Fishing with Rage

Having decided I am a crap fisherman due to recent results I thought I could do with some tips.

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

How to make a Flying C Spinner

Image Above: The Flying C, another DIY project
Image Right: Balfour Bay, Erraid, Mull, Scotland

With my Pneumonia on the wane and the snowman who has stood guard over the garden for the last week starting to suffer from erectile dysfunction it seems only fair that I should be going on a little trip. Hopefully next week I will be sat in a cottage just back from a Hebridean  beach with a view over to the sea cliffs of the Burg, and if the mood takes me I may venture down to throw some lures or visit the local freshwater loch to test my new Flying C spinners on the local trout.

  Flying C Diagram and Blade Templates

  Tools and Materials List for the Flying C Fishing Lure

How to make a Buzzbait

It was a little busier at the lake than I am accustomed to. The warmth of the winter sunshine had brought out a field of competitors, but rather than clog up the central swim they had tucked themselves away into the corners leaving me a sizeable stage to test my lures. I had come to get some film of my latest project the Buzzbait, this was to be a repeat performance after yesterday’s visit when I found once again my camera was battery- less.

The buzzbait is at best a little more than ridiculous, I know it has its roots in the spinnerbait  but there is pushing the design envelope  and then there is farting in it and posting to someone you don’t like. Despite looking like a unfortunate accident involving a teenager with a mouth full of dental work and desk fan this is a lure that truly make sense once you get it into the water. Given a couple of reel handle cranks and a slightly raised rod tip the lure rises to the surface as the blade splashes creating a sound very similar to that of a duckling running on water to make good its escape. Unlike the sloppy casting spinnerbait the buzzbait flies a little longer and little more directly all be it with a purring blade.

With all that said this is really a summer lure for use when little critters like ducklings, rats,mice, and voles are about on the snaggy margins where wobblers fear to tread. Until then I can just make the excuse that I am testing it rather than fishing with it.

When I had what I thought was enough video to edit together I put the camera away and clipped on a Montana John and went for walk along the bank. A group of young lads decided to join me casting jellied lures across my line while telling me about the pike they had caught last week, whose weight seemed to be yo-yoing with every detailed addition to the story. I tried to get a little distance on them and attracted the attention of another passer-by who asked how it was going as I struck into a fish.

It felt a healthy size and drawn by the commotion the lads ran over brandishing landing nets and asking if I wanted them to net it. I jumped down into the shallow water and brought the fish in; with crowd safely on the bank I slipped the hook out and let pike away before it became a thing to prod at.

The lads, who couldn’t have been much more than ten, asked what I caught the pike with and I showed them the lure. The oldest of the group took off the jelly shad he had been using and began tying a different lure on his line, one which I recognised and  I told him the lure he was holding was one I had made; I think he thought I was asking for it back. His mate said he had gone into the lake to get it out and the water had come up to his underpants. I had given it away to fisherman a few weeks earlier who must have lost it only for it to change hands again.  To show I was not trying to reclaim lost property I gave him another lure, a plastic swim bait I had retrieved myself and thought I better throw in some traces for safety. I had my fish, my film and smile from hearing about a kid who wadded in after one of my lures so I packed and headed home.

  How to make A Buzzbait  Drawing by  

  Tools and materials list for making as Buzzbait by  

How To Make A Spinnerbait

The latest little project, a spinnerbait.

Spinnerbait Drawing by Paul Adams

Making a Spinnerbait Materials and Tools by Paul Adams

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. 

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.

If Moleskine made Lure Boxes

Recycled Fishing Tackle Box #2

I needed a portable home for my little collection of homemade spinners. I imagined afternoons on a trout a stream with a rod, reel, and my box of spinners. I routed out compartments in a piece of scrap pine and then attached a cover made from the front of an old business folder. I took inspiration from that other portable device the Moleskine pad and a tobacco tin of lures an American fisherman had shown me down at the lake.

How To Make Spinners From Scrap

I started making my own fishing lures for a number of reasons one of which was losing lures while teaching my oldest son to fish with spinners. Spinners while great at attracting fish are also amazing at attracting snags, I suspect there isn’t a pond, river or lake in the northern hemisphere which isn’t playing host to its little collection of orphaned spinners; no wonder Mepps claim to produce the world’s bestselling lure.

Having found the remnants of copper fireplace hood that somehow had managed to survive a few decades past its style by date I thought I would see if I could start with raw materials and make a decent spinner.