A Second Pike
Image Below:  The Pine Wobbler and Link to Shop

Another Handful

Image Above: A morning’s work carving balsa wobblers

The coarse fishing season officially opens tomorrow; I may just have to go fishing despite the weather and the need to make lures. I spent the morning carving more balsa wobblers. I can’t say I am getting any faster despite the practice but it is beginning to feel rather natural.

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

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. 

Making Jointed Sand Eel Lures

Making Jointed Sand Eel Lures, The Movie.

This is what I get up to when honest folk are in bed.