vlog 6, Swimbait Diaries Joints and Ireland

I finally managed to find some fish with a little help from my friends.

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.

Making Reed Fishing Floats (bobbers) with the hand cranked lathe

I am never really sure with any video or project exactly where I am going to end up, scripts and storyboards if I bother to make them, can only do so much in steering but there are always surprises. I think what started me down the track of making my own floats was the disposable way mass produced floats tend to get treated almost like bic pens. It seams I am always finding their snapped plastic stems stuck in the mud or the margins of ponds or lake.  I have devoted a fair amount of my free time to stirring at fluorescent blobs of paint in lakes or ponds, long enough for it to be considered semi religious and with any relic there has to be some kind respect. So I wanted to make a float that if it decided to take up residency in a snag it would return to dust without doing to much damage to the pond on route, but it had to start out looking somewhere between a candle and an incense stick.

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

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

Making a Bulletproof Glide Bait

I am starting to feel at home with my camera and to be honest it has been I long time since I have felt like that. I used to love stills photography I mean really love it, but to get there I had to get past the camera. It wasn’t that I had to understand how it worked as a machine; I had to know it almost as if it was just another limb.  Video is a little different, the image doesn’t stand alone it is part of a narrative something to hold the viewers’ attention or transport them through the story.  

An old picture of the River Mersey a long way from the sea

Making a soft plastic fishing lure: The Uber Grub

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I didn’t know if it would all work out, I suppose it seems foolhardy to make a film about a lure that I haven’t tested as well as using a process at its extreme.  When I opened the mould after the first injection, there were a few nervous moments to say the least.

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.

Making soft plastic paddle tails part 2

I think all this messing around with soft plastic is making me long for a knife and a block of wood.

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. 

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.

Making Reed Fishing Floats (bobbers) by hand

It has been a little bit of a strange week, I seem to have been stuck making a video that didn't want to be made; computer crashes, broken cameras, accidentally deleting scenes and then breaking the float I’d made.  Just before finishing the film I took my floats down to the lake and it all largely didn't seem to matter.

  Making Reed Fishing Floats Materials

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.  

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.  

Making Soft plastic Fishing Lures

A very bad fisherman

    When the pike hit the lure I did what I have been telling myself I shouldn’t do, instead of striking and setting the hook I reached for the button on my camera. The pike needless to say was camera shy and just as I got the video going it threw the hook and buggered off to recover. I gave a few more casts just in case it was having second thoughts but I guessed it had better things to do. Well this was my first outing with my new Sushi Whip Tailed Grubs, I hadn’t actually caught a fish but at least I had proved to myself that it had attracted or annoyed one enough for it to take a swing at it.

                Despite being five in the morning other anglers had begun to arrive and my open water was quickly reduced to small patch which felt only a little larger than the bath tub I had tested the lures in. Before long I was into something again and this time I managed to strike. Whatever was on the end of the line shot off stripping line from reel as the drag buzzed. Despite thudding away at my rod I was not convinced it was a pike, I thought maybe it was one of the fabled catfish or a foul hooked carp.  A few mutes later I was gaining on it and the back end of a very large eel emerged from the weeds.  

I suppose an eel foul hooked doesn’t count unless you are a really bad fisherman. The only compensation was that I didn’t have to get my forceps down its mouth to unhook it.  

Making a Beetle Fishing Lure From Plastic Spoons

I am not sure this lure project really made sense until I added water and then when a pair of eyes swam towards the camera I knew it had that spark.  The plastic spoon lure was an idea I had, had a long while ago and never got to building; mainly because I knew I could make the beetle part but I had no clue how to turn it into a lure. In the end I made the beetle last week and after working over the weekend in the city at the river festival, I came back to it with a plan. Rather just create another wobbler I thought about a drop shot rig which I have been using for pike in the winter when they tend to sit in the mud. As always I am a few seasons behind with my lure making but when weed dies back I should be able to bounce this baby a foot or so off the bottom without the constant fear of losing it. 

el Dorado ............ Golden Dorado

La mejor manera de cubrir un señuelo de pesca son las marcas dejadas por un par de dientes afilados. Gracias a Cholex1000 que me envió un link a un vídeo que ha hecho de su primera pesca de madera señuelos. Ahora quiero vivir en Argentina y para pescar el Dorado (Golden Dorado). Gracias por el video         Google Translate


The best pattern to cover a fishing lure with are the marks left by a pair of sharp teeth. Thanks to Cholex1000 who sent me a link to a video he has made of his first wooden fishing lures. Now I want to live in Argentina and to fish for el Dorado (Golden Dorado).  Thanks for the video

Drinks Can Vibe Lure

I often start a lure project with a big idea and then try to bolt ahead to the finish without paying too much attention to the details. This is great for quick prototypes but almost useless if I want them to last longer than a few chucks into pond. So this vibe lure is about the details for me, the real lure or big idea I want to make is a swimbait with a polycarbonate core but my main experience with polycarbonate comes from making minnow lips rather than anything structural.  Using polycarbonate as the lure body has put me on a really steep learning curve. It is an unbelievably strong material with a high impact resistance but a bit of a pain in the arse to drill and needs a bit of work to bring the edges up to a shine.

 Using the drinks can was something I thought about for a while; normally aluminium cans are coated internally with varnish which makes for a better surface for the glue to bond to than aluminium. Having pre-coloured and protected finishes also saves a bit of time.  So this was a bit of fun which really worked on the canal perch even if I didn’t catch anything bigger than a handful I mean a finger full. 

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