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.

The T Shirt Action Camera Mount

I am dead baiting for pike. For a lure builder this feels like surrender or the start down a slippery slope. I take comfort in the fact that at least I have made my own float from a couple of corks and some bamboo. This is the second swim I have tried and despite the sunshine it is bloody freezing and I am conscious that I may be found frozen to death with a rather healthy tan.  

My float is finally showing some signs that the mackerel a few feet below has drawn something’s attention. I wait until whatever is down there has decided to don a napkin and tuck in. The float starts to move as if propelled by its own outboard motor and then like Nemo’s Nautilus  it sinks below the surface. I wait for what feels like an indescribably long period of time but probably amounts to a couple of seconds and then strike. My rod is bent and there is a thud of fish while simultaneously the cold that has been gnawing at my toes disappears. I attempt to wind in but nothing seems to move and there is crunch inside the reel housing, I try again while the fish continues to exert some pressure on the rod but the reel is not moving.  

 I have one quote that I keep for moments like this, it comes from that literary masterpiece, The Viz and was often used by Timmy Timpson (aka spoilt bastard)  when things were not going his way; here goes   “bugger, bastard, bugger , bastard, wank”.  I consider hand lining the fish, but with branches touching the water either side of me it wouldn’t be the best of approaches. Realising I have only one barbless treble connecting me with the fight I tip the rod down and wait, the pike takes the float for a tour before managing to slip the hook . Never mind, I walk back with the rod up in the air and get the bait out of the water before pissing round with the reel ; my feet are suddenly cold again. 

Making Simple Soft Plastic Fishing Worms

It is all over the film is uploaded it seems to run ok, there are fifty things I would like to change about it but I want to go fishing so much it hurts. Someone on video course I am attending asked me what I do as a job, one day I would like to say fish.