Foil and Felt Tips

Image Above: Foil covered salmon parr lures (Prototype)

I am little further down the road with my new lures; the next steps are finish and texture. So I got the tin foil out and began experimenting embossing patterns on it and then laying it over the lures, the above image shows the results so far. For colour I used some permanent makers rather than get the airbrush out just yet. Hopefully over the next week I will experiment with the airbrush and post the final versions on my blog. 

Christmas Decorations

Image Above: Home made lures shaped from polymer clay

Three weeks without holding a fishing rod, I feel like a recovering addict. Anyway it has not all been wasted I have finally got to grips with making some prototypes out of polymer clay. After buying a cheap set of wax shaping tools my sculpting abilities seem to have come on a bit. The main lures above are attempts to capture the look of salmon parr, the white is the original and the others cast out of latex mould of the same. These are far from finished, at the moment I am just working on the shape and the swimming action. The final finish will be airbrush and epoxy with a natural look.

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.