The Handmade Fisherman

I have finally made a start on building my new website, “The Handmade Fisherman” hopefully this will be a base for visitors to land on and explore. At the moment it seems still like I have a couple of thousand things to deal with before everything is up and running and I can get back to making some videos let alone doing some fishing.

I also did a bit more experimenting with my real minnow, adding another hook hanger and a diving lip. I may get chance for a couple of testing sessions next week, it swims great in the bath but that is never a judge of how it will work out in the real world. Weight wise I have ordered some tungsten 4mm fly tying beads which I think will work out better than lead free shot I am using at the moment. Carving the balsa is still a bit of pig so I made up a face out of layered paper covered with foil, this feels like cheating a bit. Another great thing I discovered about working on something this small is when I go back to making larger lures like the crank bait the feel massive by comparison. 

Possibilities

Above: Mario Doiron painting a beach scene

I don’t often know what to make of the internet, it seems like a place of infinite possibilities. If I wanted to get up tomorrow and build a high powered rocket to attach to a bicycle it wouldn’t be a big ask to a least find some instructions and possibly a video floating about the web. I wonder where those possibilities will take me. 

Early next year I plan to start another series of videos, with better production thanks to some new camera equipment, editing kit and help from a video making course I have been attending  part time for a couple of months. Content wise I want try some new stuff, stuff that is new to me and dig out some of those wackier ideas I have been sitting on for too long.  I want to push myself out of my comfort zone and maybe make use of those infinite possibilities the web has to offer, who knows a rocket powered lure on a bicycle.

Today while trying to draw something on the computer, answer e-mails and deal with the rest of the things that ping at me to tell me, what somebody has posted or commented on, I got a message about a video an artist had posted. The video was of painting a beach fishing scene, and the scene was inspired by an image from a mackerel fishing video I made on Chesil Beach. I watched the video it is fair to say a few times and felt privileged to be part of one those infinite possibilities.  

Thanks Mario

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.