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 a Basic Plastic Glide Bait

Underneath the skin of this slightly overweight, lazy, middle aged man is another slightly overweight, middle aged man who has just ordered pizza. I am it is fair to say blessed with a reluctance to do anything much, after all my middle name is Inertia. So when something comes along that makes lure making less about making and more about the lure I kind of like it. Plastic may be killing our oceans but it is great stuff to make lures out of especially quickly. So for this video I put away the balsa (well left it where it was) and made the long walk down to the cellar to make a quick lure out of polyurethane. The results you can see for yourself, it was a bit heavy and broke the handle on my crap jerk bait rod (this is a hint to a jerk bait rod maker for a freebie, Don't judge I am as broke as my rod) so I my need another one to use in future videos where I may let the camera linger over the label and refer to it a few times (it is worth a try). Enjoy, and as always share the shit out of it. For the rod people my e-mail is paulpadam@aol.com (yes I am that cheap)

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?

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. 

Thank You Mr Bettell

Image Above: Pike on a homemade jig head

Image Below Right: Polyurethane jig heads and spinner bait (note the missing point on the last jig)

Image Bottom: Bungee sacrificed in the pursuit of pike 

Blanking once is bad enough but to blank twice in a row is a bit of a confidence breaker and when it’s your own lures on the end of the line, well it doesn’t get any worse. I have a list of familiar doubts for these occasions but with pike I take comfort in the fact that I have only been fishing for this species since February this year a little less than tenth months. My previous pike experience was a couple of fishing trips to a gravel pit about five years ago; even then I was fishing with homemade lures and enjoyed some success.  I still have a lot to learn and winter is proving to be a harder master than I anticipated.  

                

I suppose things have slowed down and I have still been fishing as if the sun was still cracking the flags. Pike like most fish get a bit lethargic in the cold and without that extra kick of solar energy heating things up chasing down every plug that rattles past them can not only be costly but just plain impossible.  Most of my lures require some speed to create action or in the case of floating/diving lures to dive down to the fish. Slowing things down requires something else; a lure that has action, depth and moves slowly enough to annoy the pike for a little longer. Looking for a bit of inspiration I turned to the late Charlie Bettell’s book entitled, ‘The Art of Lure Fishing’. Amongst the anecdotes and fisherman’s tales he gives some sound advice on using lures that run a little slower and deeper like spoons trailed behind weights, spinner baits and jig heads (my current favourite).

So last night I got the polyurethane resin out again and cast half a dozen jig heads from some recent moulds I had made. Taking Mr Bettell’s advice I knocked up my first spinner bait with a blade cut from a scrap copper fire surround. To dress the jigs I got the feathers and flash out, added some brass jingle bells (nearly Christmas) before butchering a bungee elastic to make rubber skirts. Finishing touches came by way of my sister who is helping to sort out a friend’s fashion design studio by getting rid of off-cuts. I managed to retrieve to pieces of stretchy fabric one with a glow in the dark coating and another with fine silver scales, these had come from an outfit she made for a guest on ‘Top Of The Pops’ ; a television program I watched almost religiously until its demise.

It was a cold start at the lake but the spinner bait was a revelation the blade turned even on the slowest of retrieves and as it pulsed the feathered tail gave a mesmeric wiggle. Following Mr Bettell’s instruction I bounced it off the bottom and as if by magic its design kept it almost snag free. I worked the lake but nothing was in the mood and not having  brought my wellingtons I didn't fancy dampening my feet to get over to the island and the sunlit shallows to see if anything had come to warm up. I went through all my jig heads giving each a try and retrieving them in slow bounces until I had an almost mental picture of the bottom of the lake. Finally I pulled out my bungee corded friend and sent it across the lake. Within a few casts I had hooked a jack and despite the cold it set off at a pace for a patch of shallow water a little further down the lake.  I was just about to jump into the shallows when I remembered my lack of boots and quickly walked the fish to a place I where the bank was low enough for me to unhook it while it was still in the water.  As if to pour scorn on my lethargic pike theory it bolted like a torpedo.

I moved further up the lake and within five minutes was into something a little larger that set my drag ticking like a bomb. On my knees at the bank I reached down to turn the hook again and release the fish without lifting her but the barb wasn't going to come back through so  I got the snips out closed my eyes and let the point and barb ping over my head. I felt a momentary pang of disappointment realising that was the end of my jig but feeling the pike surge out from my gentle tail pulls more than made up for it. 

The Oldest Trout Parr

Image Above: Trout Parr Casting Spoon, experimenting with colours

Sometimes I avoid things and build them up until when I finally get round to them it is all a bit fraught. So I finally sat down with a trout parr, lure blank and began experimenting with colour and pattern. Working free hand without stencils is like riding a bike with your hands tied behind your back, you can do it but when it goes wrong it goes very wrong although the thrill is quite cool. I still have a way to go with this lure even though I have been messing around with its shape for over a year, it isn't perfect but it is starting to look like the thing I imagined. 

Polyurethane Blank Fishing Lures (hanging to cure)


It was back to work today, if you can call making lures a job. Over the last week or so I have been trying to speed up the process of making my casting spoons and today’s quick turnaround creating blanks seems to prove that the new methods are working.

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.

More Advertising

Lure making by day lure Advertising by night. Hopefully I will get round to a more interesting how to video soon.

Messing with paints

I got the paint pots out and did bit of messing around trying to come up with some colour combinations, some I love, some I hate.

Below is Pedro, a very little lure I made as a prototype he weighed 3grams. I made him yesterday from fimo (polymerclay) it took me about ten minutes and then another twenty to airbrush him. I gave him a couple of coats of acrylic varnish and left him to dry overnight. This morning early I took him along with some other lures to the local lake for test run. What a lure he swam beautifully and then I lost him to snag, why oh why oh why.  Poor Pedro you are now like an ex-girlfriend, it was beautiful but it is over.   

The business

I suppose the trouble with business is ultimately you have to make money which is useful but on the whole shit boring. So I am hopefully going to make fishing lures instead and then sell them for money so I can continue making fishing lures and eating and going fishing. That is my business plan, lucky I don`t have to take it to the bank and ask for money based on the last sentence.  The biggest question is, can I do it?  I am not the only person asking, both in-laws and outlaws are asking. I think I can and what’s more I am going to give it a go.

Above is my first advert, this feels a bit like prostituting the thing I love but needs must and at least it is an attempt at humour although an advertising guru would tell me it is sending out mixed messages.    Bollocks to mission statements, bollocks to ethos I am just going to make lures that I like and that I catch fish with, hopefully other people might also. Watch this space the lures will be on sale by the end of the week.

My wife says I always look like that picture above and that based on that evidence I should smarten up my act.  Yes and the hook is real and even with the point snapped off it hurt.

A little bit of airbrushing

So I am a little bit further along with my fishing lures, hopefully they will be for sale this year.