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There was a post from the spring where a guy was casting hard bodies in an FDM mold. I tried it myself but I did not build in enough clearance so it wan just about impossible to get the wire harness and ballast done right. I did have some success printing a mold of a mold the upside is you can adjust the silicon mold easier if you need to expand the pour hole. And rigging the mold for pouring is more forgiving with wire dimensions. One thing I did not do enough of was tuning my printer for dimensional accuracy is did some but the 20mm calibration cubes are not quite enough. errors that don't show up at 20 mm will at 200 mm. Tuning will help with layer lines but the single best mod I did for my printer for layer lines was to make a spool holder that ran on bearings. A coat of CA glue gets all but the worst of the layer lines. From my limited experience with cast bodies I find a printed lure takes less effort. But I will admit that maybe I don't have the practice building harnesses. Up till now my over riding design goal is to end up with a one piece lure blank like it was carved from one piece of wood. I have done screw eyes slotted thru wire and "drilled" through wire. I did a bit of a side by side of cast and printed lures and I actually prefer printed over cast, in the case of that particular body. The printed lure had a slightly better action. This is what I mean by a Mold of a Mold

I'm sure you could but I want to have enough to do different sink rates, color schemes, and have enough for my friends to fish with too. I think if I get the mold process going well it won't be much time or effort to make another bait. I'll only have to sand the layer lines down once on the mold vs every time on the printed lures.

I haven't been crappie fishing in a long time (20 plus years). I would target them in the spring once they made their way back into some of the shallow creeks. Typically would wade or perhaps float tube some of those areas. Didn't usually take the boat out and join the madness (KY/Barkley lakes) just would catch a cooler full a few times and call it quits for the year. Did do some night fishing with lights in the summer a few times as a change of pace.

Wish we had fish that size in any of the three waters I fish. Today I managed only 11" crappie. Last year at this time I caught 14" crappie. Still don't compare to crappie over a pound that I bet fought just like bass.

For testing, I go to the ponds 30 minutes before the competition, the owner is happy about this. This lure is a small, shallow, hunting crank I developed for this small mouthed fish. The fish is called a bawal. This one is around 3Kg (6.6Lb). Bait fishing, the average weight is 0.5Kg to 1.5Kg, but with lures, the BIG fish come out to play. Dave