Lure painting a basic pike pattern and using decals

It has been a while since I have used any decals but it was worth it to a add a personal touch to this lure.

Fishing Journeys Nutterjuck Lures

I am a big fan the guy behind Nutterjuck Lures, Scott Anderson he makes some truly original lures that step away from the everyday things your likely to see on tackle shops racks. So this video was a great find for me and also a great watch.

Links facebook https://www.facebook.com/NutterJuck-Lures-171058632922767/

Links Nutterjuck blog http://nutterjucklures.blogspot.co.uk/

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

Marling Baits

I am not sure which of this guy's videos I like best so I will just have to watch them another fifty times to make up my mind, but that is no great hardship. Once again share the love or in failing that share the videos and check the website.    http://www.marlingbaits.com/  

RV plugs a look behind the scenes

I love looking at other lure makers workshops it kind of makes me feel I am not alone

Carving a finger full of balsa

A little bit of light carving.

What I wanted was something I could dropshot with that unlike a soft plastic lure it would have 

some buoyancy. The main advantages of dropshotting is keeping the lure a set distance from the bottom rather than guessing, while also working the lure without changing its position so effectively it gets to dance in a predator’s face rather than racing past . The disadvantage is keeping the rod up and the line tight plus it isn’t great at any distance.  Adding a small float above the hook can work for distance as it keep the line up out of any trouble but inversely it also reduces the distance of cast. So with this aside I thought I would make a floating dropshot lure for a trout and perch water I fish.

I didn’t have to look far for inspiration, when it comes to balsa trout lures there is of course Maki Handmade lures; it would be fair to say that if god wanted to make some fishing lures he would probably serve an apprenticeship with Maki.  There isn’t a lot to say about his workmanship, it would all be a bit superfluous just follow the link   http://blog.goo.ne.jp/makilure?fm=rss            (and don’t forget to come back).

Rather than resort to shell veneers I thought I would stick with foil and also limit my choice of finishes to a bit of black acrylic paint, a dab of red sharpie and 15-20 dibs in some model aircraft dope. One of my aims when I started making lures was to keep it simple and often I find myself jumping headlong into over-complication, while this can be fun I try to remember the person I was when I first began making lures. Keeping it simple means I didn’t want to get the airbrush out, I wanted to sit and just make without the hum of a machine or Darth Vader’s respirator.

So I sketched up what I thought would go for a prototype, redrew it in a Cad program and then printed it out as templates. Rough shaping the body was easy enough with the parting line between two pieces of 4.5mm balsa giving me a dead centre.

Carving the face required some very light music, I found a YouTube channel that played Gregory Alan Isakov, songs back to back and settled in for the duration. I shouln’t really call it carving, it was more a case of cut and sand; balsa being a bit of a pig when comes down to fine details. Carve, fit the through wire and weights, foil, paint with a bamboo skewer and then dip every half hour in dope until I lost count but a least over fifteen times would be a good guess.

So I have my lure it is a little smaller than my index finger and more importantly it has been finished just as the trout season is over so I won’t know its true value until next spring. It isn’t perfect but I know largely the bits that went wrong and how to avoid them in the future. This is a start and the learning has only just begun so I have quite a lot of fiddling about ahead of me. Maybe if I get a bit better at it I'll make a video.

How to make a Balsa Crankbait

Well it is a start……………………

   I finally edited together my balsa crankbait video. It feels like an age since I started messing around with this little lure and hopefully later this week I will after a long recuperation from my recent illness get a chance to throw it back in some water.  Maybe I will remember how to catch some fish but that is never guaranteed. Part two will be along soon.

  Balsa Crankbait Design and Templates

  Balsa Crankbait Tools and Materials lists

A long cast into the soup

Image Above: The Prototype, magnetic weight shift balsa minnow lure

I knew I should I have stayed at home before I set off. It had been raining hard for almost a day and a half before the weather broke and a weak sun managed to hollow a disc in the clouds. The lake water had turned the colour of strong milky tea, the kind of tea you would accept only in politeness while looking for a plant pot to tip it in. Normally when the lake colours some visibility remains even if it is reduced to a few feet but today I could have been dropping my lures into molten lead.

I had come to test a new lure which in fairness is not the same thing as fishing although catching a fish while not pursuing them is always a bonus. The lure was a Phox Minnow with a new magnetic weight shifting system. I wasn’t looking for distance particularly but to reduce or even eliminate the tumbling that normally plagues lightweight lures on the cast.

                I don’t have a great record with prototype lures I have a tendency to test them to their limits and then a little beyond so there is always a little trepidation when tying on a new crash test dummy. Rigged and ready I found a nice open area of bank and swung the rod, there was a sharp click as the internal weights shifted and then the lure sailed out over the lake. There was no tumbled or spin just a long arcing flight with the line pealing out like a vapour trail, I half expected a thud and then the rumble of a distant explosion as the lure touched down.

I am not used to early success so I casted again and again, and then some more, and then a bit more and again and then after I had decide to leave I stayed and casted some more. The lure worked again and again and despite the water being a slightly wetter variety of mud and the chances of catching a fish being slim to nothing I was enjoying myself.

I eventually left the lake and made the short walk up the embankment to the canal. By comparison the water looked almost pristine but in reality visibility was only a little over eighteen inches. There was another problem to contend with; the wind had stripped the last of the autumn leaves from the bankside trees and they hung in the slow moving water suspend like mines. I wasted too long collecting flora.

Later I clipped on a spinner bait in the hopes of avoiding the leaves and maybe luring out a pike by vibration rather than sight. Instead I moved from flora to collecting the kind things that canals are more famous for holding. A brief but not exhaustive list of my haul follows: A complete open golf umbrella, a hood from a jacket, a pair of trousers, part of a pair of jeans, an Asda plastic bag, a Tesco plastic bag, a cloth draw string P.E. bag (haven’t seen one for years), part of a rod case, a long piece of what looked like video tape. Eventually a pike made a feeble strike as the spinner passed  but it missed and rolled at the surface before returning into the murk.

Shifting a bit of weight

Image Above: Phox Minnow with internal magnetic weight shift tube.

Some bits and bobs of pipe finally turned up with this afternoon’s post and I got to mess around trying to put together a weight shifting tube for the Phox Minnow. Like most lightweight balsa lures the Phox suffers from a bit of tumble on the cast, so I decided a while ago to design a magnetic weight shift. At the first opportunity after dinner I quickly bent up a new wire configuration to incorporate the tube and then carved out a balsa body. Externally the lure will look exactly the same it is only internally that things have changed. There are four balls, one external to the tube then a magnet, plastic spacer and another three balls which will hopefully pull away from the magnet with the force of the cast and then roll back when the lure dives to be held in place until the next cast.

This is all untried as far as this lure goes but fingers crossed I should get to try it out in water  in a couple of days. 

Starting At The End

Having in one way reached the end of the construction part of this set of videos I find myself at the beginning with a lure, a rod and a lake. I have been taking bits of wood shaping, painting them and throwing them in the water for over five years and I still get excited every time one of my fishing lures springs to life at the end of a line, but when it stops dead in the water and the rod arcs as something grabs hold that’s when it all kind of makes sense.  

I would not of been able to make these videos without the help, inspiration or encouragement of other lure fanatics, those people who share to the ‘how to’ either as bloggers, video makers, writers, professional lure makers or the people who take time to answer question on forums so thanks and thanks to my family for dealing with my lure obsession with compassion, understanding and only occasionally singing or shouting in background while I was filming.

Special thanks to

Solarfall Baits, Genie Lures, Hansom Lures, Maki Lures, Pondbuster Lures, Lure Passion Italy, Manart Craft Baits, Mac Tackle, 61diemai, Japanese Handmade Lure Blog, Salty Water Rusty Memories, Dawn Patrol, Brain Pope and Tails From The River Bank for the encouragement and Lauri Rapala.

Part 6 the end is a bit nearer but not yet

The penultimate video, I feel like Cecil B Demille but maybe a little poorer. While I am prating round with wooden fish my little brother is providing animation instillations for the Victoria and Albert Museum,  obviously when he grows up he too will film wooden fish.  Tomorrow I will fish not film and do some other work I have been putting off. 

Making Balsa Lures the saga continues

Will it ever end, is it 'Gone with Wind' for lures?

On a lighter note autumn is with us and I find myself staring into golden pools instead of watching my line. This morning a juvenile crested grebe followed my lure beneath the surface to my feet and then exploded when it realised its mistake. 

How to make a balsa lure part 4

Image Right: what you could have won............

Link To Pdf   Materials and tool list for lip        

Link to Pdf    Jig and lip templates

Some days are just a bit crappy and the fish don’t bite. I have a whole list of excuses for these days , a change in the weather, too much rain, too much mud in the water, the wrong lure, the right lure the wrong colour……. It goes on. I tried everything today I had the whole arsenal out and even managed to create a new lure (new to me) by combining a spinner with a wooden plug. I fished deep, mid water and surface. I changed colours from bright reds to softer blues; I picked up the pace, dropped it back, twitched, walloped and cranked the baits. It was not a good morning.  

Building A Balsa Fishing Lure Part 3

After spending a little too long messing with videos I needed to get out and get some fresh air. So this morning I headed off to the local pond while the weather was bad enough to deter less fool hardy anglers.  Building lures can be great but fishing with them is in a whole different league. I wasn't expecting much from the pond it had rained for the whole of the previous day which had raised the water level a little but surprising not coloured it much beyond its normal noodle soup hue.  

There was one carp angler who was packing up his tent after what looked to have been a heavy night. I clipped on a Phox Minnow and sent it the short distance across the lake. With the summer weed almost gone the lure bounced off the bottom on fast retrieves only bringing home the occasional autumn leaf.  I worked along the reeds and covered both shores at the tail of the water. When the Carp man had gone I moved to a deeper stretch and took a jack almost on the first cast. The hook was looped around a gill raker but luckily it had not pierced any flesh and there was no blood. I slipped the hook out gently and the raker flopped back into position undamaged. Back in the water the pike bolted and I move along the bank a little.  Five or so minutes later I was in a again and then as I struggled to find my camera the fight came to an end as the pike broke the surface and threw the hook.  I took a few casts over the same spot hoping for a replay and surprising I hit into something a little larger once again I let the line fall slack as I pissed around with my camera and then the pike was gone.

I put the camera away and headed over to a small stand of reeds on the other side of the lake where I had often seen movement. This had all the looks of classic pike hold up,  a sunken tree trunk, reeds, shoals of juvenile fish and almost impossible to fish with a lure. I managed a few casts and something rumbled under the surface on the edge of the reeds. In the excitement I buried the lure into the submerge tree and after a harsh tug on the line there it stayed and will probably always stay. I tied on a new trace and clipped on my larger pine minnow casting it way out beyond the snags, it wobbled its way up to the reed bed and the rumble came out to meet it.  This was a much bigger fish and I kept the camera safe inside my jacket until I had it on the bank. 

I need a go-pro or a cameraman

Jack Pike On A Phox Minnow

How to Make a Balsa Lure Part One

Here goes building the Phox Minnow

Link to PDF Fig.1 Wire Template Layout

Link  to PDF Tools and Materials for Through Wire

Hopefully this is a pretty straightforward start.

The Devil Rides Out

I wanted to create a robust minnow type lure from wood using just some basic geometry to give it that look rather than complex carving or casting.  I shaped the above lure from pine using the band saw and router. As test piece I thought I would go a little off beat with the colour, this I suppose is the zombie look. The eyes are glow in the dark beads cut in half, maybe not zombie more the devil rides out.  This time I am going to let the epoxy fully cure before giving it a test run. 

Making lead fishing weights in wooden moulds

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