RiverMan

Love the color scheme! jed

Good looking bait Bill...great job!! jed

Skeeter, You know here in the Northwest guys have been using flatfish forever. I was always told these lures were originally made to be trolled in lakes. Here guys buy literally thousands of them in size 14, 15, and 16 for chinook, these are huge lures. Smaller sizes are bought up by the summer-time fisherman who like to take out the "family" and catch a few trout in the lake. These lures are not casted and "cranked" typically, at least not that I have ever seen or heard of so I wouldn't expect to build them to hold up to such conditions. If you are going to build them from balsa, what if you secure your screw-eyes into a piece of wooden dowel, maybe 1/4 inch stuff, and then drill out the balsa to accept the dowel. The dowel would then be glued with epoxy...this would make for a very strong set-up and could easily be accomplished. Just a thought... jed

I think it's great and a different approach to lure-building. Good job! Jed

Very nice, I like all of them and particularly the one with the lightening bolts around his eyes! Jed

I'm glad you are taking on this challenge Skeeter as I am curious as to whether you can get the things to work. I carved quite a few and to my eye they looked perfect in every way and I still have trouble getting them to run. Be aware when water testing them that they are a bit "freaky" and even those that have been purchased do some weird things at times. These lures operate right on the very edge of "too much wobble" and are thus ready to blow out at any moment. Please come back with to the group with how things turn out for you. Jed

Just noticed that there is a chat session scheduled for this eve...wondered if some of you might be up for it! Hope you make it! jed

Is this the lure in the bottom right of the pic Skeeter?

Siebler, I don't have a scale and so have no idea what it weighs; I am guessing tho that I put a bit less than 1/2 ounce of lead into the body to adjust the balast. I know there is going to be a whole bunch of river smallmouth that want to eat it in about two months, lol, son! Jed

OH yes, the flatfish, kwikfish, I have probably a 100 of them varying from an inch long to over 6 inches in length. This is the "go to" lure here for chinook. All of mine are made of plastic. The info you provided is interesting Bass as I wasn't aware the lure had that long of history. I shaped a bunch of these out of cedar a few months back but kind of lost interest in them since then. I found them a bit difficult to get running correctly, would like to give it another try tho. If you would like me to Skeeter I would be happy to float some and pass on the info to you. jed

Thanks for the compliments Shawn. Several months ago I bought the kit you are talking about in Wal-Mart for printing out my company name on floats I was making. I have most of the kit around here somewhere, will have to see if I can dig it out. If I recall there are only 2 or 3 sheets in the box which would make things a bit spendy. Also the stuff wasn't sticky at all, had to glue it in place on the wooden floats I was building at that time. I will give it a try tho and see what happens, thx for the suggestion. Enjoy the wknd! jed

Have a pic of one skeeter?

See that is exactly what I am afraid of Richoc. If I pay 8k for a patent and 500 for a patent search, well I could have produced a good number of lures for that amount. As Bob said if a guy has something special then patent it, otherwise it seems to me to just avoid the whole business and start producing.......being respectful of other patents of course.

Thanks Bob, great info! So lets say I have a patent on a lure design. What is stopping the next guy from simply making the same lure with a slightly rounder head, or thinner tail? Now if it my lure had some "unique" feature as I mentioned above, like the new lucky craft pointers, I could see being able to protect it but so many lures are nearly the same aren't they? jed

I was told by a coworker that infringment is fairly common in this business. He told me that many small business people will simply make lures and other such products knowing they will likely tread on somebody else's patent. If they get sued and lose, they simply bankrupt the business and start all over again. I wouldn't be able to sleep doing this myself but I can certainly see others doing it. You know tho so many lures are virtually identical in form and function that it would be very hard to prove you have "stolen" an idea. If the lure had some concept that made it "unique" (one of a kind) then of course this would be a different situation but most all of us are making lures that wiggle, wobble, dive or float, these have been around forever and are made by virtually everyone. If you like a particular lure, it seems you could simply change it's design some and go into production as this is what virtually everyone has done. Look at flatfish for example, now there are kwifish, elmers, and a host of other off-shoots that look exactly the same. The flat-fish to me looks just about exactly like the old "lazy ike's", someone changed the design a bit and went with it. The sonic and rattle traps are another good example, they are the same bait, how many others look nearly identical to this same design? Jed

Paul, This lure was built following the same process that Lincoya outlined below. Bass, The lure will have a short bill on it and the slot is at 60 degrees. It is designed to be fished like a jerk-bait...shallow runner. jed

Hi Perro, I have made some banana-shaped lures and would be glad to give you some advice. You can see a picture of some of them in the club gallery. I have not had very good luck getting banana plugs to run correctly but to be honest have not invested the time to experiment with them. Since you have not built any baits before I would suggest you first built a "minnow-type" lure as they are probably the easiest. Please refer to the following tutorials and feel free to write back for any questions you may have. Hope this helps. http://home.mchsi.com/~djaroscak/buildinglure.html http://www.carolinachip.com/ jed

Just measured him Lunge, he's 4.75 inches....almost big enough to eat, lol. Jed

Another version. jed

Gene, I read through your process and the only thing I can see different is that I used Elmer's glue to secure the pattern and I only used one coat of Devcon. After glueing the pattern, I painted the back and belly and then coated with Devcon. I personally don't like to use two coats as it adds a considerable amount of bulk to the lure....just personal preference. Oh, I also used my dremel to grind out the eye pockets for the 3-d eyes, this was done prior to the Devcon of course. I could have left the eyes that came with the pattern but the 3-d eyes really bring the lure to life. I like how you brought the belly paint up higher than I did, gives the lure a very finished look and is quite realistic. For realism this process is hard to beat. Whether they out-perform traditional paint jobs on fish, however, remains to be seen. When I look at this sardine lure compared to the one with foil, the foil to me just look more genuine! When you tilt the foil in the light you can see small scratches in it, small dings that occured during constructon, these areas look identical to a live fish when you are holding them. If you look at the side of a bass, a crappie, salmon, whatever, they all have small marks, scratches, lines, foil can duplicate this exactly. A good painter (unlike myself) over the top of foil is amazingly accurate in my opinion and I suspect must look incredibly real to underwater predators as well. jed

Gene, Great minds think alike I guess....I have been working on the exact same process during the last two weeks or so. Perhaps even more amazing is that you have been going to the same site, americanfishes.com to get the models. Below I have attached a sardine lure I put together using this same process for you and others to see. I used the Pacific Sardine for my model......you did a much finer job Gene than I did by the way. I might add to those wanting to do this that you need some type of photo manipulating software to work with the pics. When you see something you like online, right click on the picture and then save it to a folder. Then go into your photo-software, I use adobe photo-shop. If you have Win98 you use the Microsoft version, can't remember the name of it. In WINXP I believe all you have is "imaging" which is not user friendly at all. It might be possible to suck down some free photo software at www.nonags.com or www.download.com. If you have a digital camera use the software that came with it. Anyway, open the pic up in the photo software and resize as Gene has instructed, then print at high quality. Next choose "horizontal flip" and print a replica of the other side of the fish. I found glueing and fitting the pattern easy to do, the difficult part for me was getting the correct transition from my pattern to the belly and back paint....tough thing to do with a rattle can. Jed

I don't think you could make a lure any better than those...perfect. Jed

Lol, thx Bob, I essentially did exactly what you said yesterday and found something that sounds somewhat similar but for some reason I couldn't get all of it to download...will try again today. It's quite interesting to do a search on patent ideas for fishing lures. Just about every possible idea you can think of someone has put a patent on at some point in time. Many of the ideas are so trivial I have to wonder why anyone bothered. Thx again. jed

I'm curious as to whether anyone here has experience with patents. I would like to know "how different is different" when it comes to manufacturing a lure. I have a concept I want to pursue and would like to have it manufactured in quantity. The concept I have is a modification to an existing lure. I would like to just go ahead with having the molds machined and begin production without going through the hassle of patent search and protection as these costs would essentially sink me. So what I am asking is "how different does a lure have to be to be protected from infringement"?

Shobaja, If I am understanding you correctly I don't see anything you need to change on the bait, it looks excellent! Jed