Michael Gerold Sand Casting Pirks

Back with Micheal Gerold for another superb video showing the basic technique of sand casting lead pirks, this is making video at its best.

BIg jig heads big fish fish

Another great vid from Splish Splash, and this time it is in English and just when I had started to learn Danish.

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.  

Lure Making School

Image Above: Salmon Parr Casting Spoon Prototype

Image Below Right: The Original with a Cole Fish

I spent the day trying out some new ideas I had come up with while making spinners from scrap. I have been putting off buying some kind of wire former hoping I could come up with a homemade alternative a little more suited to my needs. It is not that I am against buying tools, far from it; it is just that because I never went to lure making school I find myself doing things in a way that requires tools that as yet don’t exist and then in the process of making tools a whole new field of opportunities and ideas opens up. So from scrap spinners I jumped to wire forming jigs and lead moulds and decided to have another go at wiring an old prototype that I have never gotten round to finishing despite being the first lure I ever cast out of resin: The result is above; a trout or salmon parr casting spoon which is through wired and weighted and waiting for paint and epoxy. The original prototype took a fish on its first cast which I lost close to the boat but I got another on the second cast so I am hoping for good things.

Hand Lines

Image above: Homemade Hand Line

A little while ago we spent a few days in Wales trying to look for a future. We stayed with couple who were friends of a friend in a converted barn. As a thank you present I got together a hand line as the guy had said he had a small boat but he didn`t go fishing. The hand line handle I routed out of oak and used an old cork place mat to create a hook hold while it is being stored. The feather rig I tied from holographic curling ribbon and the weight is one I cast in the small video I made (see earlier post).

I had forgotten that I had once done a bit a hand lining many years ago while holidaying in Devon. I paddled across a wide bay and about half a mile out the line I was towing cut through a shoal of mackerel and the rest was history. Despite the obvious advantages of a rod it is still dull compared to the urgency that hand holding a line gives.

If you are looking for some feather rigs for the summer influx of mackerel or a bit of Pollock fishing follow the link below. These are rigs I hand tie from  designs I have used for the last few years to take a few thousand fish.

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. 

Making lead fishing weights in wooden moulds

Another how-to video. The exciting world of lead smelting.