Leaderboard

Hole punch the size eye you want in a thin piece of card stock, Christmas card, or heavy weight paper. I picked up a set of hole punches from Harbor Freight and a metric size set from Amazon. Place the hole over and center around the eye bump. Use a foam brush or just a piece of foam brush to dab on the eye. This should provide a clean eye dot since the card/paper will catch the excess paint. Once dry seal with some Sally Hanson clear nail polish or head cement. Same principle if using an airbrush.

I have used in the past, a head of a finishing nail, end of a kids artist brush. Also you can go over the eye with a marker. I use black marker on white jig. Let dry and then go over it again.

Jjg Man, they don't look that bad. The colors are more blended in than standing out. I'm sure the fish don't care. On the second one in the last pic, are those slight bulges from the lead pours?

I’ve got a long way to go. My blue isn’t bright enough and my black soaked into my chartreuse. They are just plain butt ugly.

1) Don't be afraid to try new things. 2) Slow down and work on a quality finish. 3) Don't be in a hurry to sell, build and improve quality first! 4) Test lures before painting them. Merry Christmas and thanks to everyone for all the insight you have shared!!!!!

I strongly agree with this statement. I was rinsing my reels in a lake after saltwater fishing and tied on a 7” ladyfish glide I made, but on my heavier, longer rod, with a lower speed reel and was surprised how little action I got out of the bait in comparison to my usual setup.

A mistake that I made in the early days of lure building, was testing without hooks fitted. The addition of hooks in weight and fluid effects changes the action of the lure, sometimes sending the lure outside the design idea, or at least disappointing after the initial hookless trials. So my contribution is; Always fit the hooks for testing. Dave

Action has been my priority from day one My number one piece of advice is experiment and try things don’t just do what everyone else does I have learned lots from making crude lures and test swimming them. Another is building test baits I could swap out weigh amount/placement. I have learned things from others but 95% or more of what I know action wise was trial and error

Yes agreed. Function not form I am sure would have been my advice, especially in the early stages of a project. Dave