Dusto Transit van Trout

Art meets fish, meets van, meets artist, it is about that simple.

A Monster Trout

I don't often put commercial lure company's gear on this blog as they normally have marketing budgets bigger than their manufacturing budgets, but hats off to Savage Gear for this monster trout they released a couple of years back. It is not something people are going to throw everyday or at all for that matter and neither are savage gear going to sell many so I am guessing this is to show what they can do. The video shows the lure being trolled behind a water-wolf camera by a gang of friends fishing a lake in Slovenia.

The Chalk Streams of Norfolk

The Chalk Streams of Norfolk with Stephen Fry from Relevant Films on Vimeo.

A great bit of fishy film making with a voice over from Stephen Fry a Norfolk native. Check out the Norfolk Rivers trust http://www.norfolkriverstrust.org/

Moulding and casting a trout with Smooth-on

This I suppose is aimed at taxidermists and being made by a silicone and resin supplier is a little liberal with the silicone. With that said it is a great video that shows the process of casting from a real fish in some detail. I especially like the fins. Check out the youtube channel for more moulding and casting videos.

Urban Lures

Urban Fishing Lures - Making of from Giorgio Nasti on Vimeo.

From a basement in Italy, Urban Lures has started a little empire based on quality handmade balsa fishing lures. This is a really beautiful glimpse into his workshop by Giorgio Nasti a film maker based in Rome, lets hope he keeps pointing is camera at fishy subjects.

Currently Urban lures is selling through his facbook page (https://www.facebook.com/urbanfishinglures/) ,but a website is in the making. Meanwhile if the video doesn't wet you appetite enough check out the lure porn below.

No Tanks No Testing just some fishing, Nuffinbutfishing and Willem Romeijn

If tank test Tuesday is about anything for me it is about not feeling alone. There is a comfort in knowing that around the world other lost souls are throwing things they have made in water in the hopes that what ever has occupied their thoughts and hands for the previous weeks, months or even years makes sense when wet.

But as someone who is also burdened with the desire to makes short films about fishing I need some assurance that there are others equally obsessed with dragging cameras about along with their landing nets and then when it is time to leave the water editing into the early hours. It is fair to say I am not alone, so I get a choice of where to find comfort and some inspiration and so for today's tank test I am visitng a couple of those places, the youtube channels of Nuffinbutfishing from the UK and Willem Romejin from Holland, a couple of young (yes I feel Old) fishing film-makers. As luck would have it both of them have managed to upload their latest videos today. I don't really want to say too much about these videos other than if the future of fishing is going to be carried on anybodies shoulders I rather it was people like these.

I try and keep away from telling other people what to do but if you have enjoyed these films click on the youtube icon and subscribe to their channels, even make the effort to press the like button and then if you haven't worn your fingers to the bone share them on your facebook because other people might also enjoy them and they are probably sick of you posting pictures of your dog or selfies. thanks

The Trouble with Trout Parr

The first fish I ever caught on a homemade lure was a brown trout just a little bigger than a parr but with the attitude of a tuna.

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 Flying C Spinner

Image Above: The Flying C, another DIY project
Image Right: Balfour Bay, Erraid, Mull, Scotland

With my Pneumonia on the wane and the snowman who has stood guard over the garden for the last week starting to suffer from erectile dysfunction it seems only fair that I should be going on a little trip. Hopefully next week I will be sat in a cottage just back from a Hebridean  beach with a view over to the sea cliffs of the Burg, and if the mood takes me I may venture down to throw some lures or visit the local freshwater loch to test my new Flying C spinners on the local trout.

  Flying C Diagram and Blade Templates

  Tools and Materials List for the Flying C Fishing Lure

The Oldest Trout Parr

Image Above: Trout Parr Casting Spoon, experimenting with colours

Sometimes I avoid things and build them up until when I finally get round to them it is all a bit fraught. So I finally sat down with a trout parr, lure blank and began experimenting with colour and pattern. Working free hand without stencils is like riding a bike with your hands tied behind your back, you can do it but when it goes wrong it goes very wrong although the thrill is quite cool. I still have a way to go with this lure even though I have been messing around with its shape for over a year, it isn't perfect but it is starting to look like the thing I imagined. 

Lure Making School

Image Above: Salmon Parr Casting Spoon Prototype

Image Below Right: The Original with a Cole Fish

I spent the day trying out some new ideas I had come up with while making spinners from scrap. I have been putting off buying some kind of wire former hoping I could come up with a homemade alternative a little more suited to my needs. It is not that I am against buying tools, far from it; it is just that because I never went to lure making school I find myself doing things in a way that requires tools that as yet don’t exist and then in the process of making tools a whole new field of opportunities and ideas opens up. So from scrap spinners I jumped to wire forming jigs and lead moulds and decided to have another go at wiring an old prototype that I have never gotten round to finishing despite being the first lure I ever cast out of resin: The result is above; a trout or salmon parr casting spoon which is through wired and weighted and waiting for paint and epoxy. The original prototype took a fish on its first cast which I lost close to the boat but I got another on the second cast so I am hoping for good things.

Making bobbin holders for fly tying

Another homemade vid.

So I live in the city again and I have already been on google earth to plan my first fishing trip which will be at Nine o'clock on Monday morning while honest men and women are at work.