7 inch trout raised scales

Me thinks you are on verge of going into a new business. Believe you can compete with anyone.

David

A few hundred pixel photograph on a computerscreen could never display the real effect of those scales , but by the describtion in your thread and now by viewing this pic I have a close image of it in my mind .

Must really look awesome in the water !

greetz , Dieter

you are like the swimbait king. That is pretty sweet lure that you have there. Just wondering how long have you been making swimbaits cause you are pretty wicked at it8O. And another thing you are wicked at is the paint jobs. The trout patterns are great.

Just wondering:whistle:, how many lures have you built so far? I have just started and i have at least forty, but i only use a few of them:lol:.

Thanks for the nice replies.

Spoopa,

At forty lures, you're way ahead of me. I've probably made thirty, tops. I don't really know, because I have given so many away to friends.

I've been making lures for two years. First I made big surface gliders, and painted them with rattle cans.

Then I bought an Iwata air brush at the end of the summer of '07, and started painting with it.

I started making jointed lures about the same time.

Trial and error has been my best teacher, and not being afraid to copy another lure that works.

My first swimbaits were attempts to copy the two Triple Trout lures my buddy lost on successive weekends. I figured I could make the same thing, since it was made of wood, and I'm a carpenter.

Because I did copy the design, more or less, of a very successful lure, my first lures actually worked and caught fish. That encouraged me to do more, and now I'm hooked.

I recently did a batch of six, and kept a log of my time on them, to see how much time each lure would take. It takes about 2 1/2 hours per lure, start to finish. I say about, because every time I make a new lure, like the 7" trout, I try new stuff, and play with the paint schemes.

More basic paint schemes, like on the original Triple Trout lures by Scott Whitmer, cut the time down to 2 hours. But even he has made his paint schemes more complicated, due to angler demand.

Being deliberate and repetitive in my lure making process helps. I follow the same steps that have worked in the past, so I don't have to reinvent the process each time, and can concentrate on new detailing.

I also learned that using cheaper components doesn't help if they require more prep time. The materials in one of my jointed swimbaits, including Owner hooks and spit rings, runs about $15.

The labor, my time, is where the real expense lies, and anything I can do to cut that down, while still keeping the quality, is worth doing, even if it ends up adding $1 to each lure's cost.

I use 1/8 oz egg sinkers with cotter pins run through them as hook hangers. That way, my ballast is already started when I install the hook hangers.

So I buy my egg sinkers from Cabela's, even though I can find them cheaper other places, because the castings are clean and consistent. Same thing with my sst cotter pins, from Small Parts, and my sst screw eyes, from Stamina. I can assemble the hardware I need for a lure in ten minutes using these components, while I'd have to spend extra time drilling out the hole in cheaper egg sinkers to accept the sst cotter pins.

And I use 1/4" lead from Cabela's for any additional ballast weighting I might need. It's easy to cut into lengths with an exacto knife by rolling it back and forth, and it weighs about 1/8 oz per 5/8" of lead rod, so I can quickly cut the amount of ballast I need without weighing it. I just use a scale I marked on my work bench.

It's all about simplifying the process, once you've figured out how to make a lure work like you want it to.

Same with painting. I'm no artist, but I do enjoy the painting, and am not afraid to try something new.

And, most important, I asked a million questions here on TU, and used the search feature to look up and read everything I could.

I think you'll find that, once you've made the commitment and are serious, lots of the people here will happily take the time to help you.

I know they did that for me, and still do.