The "Dinner Bell"

Quite a weird spoon model , that I designed in winter 2006/07 , lateron I've named it "Dinner Bell" .

My target of design was to build a spoon , that would off course have an attractive appeal on predatory fish , but can be shaped with only straight saw cuts (no bandsaw neccessary) and does not require extensive swaging with a ballpeen-hammer .

After some trial and error I came up with this design , a small spoon of approx. 60mm length(about 2 1/2") made of brass,- or stainless steel sheet , 1,0 or 1,5mm thick(25,4mm=1").

After completing the outer shape of the blank(check template on pic) it is simply bent to shape in a vise , first along the lenghtwise center line(requires plastic hammer) , after the two rear flaps are bent upward equally and finally the front end bent to achieve a slight S-shape of the spoon .

It is a little bit tricky to assemble the wire harness holding the hook , the small wire loop over the closure tubing opposite of the longer wire shank with beads and hook is to limit the forward swing of the harness to prevent the hook from leader-tangling whilst casting .

At first I rigged those metal beads(one small hollow one as spacer , one bigger solid one for function)to prevent the wire harness to slide through the slot between the two flaps , which worked out well , but during my first bathtube-tests I've found , that these solid beads slide up and down the rear flaps , generating a constant , metalic "clic-clic-clic...." sound , every time they hit the kink between the flaps , hence it's name "Dinner Bell".

You can clearly view the traces of the moving bead on the bigger scale detail picture .

The spoon has a lively , "rocking" and also irregular swimming pattern , that one can enhance with little twitches of rod tip and/or random retrieve pauses .

Only disadvantage is , that the hook occassionally tangles into the small wire loop , maybe every 10th cast , only solution I thought of so far , would be to fix hook rigid onto the harness , either by winding the wire around the hookshank or by soldering .

Also made bigger models like this , but those don't provide as much action , I guess , they turned out to be too heavy !

These small lures cast extremely well for their size , I have already caught some smaller pike and perch-pike(Zander or Walleye) , also perch , on them:) .

Questions ? Feel free to mail:wink: !

Greetings , diemai