T.I.Y. tie it yourself

Image Left: Homemade Tinsel Rig Lures (awaiting rigging)

I had day off island today and visited Oban, the nearest mainland port. As well as running errands for fellow islanders I got to visit the tackle shop. Despite spending far too much time making my own tackle I really enjoy browsing through the racks of readymade lures. It would seem that the biggest advances in mass produced fishing lures are largely limited to the packaging, I wondered if some the companies would have been better attaching hooks to the wrapper and throwing the contents away.

My real interest was in the feather rigs, not to buy them but more to check up on the competition. As I mainly fish with feather rigs and of course tie my own I wanted to see if the quality was comparable with store bought varieties and also check prices. I was a little disappointed that some of world’s major tackle manufactures were producing what could only be described as crap, but also I little happier about my own rigs. Over the last few of years I have pulled a few thousand fish out the seas around the island using home-made feather rigs so maybe it’s about time I starting making them to sell, so that is the plan.

A lure in a storm

Image Above: Foiled diving lure

A bit of a storm blew in on Thursday and after demolishing half the trees in the island’s small wood and knocking out the power supply it blew its self out. The power took a little longer to return and earlier this evening I spent a couple of hours tying feather rigs under the light of a head torch. In the meantime I managed to finish another diving lure and attempted to take it for a testing session but the boat’s engine is running a little off beat at the moment. I carved the lure from pine and then foiled it and coated it with epoxy. It runs at about a couple of feet below the surface on moderate retrieve and casts very smoothly.

Making lead fishing weights in wooden moulds

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

Fishing with fixed arms

Image above. Fishing with fixed arms

The wind has not dropped below a gale force eight for over a week now, I want to go fishing and soon. Carved the lure in the above image out of pine in an attempt to stave off the boredom.

Sand Eel Testing (fishing)

Another short video, I need a make-up department.

A Testing Session

The sea is almost flat calm, the wind is a little more than a breeze and the boat is waiting on the pier steps. There are few if any days like this at this end of the year and as the boat idles away from the pier I look out into the Sound of Iona and then to the jetty over the bay where the van waits. No fishing today I am driving the island’s candle maker and a selection of candles to a Christmas fair twenty miles up the Ross of Mull.

It is late in the afternoon when I get back and the breeze has picked up but there is still a chance to get out there even if it is only for an hour’s fishing. I rush to the house and collect a lure I had given a final topcoat of resin to only yesterday and it still feels a little tacky. Ten minutes later and I am in casting range of my favourite reef.

The lure is a prototype and this is its second outing, the first a week ago ended prematurely with the diving lip snapping after a something grabbed it and took it down into the kelp. With a little surgery and a thicker lip we are back to face the fish and the kelp.
I carved the lure to look something like a juvenile pollock hoping to appeal to a large pollock’s cannibal instincts. It seems that big fish like big baits, or just possibly that small fish don’t like large baits. There are lots of small fish here and avoiding is a major problem, maybe my lure will scare them off.

On the third cast everything stops with a bag, the rod whips over as the fish dives. I keep my head realising it is diving for the kelp and pull the rod up high turning the fish sharply toward the surface. It dives again and runs in the direction of the boat; I wind the line in as fast as I can trying to keep the fish’s head up. As it nears the boat it finds some depth and bringing it to surface is almost a straight hoist of a job. A four and half pound Pollock, not bad for the lure's first victim.

I half-heartedly cast again but the thought of losing my prototype gets the better of me and besides the island’s population has shrunk this week, one fish this size could probably feed us all.

Birthday Presents

There is an expectation when I borrow the island’s boat for a bit of fishing that I actually catch enough fish to feed the island’s population. Including guests this is never more than thirty and usually between ten to twenty. Today’s trip was a little more pressured due to a certain youngster who is celebrating his birthday tomorrow and has demanded his favourite meal, fish and chips. I suspect for the rest of Britain fish and chips for twelve is a large order in a fish and chip shop, here being a little over fifty miles from the nearest chippy it means catching the fish and using our own potatoes for the chips.


From the pier the wind looked to be blowing somewhere between five and six and the tide was a little further out than I would have liked but the swell seemed to have petered out despite the chop drummed up by the wind. Apart from feeding people the main reason for the trip was to test my jointed sand eel lures. Testing lures and catching volumes of fish don’t always go hand in hand so for insurance purposes I took a boat rod with some homemade feather rigs, equipment usually guaranteed to fill a quota.

The wind carried me to my first mark a reef centred on a rock that dries at low water. Not used to casting from a boat I lost confidence and began by bashing the sand eel lure into the water and then hooking up with the bow rope. Eventually after prating round for ten minutes I gave up and got the boat rod and feathers out. It wasn’t long before I lost the weight to patch of kelp and began to wonder, why fishing? Having drifted in the wind just into the sound I decide to motor back and have another go with the eel.

I took things a little slower this time and put the boat in reverse to hold my position against the wind. The casting improved as I relaxed and gradually I got some distance. There wasn’t much depth of water over the kelp beds around the rock and feathering vertically probably would have been a chore. Casting and retrieving the lure at a steady rate kept me out of the weed and it wasn’t long before I hit into to some coalfish. The bites came hard and fast one fish actually left the water but many others broke the surface in the chase. At one point I was taking a fish on every cast and even in the falling light I could see the water explode as I began the retrieve. Out of the twenty or so coalfish I landed I kept eight which looked to be easily larger than the minimum size, the rest I returned. Just before setting off back to the pier I remembered the camera and hoped my luck would hold out and I could get some video.


Does the lure work? Shit yes.

Making Jointed Sand Eel Lures

Making Jointed Sand Eel Lures, The Movie.

This is what I get up to when honest folk are in bed.

Fly Fishing For Pollock

Image Above: Pollock on the fly

Image below: Ripple tail fly cut from washing-up gloves

Image Bottom: Fly fishing into evening

I once believed the fly fishing was about the most ridiculous and inefficient way to catch fish, like attempting to drive a car while locked in the boot. Despite owning a fly rod and using it regularly my opinion has changed little, I know there are endless books and magazines that extoll the almost religious nature of fly fishing but I am an atheist.

With all that said I ventured onto the island’s pier yesterday afternoon holding a fly rod loaded with sinking line, an eight pound tippet and homemade fly. As a full moon rose out of the mountains on Mull across the bay I landed a selection of pollock and saithe from the shoals of fish that move in from sound as darkness gathers. Few were of any size but it but I briefly found some kind of casting rhythm and fly fishing didn’t seem that much of a task after all.

I was most proud of the fly a true junk item made from copper wire stripped out of and appliance, a tail cut from a plastic bag, insulation tape and a bit of nail varnish. Beautiful it isn’t but deadly none the less.

Pendulum Casting

Image Above: Pollock on home made feathers

Sunset has made its way into the afternoon and an hour’s fishing before dinner has become a race against the light. Today I was trying distance casting from my favourite rocks at the northwest corner of the island. I hand been out in the boat a couple of days ago fishing over a reef which runs parallel to the shore about 90meters out and taken a mixed bag. Getting out beyond the reef from the shore would take a bit of doing with a lure so I opted for a string of home feathers and lead bomb. Having never really fished in places where long distances where required I thought I would try out pendulum casting. It took me a while to remember the stance and swing from a DVD I had found in a charity shop but it wasn’t long before I was completely emptying my spool which was carrying about a 120 meters of braid. Once in the deeper water over the reef I hit into a shoal of juvenile coal fish and Pollock. Getting them back over the kelp covered reef wasn`t easy but I think the cleanly tied rig helped.

I was hoping some larger fish would venture in from the sound as the light dropped but it wasn`t to be. I headed back to feed the cows before it got completely dark.

Homemade mackerel feathers

Image Above: Homemade Mackerel feathers

Luckily today I found an hour between transporting people on and off the island to get in a bit of boat fishing. Realising the time constraints and the fact that a swell was still breaking heavily in the sound of Iona I stayed in the shelter of Easter Island fishing a reef that runs in a line from the island’s pier out into the sound.

No bait this time just homemade feather rigs jigged off the bottom. It didn`t take to find a shoal of baby pollock and cod. I moved into deeper water in an effort to find some large fish and struck into some saithe that were just on eating size. The real reason for the trip was to test out some rigs I had bonded rather than tied and then held with no problems even after a few encounters with kelp.

I am still waiting for a good calm day to get a little further out where the big fish live and really test some homemade tackle.

Image Below: Saithe (coal fish) caught on homemade feather rigs

Pollock Lure

I am back carving wobblers and this effort is an attempt to capture the look of a juvenile Pollock or coal fish. It is carved from pine with stainless screw eyes and will have a diving vane but first it needs a coat epoxy.Rather than a Stanley knife I actually used some professional Swiss made carving tools that I borrowed from my wife.

Image above: Drying Floats

I got back to bit of sliding float making using balsa wood that I had bought to make lures. It is a bit easier to work with than cork but still needs a lot of finishing with sand paper. The centres are once again of hollow cane and the heads have been airbrushed and then silver foil added. The foil really helps locating the float when the tide takes it some some distance especially in large waves.

Snell or Whipping Knot

Image Above: A mackerel shelters from the rain
Location: Isle of Erraid, Mull, Scotland

I should have gathered by now that when the weather isn`t suitable for boat fishing it doesn’t mean it will be any better if I choose to fish off the rocks. This afternoon it wasn’t, it rained hard enough for a small river to develop inside my waterproofs and I had the sensation of wetting myself without the pleasure of the accompanying warmth. I stuck it out for an hour with a float rig and landed a larger than average mackerel. Having had to wait on previous trips for the mackerel to hook themselves after they had pulled at the bait strips for ten or even twenty minutes I decided against using a single hook opting for a new three hook set-up instead (see below). The mackerel took the bait on the first pull and the float disappeared. I waited before retrieving just to make sure it was hooked but half expecting my float to re-surface signalling the fish was still free as had happened too many times in the past. After a minute the line tightened, I lifted the rod and the fish turned and shot towards me. It wasn’t really a fight, too much like being at the fishmonger’s with an open bag.

The fun element left me finally when I bent down and the puddle that had developed in my hood ran down my back. Living on a small island at least ensures that the walk home is never longer than half an hour and in this case five minutes.

Image below: Alternative Pennel Rig and snell or whipping knot

Epoxy Putty Lure

Image Above: Solid Epoxy Spoon Lure

So I hand carved the 99e wobbler shown in my last post, through wired it, lead weighted and balanced it, covered its gills with foil, sprayed it with an airbrush, coated it with epoxy, added the bib and hooks. I thought I had the best lure in the world so I bought a new Abu pro-max bait caster reel, thinking I have the best lure I must have the best reel.
I have never used a bait caster so on my first cast I mess up, but I mess up using such force that my lure casts an amazing distance. I was proud until I realise the line has not gone with it and my lure was

out in the north Atlantic free and unattached. Farewell lure, you wobbled beautifully, you dived to just the right depth and surfaced so I could pull you over the weeds and tonight and for ever you will swim with the fishes.

Needless to say I have had to re-arm. This time I have made a spoon style bait using epoxy putty, lead and wire. It is flat backed and rolls from side to side on the retrieve even fluttering to the bottom when the line is let out. It can be used like a jerk bait and rises to the surface quiet easily making splashes a bit like a popper, it is really a good all-rounder.

The idea was to make a lure that had the look of a sand eel and weighed 20grams, perfect for my rod. So I weighed all the materials beforehand and adjusted them as needed. Now I have got used to my pro-max reel the lure casts like a dream and I am not sure if I will ever go back to a fixed spool reel. As for testing the lure, well I need some deeper water as we have had our first snow on the local mountain and the fish have headed out of the shallows. I may have to wait for the boat to go back in the water or make the long walk southwest corner of the island.

Home made wobbler lure

I suppose I learn a little bit every time I make a fishing lure and this one is no different. I carved this lure using a Stanley knife which was the easy part the finish isn’t great but it works in that I wanted a wobbler that would dive a couple feet on retrieve. I rushed it and that was the mistake, there are so many stages in making one of these lures and messing up one always shows through in the finished lure. So I live and learn and on to the next lure.

An International Crew

Image Above: Wechiga holding a couple of pollock
Location: Isle of Erraid, Sound of Iona, Scotland

We have had two days of good weather, two days out of month of truly atrocious gales and swell far outside of the capabilities of our boat. So yesterday I was out at first light, 7am with Orlando for a bit of mackerel bashing in the sound of Iona. After an hour we had bagged twenty by trolling along the channels that pass into the sound from the rear of the island.

This afternoon it was the turn of my father and another visitor to the island, Wechiga from Ghana who is staying at the croft. I explained it was probably the worst time to go fishing at the bottom of a spring tide but we might be lucky. So after finding out who wanted which rod we set off into the sound trolling some homemade feather rigs. The afternoon sun and relatively small swell meant the bottom was visible far out into the sound and it seemed there was nothing hiding in plain sight.

We motored round to the back of American island and Wechiga hooked two good sized pollock on the move, I disgorged them and he quickly dropped his line and brought up another of a similar size. My father hooked a couple of mackerel but little else showed up as moved around hell’s kitchen. Unused to fishing over rougher ground the weed and rocks claimed their fair share of weights and rigs, luckily being mostly homemade we lost in the region of 50pences worth of tackle. We moved again and took a dozen average sized coal fish and some more mackerel before heading home and inviting Wechiga for dinner the tomorrow night.

Image Right: Orlando and Mackerel

Image Below: Fishing weights made from copper tube filled with lead

Carved with a 99e Stanley Knife

Carved 

Image above: A fishing lure carved with a 99e Stanley knife

There was an art teacher at the school I attended as a child, I never knew who she taught or when, she was as all art teachers should be a little vague. The vagueness was also touched with a peculiar random quality. I once came across her lifting a giant abstract canvas through the vestibule at the front of the building, a place seldom visited by anyone as it opened onto a main road. Then one afternoon at a park near a friend’s house she was setting up an old bellows type camera on a giant tripod as we cycled past.

We arrived for our own art lesson one afternoon to find a roughly hewn shape of a dear or antelope clamped to one of the tables, it was hers. Every cut left by the chisel or knife was still visible and raw giving the figure a sense of animation as if the weight of its body was swinging under motion. It stayed in the art room for a week or two in this state and then she came back to it and smoothed out the cuts until the rounded flanks of an antelope emerged. It was perfect but perfect in a way that Tupperware is; the life had gone out of the piece and the sculpture was lost to bric-a-brac.

I am conscious of that antelope when making lures. Part of me wants to set up a jig for the router and turn out precision machined pieces and then there is the whittler in me that needs to feel the magic of form in the formless. So I sat down last night with a pencil, a template, cabinet scraper, piece of old pine bed and a Stanley 99e utility knife. It’s not perfect.

I suppose I should rename this, ‘the homemade float blog’ as it seems to be my latest preoccupation. I went back to my favourite rock this afternoon just before high tide with my float rig(see previous post) and a spinning rod to test some lures. The lures drew a blank but I landed a couple of decent mackerel on the float rig using strips of mackerel for bait. So I made a short video on filleting mackerel and saving the flanks for bait strips.

Sliding float rigs

Image Above: A couple of home made floats and old bubble float

Taking up float fishing again is little like returning home after a long absence; after all it was an afternoon staring at a float rigged for me by grandfather on a local park lake that first drew me in. The sea is a different matter; there is the depth of water and the small problem of waves but still to watch a float in water is meditation of sorts and one that is often only disturbed by the prospect of a fish.

I came back to float fishing for two reasons, one was to have some bait in the water while I was spinning from the rocks and the other because I began experimenting with making floats from corks and cane. The floats are of the sliding variety and large enough to seen amongst the wave crests without prohibiting a fish pulling them under.

Below are illustrations of two sliding float rigs, the first is pretty much a standard rig and I have had some success with this but on the downside it does have a habit tangling mid cast. The second is an improved rig which with a second stop knot keeps the float and the baited hook apart a little more successfully. The stop knots I generally tie with thin elastic or a short piece of the main line.

For bait I use mackerel strips, sand eels, worms or whatever I can get my hands on. As there isn`t much depth of water around the island’s shores I often limit myself to fishing around the top of the tide, letting the float drift with the wind or the currents. I suppose you can pretty much catch anything on a float rig but it is probably best for mid-water species like mackerel, garfish, sea trout, pollock and saithe.

Image below: Sliding float rigs

Popper

Image Above: Home Made Chug Bug Lure

It was a day of messing around in boats and not really fishing. With the tail end of hurricane Katia visiting us earlier in the week we took Reliance, the island’s main boat out of the water. Being a glass fibre version of a Yorkshire coble we rolled her up the beach with the tractor and some logs. Unfortunately the storm had brought a tidal surge which re-floated her from her position above the high tide mark; having anchored her just in case, she didn`t get out to sea. It was one of our neighbours, who’s own boat had sank that came told us what had happened to reliance, so in the middle of the night we pulled her back up the beach and this time took her way above the high tide mark.

Today we rolled her back down the beach and into the sea. I took a fishing rod along to troll a spoon handle lure on the short journey back to the pier. On the second cast and I caught greater sand eel which I kept for bait. I took the boat to the pier and picked up a new lure I had made a couple of days earlier. The Chug Bug (not an original name) is made from a spindle out of the head of an old pine bed. I turned it down a little on my drill lathe and hollowed out a concave mouth; some tin foil and a bit airbrush work and I have to say I was rather proud of my little creation. The idea came from float fishing, last week a fish had bumped my float a couple of time and chased it as I retrieved it, so I thought I would make something with a splashy action like float being retrieved.

I drifted the boat down to a small reef and had a few casts. It wasn’t until I began to really jerk it about that I got some action as a young Pollock gave chase breaking the surface alongside the lure. Eventually the fish swung at the lure and grabbed hold; I landed it without much of fuss estimating that probably weighed about a pound. I suppose the test of any lure is whether it catches fish and this one does.

Floats not lures

Image Above: Drying cork floats over the Rayburn

Location: Isle of Erraid, Mull, Scotland

I had an unsuccessful couple of hours fishing from the rocks after high tide, this afternoon. A little disappointed I spent an hour this evening making sliding floats from used wine corks and garden canes. With the boats still out of the water and a weekend of storms due, I may be limited to the rocks for a while yet. There is something quite mesmerizing about watching a float; harry who was fishing alongside using a spinning rod setup kept finding himself drawn in to the waiting game.

Image above: Cleaning out the main boatshed, Harry and co.
Location: The pier, Isle of Erraid, Mull

Sometimes it all comes a little too easy; yesterday while taking the boat to safety before the oncoming storm I trolled my spoon lure creation and landed another Sea Trout just a short way of the island’s pier. Today while cleaning out the large boatshed we came across a box off old cutlery that someone had packaged up to send off to the charity shop. I got a little over excited realising I hand enough spoons to keep me going for the rest of my life.

Image Above: New Spoon Lure

Image Below: The deadly sand fish

My teaspoon handle pirk is no more, claimed by a kelp covered rock. In one way I am a bit sad but it also gives me a chance to move on and make some improvements. So with plenty more spoons in the cutlery draw I went back to the tool-shed. Rather than bash something out I took the basic shape and refined the finish using my current favourite, self-adhesive silver foil. I cross hatched the foil to imitate scales and added a lateral line before overlaying a pectoral fin and gill fold. I used an airbrush to apply a flash of blue acrylic and finished off with a dipped coat of polyurethane.

Image Above: Sea Trout
Image Below: New Teaspoon Handle Jointed Lure
Location: Isle of Erraid, Mull, Scotland

New lure, New tricks

I went back to perch rock this evening with some new homemade tools, a jointed spoon and cork float rig. I made the new jointed spoon out of a couple of teaspoon handles and some split rings. Rather than engrave scale patterns with a hacksaw as previous, I opted to cover it with some self-adhesive foil and gave it some colour with nail varnish. The eyes were drilled out and foil eyes placed inside the recess with a coat of nail varnish. I added a smaller treble towards the eye end hoping to reduce missed bites. It swims with a lazy side to side motion and casts a little better than my original teaspoon pirk. The only draw-back is it occasionally tangles in flight leaving me to wind in a hoop of metal as the back treble catches the front.

The float I cobble together from a piece of hollowed out garden cane and two wine corks which I drilled with a hole slightly smaller than the diameter of the cane and then forced the corks over the cane. I quickly sanded the corks until the seams met uniformly and then shaped the ends. Paint wise I found a can of canary yellow acrylic spray in the tools shed, I had used this last year to spray the handbrake lever on the island’s tractor to remind people not to leave it on when they were driving. A bit more self- adhesive foil and red nail varnish and the float was finished.

I have never really floated fished in the sea and fancied something different, the idea was to chuck the float rig out on one rod and use the other for spinning while I waited. The first cast with the hook baited with mackerel strips had just managed to settle when the float shot off. A mackerel eventually surfaced, skimming it ran straight up onto the ledge at my feet . Unhooked and re-baited the second cast landed the float bang on target and it too quickly shot beneath the waves as another mackerel took the bait. My spinning rod was waiting; I cast the float again and it bobbed long enough for me to pick up the other rod.
With a tail wind the heavier lure effortlessly pulled the line off the reel. I let the lure sink to the bottom and lazily wound in, all the time watching the float on the other rig. Ten minutes later and a flash of silver close into the rocks pulled the rod tip down and I was in. A small sea trout bolted for cover and then suddenly just lolled against the line. At the surface I could see the forward treble hook had almost ripped out one side of of the trout’s gills, but it had fallen to my new lure. I finished the trout off by breaking its neck but most of the blood had already trickled away. The trout like one I had watched the previous evening looked to have come up from the beneath where the submerged part of the ledge drops off and I wondered whether there may be and overhang giving the trout a holding space out of view from the surface.

The float picked up a couple of small pollock but the light began to fall and seal came round the corner so I set off home and sea trout for supper.

Doing the dishes

Image Above: Mackerel bashing
Location: Isle of Erraid, Mull, Scotland

It wasn`t much fun at my favourite rock perch (see previous post) this afternoon, with a headwind somewhere between 5 and 6; but never the less I was fishing. Despite the wind I still managed to cast some distance but there was little room for error as the wind took any drifting line. I landed another fair sized mackerel and felt a couple of other random tugs on the line. My short session was ended by a phone call telling me dinner was ready and it was my turn to do the dishes, ah if only people phoned when I was doing dishes to tell me it was my turn to go fishing. Once again my teaspoon pirk brought home the goods and now I feel it is a bit too precious to risk losing so I must return to the workshop to make some more and maybe try out some new ideas.

Sea Trout at the top of the tide.

Image Above: Sea Trout, caught on a homemade lure
Location: Isle of Erraid,Mull, Scotland LINK TO MAP

I snuck off for an hour before dinner taking a sort cut through the woods to the Northwest corner of the island. Here a large slab of granite cut a little by the sea makes a perfect platform for spinning. The water is not deep and the seabed sandy but a long outer reef provides some interest and marks out the edge of a natural channel between itself and the shore. This is a point of passage for fish coming in from the Sound of Iona to feed in the shallow bay that separates the island from Mull.

Having arrived at the top of a spring tide my chances were a little better than average although with a driving headwind my casts would probably come up a little short. I was fishing almost for free having found the rod in one of the islands outbuildings and using a reel left behind by a guest with my homemade, teaspoon pirk for a weapon. At six foot the rod is a little shorter than I am used to but it does have quite a whip action and despite the wind my lure managed to punch its way out into the channel. I let the lure flutter to the bottom before retrieving it with spasmodic jerks, and then speeding up to keep it over the weeds as it neared my perch. Twelve casts in and I foul hooked one of the greater sand eels that had taken to schooling up with my lure. Two or three casts later the small rod bent double and large arc of silver flashed in the blue. The mackerel bolted cutting the surface as if equally comfortable in both mediums. Being used to stiff boat rods and heavier line, I wound in taking no account for my lighter gear, when I lifted the fish up onto the rocks I realised just how flexible the rod really was as the tip hung limply pointing at the fish.

Ten minutes later and I felt another tug and then nothing, as my lure neared a shape glided past its speed and poise had the feel of sea trout but I wasn`t completely convinced. I casted again, letting the lure sink and then while trying to remember the action of last retrieve wound in. The line went taught, there was no flash just a solid shadow that set its own course despite the rod and line. So I landed my first ever sea trout and maybe held a bit too long before returning it to the sea.

Image Above Right: The Northwest corner of the island
Image below: Mackerel

Testing Times

Image Above and Below: Mackerel caught on a home made fishing lure.(look at that awful knot)
Location: Sound Of Iona, Scotland

Testing Times.

After an evening spin fishing in the bay with my new teaspoon lures (see previous posts) and sadly no results I took the boat out this morning to drop my wife and the kids over on Iona for playgroup. This left me an hour or so to kill and with a couple of rods on board, clear skies, a light breeze and swell that could rock you to sleep, fishing was almost compulsory. I trolled some homemade feathers and picked up a dozen mackerel as I move back up the sound of Iona. Having fulfilled my quota I tied my teaspoon pirk on and tossed it over the side while I gutted my catch. It is probably not the best lure for boat fishing in any depth of water as it lacks weight and took a long time to get down near the bottom. After a couple of minutes the line tightened and the rod tip danced, I hauled up a larger than average mackerel, but was more pleased with my lure than the fish. On the way back to Iona I rigged the lure six foot behind a paravane to get some depth and picked up another five good sized Mackerel plus a few undersized pollock and saithe which I returned.

Teaspoon Flounder Spoon

Had a little go at making a flounder spoon from the other half of my teaspoon. I masked the centre with some insulation tape and then lightly sanded and sprayed some smoothrite on the spoon. The red tag was cut from an old plastic lid. Hopefully I will get to test it in the next couple of days.

Teaspoon Handle Pirk

I made the lure from an old teaspoon handle. The eye was drilled and then painted with some gloss paint. The slashes on the flanks are hacksaw cuts with red gloss rubbed in. I used it this afternoon with a small spinning rod set-up and after a couple of minutes caught a baby Pollock.