Lure painting a basic pike pattern and using decals

It has been a while since I have used any decals but it was worth it to a add a personal touch to this lure.

Making a Balsa Minnow 1,2,3,4,5

this is your Sunday evening viewing sorted, no don't thank me just get some balsa on order and join the fun.

Jack Fin, lure making with Passion

You have got to love these guys, lure making with passion , soul and other good stuff from Italy, check out their website

Antonicont Handmade Lures

Italy has had more than its fair share of old masters, Botticelli, Michelangelo but what about some new ones. Antoni Conteddu of Antonicont Handmade Lures is one of those artists who takes, wood, paint and shiny things to some other place most of us can just dream about. It is hard to find one point alone that stands out about his creations, it is all a master work, the internal engineering and weight shift, external form, carved details and paint work is on a line of perfection.

When looking at someone’s work at this level I can only be inspired, and also a little bit jealous but I take comfort in thought that something else has to suffer for this greatness and maybe he is a terrible cook who’s pasta is always overcooked, or maybe not. Check out his facebook page Antonicont Handmade Lures, you may wish your keyboard had its own like button to save precious time while viewing.

Test Tank Tuesday with Mikko

I do not normally post Mikko's (Solarfall Baits) stuff on this blog, because If you don't already know who he is, his website and videos then you are probably living under rock or you have finally been released after serving a long prison sentence. So for those ex-cons and Martians I give you Mikko's latest soft plastic monsters, and what a test tank. This is really a combination of his wood carving skills, mould making and a special soft plastic paint in the hands of a master from CAB paints of Finland. Oh yeah and just to rub it in he goes and catches a nice pike. BLOG LINK http://solarfallbaits.blogspot.co.uk/

Urban Lures

Urban Fishing Lures - Making of from Giorgio Nasti on Vimeo.

From a basement in Italy, Urban Lures has started a little empire based on quality handmade balsa fishing lures. This is a really beautiful glimpse into his workshop by Giorgio Nasti a film maker based in Rome, lets hope he keeps pointing is camera at fishy subjects.

Currently Urban lures is selling through his facbook page (https://www.facebook.com/urbanfishinglures/) ,but a website is in the making. Meanwhile if the video doesn't wet you appetite enough check out the lure porn below.

Test Tank Tuesday

From the UK Barry Robinson with a new tench bait, and already it has got the fish interested. This is a polyurethane casting from a hand carved original. Barry not only makes for himself he also sells and makes other stunning lures (RobisonLures.co.uk) as well as finding time to write articles which you can find on his website.

Is that one pissed looking pike or what?

Tank Test Tuesday

A weekly round up of test tank action from around the globe



Check out this Beauty from Ireland via Mel Handmade Lures and for further inspiration there is a link to his Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/melhandmadelures. Hand carved original that he is resin casting, painting and coating with epoxy.

From Romania and the hands of Totoianu Mihai come the the Killer B, this thing although tiny at 2.5cm or an inch has got to drive trout or even chub wild, at one point I found myself licking the screen.



And finally for this week from Switzerland via Mark Balmer a little bit of balsa with some nice but action.

If you have tank test video you want to add e-mail me at paulpadam@aol.com using the title Tank test Tuesday and send me a link to you youtube video,  include a picture of the bait and some details about yourself and where your from

Plastic Spoon Lure Revisited, Brendan Miller

Sometimes you put ideas out there and the best case is they come back but with someone else's spin on them, Thanks Brendan

Foiled Again, Lure Passion

I am sure I was a magpie in a former life, cause I can look at shiny things all day

Marling Baits

I am not sure which of this guy's videos I like best so I will just have to watch them another fifty times to make up my mind, but that is no great hardship. Once again share the love or in failing that share the videos and check the website.    http://www.marlingbaits.com/  

Making Lead Squid Jigs

My favorite part of this video is the power wrapping of the jigs using an electric drill, like many things in life it is over briefly but none the less satisfying.

The Priest and the Postman

The guy is wearing a large electronic tag on his wrist; it almost looks like it has been saved from the set of an old sci- fi movie, one of those ridiculous visions of the future that came true. This is the new postman; we have two now, one who works for the queen or the royal mail and this guy who works for some company that I imagine operates out of grey clad buildings on grey industrial estates run by grey managers, who drive grey cars.

I am waiting for someone to answer the door as my family feel that even though I am a little over forty. I am not yet responsible enough to be trusted with keys. I ask the new postman what crime he has committed to be wearing a tag and he tells me that it is to scan the letters before he posts them and also give his global position to the base. I hold out my hand to take the post but he tells me he must post it through the letterbox as it is company policy. Then I wonder if this guy travels globally like Santa delivering letters, but I think I already know the answer to that question.

As if to restore my faith in humanity me wife opens the door while complaining loudly that my incessant bell ringing will not reduce the amount of stairs she has to descend to open the door.

Trout Priest Drawing of

Down with Abu

I am suffering from a deep need to fish, I have boot full of tackle, I am less than few miles from the lake and the traffic is not moving. Ahead a helicopter is trying to land and I am guessing it is an air ambulance. When the lights change I cut across behind the stationary traffic and do a U-turn and briefly enjoy the empty lanes before turning on to a small road and heading across the countryside.

Even away from the main road the traffic is backed up through villages not used to dealing Friday evening’s commuters. It is slow going; each junction holds its own torture. When I finally inch my way into the lake car park it is empty, although the line of traffic I had escaped from is moving slow enough to be considered for parking tickets.

It is not long before I am stood in some water and the traffic is forgotten. I am here to fish and work out some filming ideas; two things that I find seldom go well together. I have found a fish but it hasn’t found the hooks, there is always a chance if I set the camera going and recast it will make another appearance. After half a dozen badly aimed casts the pike finally makes contact with some metal and I am in, the only pressure now is to land it for the camera.

When It is back in the water and I have had chance to get myself together and check the camera was actually recording I spot crack in the handle of the rod. The carbon fibre that runs beneath the handle has split; this is not the first problem I have with this rod. Part of the reel seat broke on its first outing, I should of sent it back but I am a tinkerer and I added a brass ring from an old rod and re-whipped the reinforcement at the joint with some Kevlar thread and epoxy That re-whipping is now holding the handle together well enough for me to continue fishing. I could just blame myself for buying cheap fishing tackle but I do not believe spending another hundred pounds will make me a better fisherman or bring home anymore fish.

The reel I am using is also a cheap Chinese import, a copy of an earlier abu bait caster. The reason I bought it was as a spare to and Abu pro-max reel but to be honest the Abu is a piece of crap and I have stayed with the import. The Abu cost over a hundred pounds and I also should of sent it back after a couple of months, it never really performed; too much plastic and too little engineering and quality. I have older Abu boat reels (7000i, seven) which I used to use almost daily boat fishing in the Atlantic, and to be honest these are a tools that just work without any questions, a little rinse after use, some oil some grease and I have friends for life.

The truth is that high prices these days only guarantee that a lot of money has been spent on advertising and sadly Abu seem to heading down that route. Will I buy another Abu Reel, probably but it will have to be old school and pre-owned. The rod handle will be repaired but I do need to build my own rod.

I pick up another three small pike and miss some in equal measure before my camera battery dies and I think about going home on some empty roads.

Making Paddletail fishing Lures and messing with lollipop sticks

So the final thing I have to shoot to finish this film is some footage in the bath, not of me thank god but the lures. The only problem being is my small underwater camera is dead, it flicks on and off randomly, then it demands a charge and shortly after refuses it. I resort to finding a clear watertight box I can fit another camera into. The only other problem is I have only one very wide angle lens and my youngest son decided to throw it across the room so it no longer focuses. I sit down with lens and some micro screw drivers and an hour later after finding which piece of glass inside was out of its seating and putting it back the lens is working.  For the enclosure I empty one of my wife’s clear acrylic storage boxes that houses a collection of tea that smells like it has been stored since the opium wars. On request my son brings me a pair of underpants to pad out the box and I press the movie button, place the camera inside, close the lid and hold it just under the surface of the water. Lights, action, camera and I am sitting on the toilet holding a camera  while pulling a piece of soft plastic through the water as my fingers go numb; all the glamour of Hollywood.

Later when I have finished editing and six hours have past while it uploads I sit down once again with my micro screwdrivers and this time with my original broken underwater camera. When it is stripped down I remove the battery, it is a Samsung and looks like a mobile phone battery. I ask my wife for her old mobile and take the back off it.

The new battery from the phone is the same length and width, it even has the pins in the same place, its voltage is the same, but its amp hours are a little lower and it is 2mm thinner. Having made a film about lollipop sticks I know that they are about 2mm thick. I reach for the tub of sticks and snap one in half and slide it under the battery then put the camera back together. When I press the button the camera fires up, it has all its bars and I wait for it to fail, but no it is working perfectly. 

Lollipop sticks, bloody lollipop sticks, I have decided to carry them on my person at all times. 

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. 

Carving a finger full of balsa

A little bit of light carving.

What I wanted was something I could dropshot with that unlike a soft plastic lure it would have 

some buoyancy. The main advantages of dropshotting is keeping the lure a set distance from the bottom rather than guessing, while also working the lure without changing its position so effectively it gets to dance in a predator’s face rather than racing past . The disadvantage is keeping the rod up and the line tight plus it isn’t great at any distance.  Adding a small float above the hook can work for distance as it keep the line up out of any trouble but inversely it also reduces the distance of cast. So with this aside I thought I would make a floating dropshot lure for a trout and perch water I fish.

I didn’t have to look far for inspiration, when it comes to balsa trout lures there is of course Maki Handmade lures; it would be fair to say that if god wanted to make some fishing lures he would probably serve an apprenticeship with Maki.  There isn’t a lot to say about his workmanship, it would all be a bit superfluous just follow the link   http://blog.goo.ne.jp/makilure?fm=rss            (and don’t forget to come back).

Rather than resort to shell veneers I thought I would stick with foil and also limit my choice of finishes to a bit of black acrylic paint, a dab of red sharpie and 15-20 dibs in some model aircraft dope. One of my aims when I started making lures was to keep it simple and often I find myself jumping headlong into over-complication, while this can be fun I try to remember the person I was when I first began making lures. Keeping it simple means I didn’t want to get the airbrush out, I wanted to sit and just make without the hum of a machine or Darth Vader’s respirator.

So I sketched up what I thought would go for a prototype, redrew it in a Cad program and then printed it out as templates. Rough shaping the body was easy enough with the parting line between two pieces of 4.5mm balsa giving me a dead centre.

Carving the face required some very light music, I found a YouTube channel that played Gregory Alan Isakov, songs back to back and settled in for the duration. I shouln’t really call it carving, it was more a case of cut and sand; balsa being a bit of a pig when comes down to fine details. Carve, fit the through wire and weights, foil, paint with a bamboo skewer and then dip every half hour in dope until I lost count but a least over fifteen times would be a good guess.

So I have my lure it is a little smaller than my index finger and more importantly it has been finished just as the trout season is over so I won’t know its true value until next spring. It isn’t perfect but I know largely the bits that went wrong and how to avoid them in the future. This is a start and the learning has only just begun so I have quite a lot of fiddling about ahead of me. Maybe if I get a bit better at it I'll make a video.

Sushi Whip Tail Grub Molds / Moulds For Sale

In an attempt to pay for some much needed video equipment I am offering some Sushi Whip Tail Grub moulds for sale at £10 each plus postage. These are cast by me using high quality RTV silicone from my master, they take a day to cure and then a day later I give a test, if everything is ok I put in the post.   Recently I have done very well fishing with this grub on small jig heads, the body being just a little over half instead of fully round means the hook can be left to stand really proud, which seems to have helped hooking bony mouthed fish like the pike and the odd very greedy little perch.  

The grubs from the mould are 85mm (3 ¼” approx) long, the tails come out thicker than injected bait moulds which gives them a nice pulse that draws fish out even in the mucky ponds and canals I fish. If you are interested send me an email to paupadam@aol.com unfortunately I can only deal with paypal users.

Thanks

Adding or Replacing the Eyes on Soft Plastic Lures

He tells me the fish used to be bigger and there were more of them and then almost to contradict himself he tells he watched a guy pull a 27lb pike out last year on a dead bait. Before I leave him to his feeder rod and head along the bank he tells me that he has never seen anyone catch anything on a plug. I don’t stay to argue or brag, fish are always bigger and better in the past.

Maybe he is right if I killed a fish and stuck it on a hook my chances of a large pike would improve no end, but often it’s not the arriving that matters so much to me as how I got there. I route in my tackle box and pull out another little creation and cast again; the fish seam less than impressed today with my handiwork.

Waggler Floats and Cigarettes

The crossroads was empty except for a mange riddled fox that stood a little off the centre point. I wondered if it was waiting for the lights to change but knew it was sizing me up, trying to separate the jumble of rod case, net, chair and the man carrying it all. It waited a long time and then a cyclist pasted me and the fox moved, slinking through a gap in a fence. It was a little after four thirty and the sun was already high enough for the day to be considered fully formed all that was missing was the traffic.

                At the twenty four hour garage opposite the park entrance a guy stood on the edge of the forecourt as if waiting for a taxi. He asked me for cigarette as I neared, I told him I didn’t smoke and he asked for money; I told that I only had enough for a bottle pop as the sliding doors to shop opened. I passed him again on the way out and walked into the park.

At the lake a mist was puffing its way in from the fields cloaking the small nib of my float that poked at the surface. I missed some bites, and then missed some more, eventually I found some pace and began hooking roach and the odd bream. A noise made its way through the park cloaked by the dense foliage on the far side of the lake.  When the owners of the voices finally made it in to view I found myself watching two men striped to the waist half dance their way down the path alongside the lake. They spoke what I took to be an African language, but Africa is a big place.   They told me they wanted to catch a fish and that they were drunk as if it was carefully guarded secret , I looked at them blankly while managing to keep an eye on the float and then they asked for a cigarette.