Vlog 3 and 4

There they are blood, sweat and dust, but it is moving forward at a snail's pace

Moulding and casting a trout with Smooth-on

This I suppose is aimed at taxidermists and being made by a silicone and resin supplier is a little liberal with the silicone. With that said it is a great video that shows the process of casting from a real fish in some detail. I especially like the fins. Check out the youtube channel for more moulding and casting videos.

Making Stick Baits with Shigenaga of Japan

For me the perfect holiday would be spending a week locked in another lure makers workshop; I would be happy just to brush up and catch the odd glimpse of them working. On the other hand it is great when lure builders make videos of what they do, saving me from all that nasty travelling and hanging about in airports. This is a two part video from Shenanigan a Japanese lure maker, it really gets into the detail of how he works. I think there is always a fear with lure makers that sharing a process will somehow give the competition a foot up. Watching these videos and the way he makes lures I kind of realized no matter how much he gives away, there will be few who can give the commitment required to produce these amazing lures.



check out the action



Link to Shigenaga Facebook page

Drop shotting with Steve Collett

I have watched a fair amount of how-to catch fish videos in my time, and often they are short on the how-to bit and little more aimed at shifting gear off a shelf or promoting a personality. This video from Steve Collett and Ecogear is really a great look the catching part and the techniques he uses to make himself one of the best lure anglers in the country. Let us hope this the start of something good.

DIY - Frog Lure from cork with rubber legs

I love this video it just makes perfect sense, well to me anyway. I think what really makes it is the bit action at the end.

Salmo Lures a little look behind the scenes

I would love to visit and have a factory tour here or even make a video

Alabama Rig homestyle

Make it

Nike "The Making of Making" from Dana Shaw on Vimeo.

The Fish Carver

A nice profile of an American fish carver

Making A Weight Shift Balsa Fishing Lure Part 2 of 3

It is Boxing Day and it is cold enough to snow, even the weather reports are predicting a drop of the white stuff but as usual they have overdone things and are calling it the start of the next ice age. I am testing my weight shift lure while my wife complains about the loss of feeling in her extremities. There are no pike in this lake and no perch of any size; a winter fish kill a few seasons ago took its toll so I am casting for leaves, pleasure and the camera.

  Phox Minnow Weight Shift Balsa Fishing Lure Drawing

  Phox Minnow Weight Shift Tools and Materials

Fieldey and now for something completely different

If only fishing lures looked this good

Making a Fisherman's Friend or Altoids Tin mini tackle box

It is funny but i remember having a job i hated and i had to visit a customer whose company was just along the road from the Fisherman's Friend Factory. I used park up opposite the factory for cigarette and take the time to wonder why i was doing  a job i hated so much when i could be a fisherman. Now i carry a little reminder just in case i should ever think of taking a job like that again.

  Templates for Fisherman's Friend or Altoids tin tackle box

Making a Spybait fishing lure from PVC foam board

I am not sure that spybaits should work, well catch fish I mean. Apart from the slight flicker of the rotating blades they do bugger all and after spending a great deal of time getting lures to make some kind of dying minnow performance it can be a bit unnerving. Spybaits supposedly stem from Japanese bass fishermen hacking shop bought lures by removing the lip and adding props, but rather than floating like traditional prop baits spybaits sink and run almost silently. Not having bass population within a thousand miles of home I took my little creation out piking.


It has to be said they do cast like rockets but with little or no resistance on the retrieve It feels a little like pulling a fly though the water rather than a lure. I am used to feeling the head tug of minnows or the deep vibrations of a spinner through the braid, but with a spybait when fish hit it is a bit of a shock with just a bang out of nowhere. So with a few fish caught under my belt I suppose I have to admit they they work but like any new lure it is going to take me some time to figure out just when or even where to use them.

  Spybait Fishing Lure Drawings and Teplates

Making a Spybait Tool Sand Materials

Romanmade

One long piece of inspiration, the film and the craft are all gold

Tim Earick Baits

A really good mix or how to and a bit of background

Rockstar Lifestyle

An old video but it shows Clive of Rockstar Lures (http://www.rockstarlures.com/buy-rockstar-lures/) rebuilding a giant spinner on the water

I think i will be making one of these on one of those dark winter nights

Making Hard Plastic fishing lures on the lathe and Glide bait Leaders

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

Bulletproof glide bait part 2

Bulletproof Glide Bait Drawing and templates

Silver Carbon fibre lure

The first fully formed carbon Kevlar object I remember coming in contact with was a kayak. It wasn’t any old kayak it was a specialised wild water racer; a boat designed to plough through raging torrents at speed. Even as a kid I knew this was something different, a seventeen foot piece of sculpture with a look of polished granite weighing little more than a small cloud. Carbon Kevlar is a composite (a combination of two or more materials); a resin which in the case of the kayak was epoxy combined with layers of carbon Kevlar reinforcement.

To cover my fishing lure I wasn’t really looking for strength although anything that can reduce bite rash has to be a bonus, what I wanted was the look, that kind holographic quality. When I discovered a product described as silver carbon fibre, let’s just say I got a little over excited. The fact is there is no proper silver carbon fibre but there is Alufibre which is glass and aluminium fibres woven together that produces a material that looks like carbon fibre with added bling.

Composites can be a bit of a pig to work with as I found out with early experiments trying to wrap it around lures and get some kind of decent finish. In a factory setting moulds and vacuum, bagging equipment are the norm but even for OCD lure maker that looked a little expensive and maybe overkill. Instead I opted for a simple flat sided lure and combined with homemade flat sheets of epoxy and fibre laid up on a piece of plastic box file. Despite the simplicity of this method really stunning sheets can be produced that once incorporated into a finished lure lend me that same feeling of being stood next to that kayak.

To glide or to jerk

Despite the internet making the world seem a little smaller we don’t all share the same views when it comes to naming lures. In America there is the glide bait but in Europe the same lure would be called a jerk bait, were as jerk bait in America would probably be called a wobbler in Europe, confused? Well get over it and let’s move on, I will stick glide bait but if I mention jerk baits I mean the same thing.

What do glide baits do?

Essentially a glide bait glides from side to side in a pattern often called walking the dog, although if I had a dog that walked like this I would be looking for a refund. I once asked someone with a science background if he could give me a quick explanation of how a glide bait does what it does and he said that any short answer would probably be just B.S. so here is some well-crafted B.S. For a glide bait to work in a walk the dog way it needs a bit of input from me the fisherman, a jerk of the rod tip with a fast crank of reel will pull the lure forward, once the rod tip reel are briefly still the moving lure wants to keep moving. The trouble is the lure has no real aim so wanders off to the side. On the next jerk of the rod the lure does the same thing but it first turns back towards the rod before wandering off to the other side. A steady pattern of jerks and pauses will create a steady walk the dog track for the lure. That is a simple explanation but there are obviously a lot more factors that go into determining how the lure and angler perform and as with all lure varying the retrieve will often bring a little more interest from the fish.

Why fish like glide baits?

I have no idea. What glide baits do have in their favour is weight and power, jerking a glide bait moves a lot of water and most fish are sensitive to sudden water movement, some fleeing from it other like predators attracted to it. Another advantage is not just moving forward it can move wildly from side to side and therefore covering more of the water but also all the while not racing out of range of potential predator strike.

Tools and Materials list for Making the Bulletproof Glide(Jerk) Bait Fishing Lure