Team Adarix makes, rigs and fishes soft plastic lures

I am not a big fan of Sweden after spending half my weekend inside one of the monsters they created that is Ikea. I was forced to answer questions on which particular piece of glassware was more suited to our household; which is really very difficult when no part of you cares in the slightest. I was not the only one to suffer this fate, I did bump into a Minotaur who was looking for some greek guy while Mrs Minotaur was asking him about soft furnishings.

Anyway, rant over. Despite Sweden's Crimes against humanity on the positive side they do have more than their fair share of lure makers as these soft plastic shad videos show. As my grasp of Swedish only extends to knowing the name of coffee tables I cannot tell you much about the guy or guys behind the vids only to say they look young which may tell you more about me than them.

I invite you to take a moment, maybe put some ABBA on the (whatever device is current) and see how lure making is done.  I have included three videos which are roughly translated as Making soft plastic shads, Rigging and Fishing and they do all three very well.

I know as older people there is a fashion for moaning about what young people do or don’t do, but I have got to be honest and say I should of been doing what these guys are doing when I was their age instead wearing out street corners. Let us send this guy or guys some encouragement on their channel and videos maybe, subscribe, like, share, leave a comment.

Viva la Sweden

lure making diaries: skinny smelt

Mikko (aka Solarfall Baits) is at it again carving up a storm and pouring a new slim shad lure while cracking a few jokes, all good stuff.

Mel Lures, How to make shallow screws for Soft Plastic Lures in seconds. Maciej Dukacz Maciej Dukacz

A very clever bit of engineering and film making

Making a Softbait Plaice with Splish Splash

Dam, this guy is good, these are the kind of ideas you wish you had thought of first or at all. The title says it all

Michael Gerold Arstone soft plastic molds

This is short showing the process of making a two part plaster of paris or art-stone mould of a soft plastic. Check Micheal's youtube channel for more bright Ideas

Rigging Big Soft Plastics With Eastfield Lures

Test Tank Tuesday with Mikko

I do not normally post Mikko's (Solarfall Baits) stuff on this blog, because If you don't already know who he is, his website and videos then you are probably living under rock or you have finally been released after serving a long prison sentence. So for those ex-cons and Martians I give you Mikko's latest soft plastic monsters, and what a test tank. This is really a combination of his wood carving skills, mould making and a special soft plastic paint in the hands of a master from CAB paints of Finland. Oh yeah and just to rub it in he goes and catches a nice pike. BLOG LINK http://solarfallbaits.blogspot.co.uk/

Eric Ross Making A crawdad Soft Plastic Lure

Simple quick but very effective

Making a soft plastic fishing lure: The Uber Grub

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I didn’t know if it would all work out, I suppose it seems foolhardy to make a film about a lure that I haven’t tested as well as using a process at its extreme.  When I opened the mould after the first injection, there were a few nervous moments to say the least.

Making soft plastic paddle tails part 2

I think all this messing around with soft plastic is making me long for a knife and a block of wood.

Making Paddletail fishing Lures and messing with lollipop sticks

So the final thing I have to shoot to finish this film is some footage in the bath, not of me thank god but the lures. The only problem being is my small underwater camera is dead, it flicks on and off randomly, then it demands a charge and shortly after refuses it. I resort to finding a clear watertight box I can fit another camera into. The only other problem is I have only one very wide angle lens and my youngest son decided to throw it across the room so it no longer focuses. I sit down with lens and some micro screw drivers and an hour later after finding which piece of glass inside was out of its seating and putting it back the lens is working.  For the enclosure I empty one of my wife’s clear acrylic storage boxes that houses a collection of tea that smells like it has been stored since the opium wars. On request my son brings me a pair of underpants to pad out the box and I press the movie button, place the camera inside, close the lid and hold it just under the surface of the water. Lights, action, camera and I am sitting on the toilet holding a camera  while pulling a piece of soft plastic through the water as my fingers go numb; all the glamour of Hollywood.

Later when I have finished editing and six hours have past while it uploads I sit down once again with my micro screwdrivers and this time with my original broken underwater camera. When it is stripped down I remove the battery, it is a Samsung and looks like a mobile phone battery. I ask my wife for her old mobile and take the back off it.

The new battery from the phone is the same length and width, it even has the pins in the same place, its voltage is the same, but its amp hours are a little lower and it is 2mm thinner. Having made a film about lollipop sticks I know that they are about 2mm thick. I reach for the tub of sticks and snap one in half and slide it under the battery then put the camera back together. When I press the button the camera fires up, it has all its bars and I wait for it to fail, but no it is working perfectly. 

Lollipop sticks, bloody lollipop sticks, I have decided to carry them on my person at all times. 

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.

Sushi Whip Tail Grub Molds / Moulds For Sale

In an attempt to pay for some much needed video equipment I am offering some Sushi Whip Tail Grub moulds for sale at £10 each plus postage. These are cast by me using high quality RTV silicone from my master, they take a day to cure and then a day later I give a test, if everything is ok I put in the post.   Recently I have done very well fishing with this grub on small jig heads, the body being just a little over half instead of fully round means the hook can be left to stand really proud, which seems to have helped hooking bony mouthed fish like the pike and the odd very greedy little perch.  

The grubs from the mould are 85mm (3 ¼” approx) long, the tails come out thicker than injected bait moulds which gives them a nice pulse that draws fish out even in the mucky ponds and canals I fish. If you are interested send me an email to paupadam@aol.com unfortunately I can only deal with paypal users.

Thanks

Adding or Replacing the Eyes on Soft Plastic Lures

He tells me the fish used to be bigger and there were more of them and then almost to contradict himself he tells he watched a guy pull a 27lb pike out last year on a dead bait. Before I leave him to his feeder rod and head along the bank he tells me that he has never seen anyone catch anything on a plug. I don’t stay to argue or brag, fish are always bigger and better in the past.

Maybe he is right if I killed a fish and stuck it on a hook my chances of a large pike would improve no end, but often it’s not the arriving that matters so much to me as how I got there. I route in my tackle box and pull out another little creation and cast again; the fish seam less than impressed today with my handiwork.

Making Soft plastic Fishing Lures

A very bad fisherman

    When the pike hit the lure I did what I have been telling myself I shouldn’t do, instead of striking and setting the hook I reached for the button on my camera. The pike needless to say was camera shy and just as I got the video going it threw the hook and buggered off to recover. I gave a few more casts just in case it was having second thoughts but I guessed it had better things to do. Well this was my first outing with my new Sushi Whip Tailed Grubs, I hadn’t actually caught a fish but at least I had proved to myself that it had attracted or annoyed one enough for it to take a swing at it.

                Despite being five in the morning other anglers had begun to arrive and my open water was quickly reduced to small patch which felt only a little larger than the bath tub I had tested the lures in. Before long I was into something again and this time I managed to strike. Whatever was on the end of the line shot off stripping line from reel as the drag buzzed. Despite thudding away at my rod I was not convinced it was a pike, I thought maybe it was one of the fabled catfish or a foul hooked carp.  A few mutes later I was gaining on it and the back end of a very large eel emerged from the weeds.  

I suppose an eel foul hooked doesn’t count unless you are a really bad fisherman. The only compensation was that I didn’t have to get my forceps down its mouth to unhook it.  

How To Make A Jig Spinner OR Spinnerbait Arm

More Lead Free Madness, with a jig spinner or spinnerbait arm.







Jig Spinner Tools and Materials

How To Make Lead Free Jig Heads

With a free day on my hands I went to check out a new pond. One of the guys who fishes at my local lake had recommended it as a pike hot spot but warned that it was a bit snaggy. Why is it that fishermen are prone to extremes when it comes to the truth? The lake was a lot more than snaggy it was at best a drowned forest where someone had dumped large amounts of scrap metal. My loses were limited to a couple of jigs and an old balsa prototype that had caught fish in other locations. Lucky I managed to land three replacements, a Mepps spinner,an impossibly small crank bait and a Yo-zuri Crystsal Minnow 130f.  

I left after an hour or so, nobody else was catching fish and I wished I had brought a little dingy to collect the other ten lures I had seen hanging in the branches of partially submerged shrubs. Back at the local lake I hooked on the Yo-zuri out of curiosity. I can only remember buying one hard bodied fishing lure in my life and that was hand made from H+M lures, a thing of beauty that I packed away for the move down from Scotland and that was the last I saw of it.

The Yo-zuri felt like it could do the business there seemed nothing wasted in its design. It flew well though not to any greater distances than I was used or with  any more finesse but I loved its pulsing wobble a thing I recognised from own pine minnows being that they are a little longer than the balsa.  Most of all I liked the way it tangled in the trace when I threw the  usual sloppy cast or slapped it into the water, proof that no matter how good the lure or how long the designer has worked on it still has to be tested on idiots. 

Annoyingly I caught a small pike that saved the day from a blank but part of me wished I had caught it on one of my own lures. Fighting the darkness I slipped on my weight shifting Phox Minnow and threw it across the lake, it felt like coming home.