mgodliman

I've made many wood versions of plastic baits and they usually work to some degree or other but rarely like the original they are just too different. Something like a Burt or Believer have such thin plastic sides that no matter how light a wood you use the action is different. I have made wooden copies of lipless crankbaits out of sycamore and are easier in my opinion because it's compact and relatively heavy, it's important to make the shape thinner at the top of the lure by the pull point and fatter at the bottom to help create the wiggle. I also put in rattles sometimes more than one home made with a small tube and variuos sizes of steel ball. Originally I made them specifically for Nile perch fishing in Egypt and copied something called a "Bayou Boogie" because they had done well and were 3 to 4 inches across, but I have made them smaller and they work fine for pike.

Maybe she's got thang for older ugly middle aged geezers. Martin.

Just to chip in further on the subject of cedars......all over England there is species called the "Lebanon" cedar travelling Victorian plant hunters brought it back here and it became a favourite large tree for stately homes and big houses. A beautiful looking tree with big horizontal individual large branches that can break under their own weight when the tree is old,as they mostly all are here now. I'm sure I read somewhere that in the mountains in Lebanon where they are native, now because of war and poverty they have been systematicaly cut down for fuel and have become an endangered species. Not sure if its the same tree but when I've used cedar there is distinctive smell of pencils that reminds me of my school days,a long time ago now.

I agree in general about the vagaries of trying to very specific about maple/acer I've used it all my working life for violin making and restoring(yes it's what violins are made of !)It can vary a lot in hardness between each sub species even from the same tree.To be fair I've not known what particular kind of maple/sycamore I've been using these years since it largely a matter of apperance the figure and flame being the issue,consequently I make a lot of my lures with off cuts and odd bits and it's been a reliable material.Since I tune every lure jerkbait or crank as soon as you start adding lead and making modifications what ever the density of the wood was in first place diminishes in importence......er I think.

I've not used any release agent for my plaster mould,though I did originaly spray the inside with the kind of paint called BBQ paint heat resistent I guess,with mixed results.Some of the paint came off onto the lure this easily easily removed with meths also the surface of the lure is quite matt and I find going over it briskly and carefully with a blow lamp gives it a nice shine,I'm sure the fish don't care! My whole method is probably crude looking to you guys so far I've only made a kind of Mag Dawg of my own and use melt down scraps in a saucepan resulting in some dull strange colours but the action is great. There is nowhere here in in England or the rest of Europe apparently to buy raw material,(soft plastic not plaster !!)so importing such bulky stuff from the US is too expensive.

I use something called Ronseal wood filler it's fast drying( a few minutes )and weighs less than a butterflies wing.Thats here in England I don't know if you can get it there,but it's hard to believe there wont be some kind of equivalent stuff.

I have made a creeper type lure it is complicated and took a while to sort out the essential criteria to get the action,I didn't have anything to copy at the time so had to work it out for myself.It worked OK though probably with a bit more messing about I would improve the making technique but how many creepers can a guy use! Definitely one for those long wet evenings in the workshop.

I'm not sure this is a big problem I prefer my lures to show the signs of heavy use they are usualy the ones that work,the more tatty they look the more affectionate I feel towards them. I do touch in teeth marks and hook damage with super glue and paint etc to keep a lure going as long as possible before the devcon starts lifting too much too early,but whenever I have to repaint and cover a lure I never seem to recapture that previous liking for it,often by then I've got a new favourite any way.

I use them in my crankbaits and some jerkbaits and I make them myself. It's a bit difficult to explain in great detail but I use a plastic tube with a metal cap cut from any metal thin enough to cut with a blunt old pair of scissors superglued on each end the ball inside is a .38 slingshot (catapult over here!) ammo. Make sure you wait long enough for the super glue to dry on one end before putting in the ball and the cap on the other end! The tube I use is from the packaging from expensive violin strings, OK not everybody can easily get that but the world is full of all sorts of tubing that can be used. I like to make all my parts myself hook hangers,diving bills everything and don't buy any components but all such bits can be bought from suppliers and assembled if you prefer.

Your right Jed it doesn't glide at all being so resistent because of it's shape it's possible to with light taps to keep it sort of dancing in one spot without moving forward very far,tap it too hard and it revolves right round and can tangle the trace,it also has a nice slow zig zig on a gentle retrieve slightly different from a crank bait.Us Brits do a lot of casting from the bank compared to you guys and this lure is very aerodynamic and casts a mile and with a slow retrieve it can seem to take a long time to retrieve compared to most things. That's the best thing I like about home mades or as out2lunge called them "basement baits"they sometimes have unique actions,and can give you an edge. I'm pretty sure I mix Devcon right Lunge maybe I do need to pay attention to the base coat more though,another thing I learned about the stuff is that it doesn't like a sharp edge anywhere and naturally runs away causing a thing covering and the spot where the peeling can start from as well as pikes teeth crunching on it. A friend and I had a great time musky fishing last July on LOTW fishing the North West Angle out of Bay Store Camp with Frank Walsh I even managed a few on my home mades best 43 inches,I met and had few chats with Dick Pearson what a gent !.....wish I could come again soon but it's an expensive trip to do from here very often.

Your probably right Jed about the internet it reduces the whole world down somewhat. I do lack the ambition to get into it to that degree at the moment and regard it as an added bit of fun to lure fishing rather than a source of income.Also whilst I am prepared to be big headed about my wood carving skills I perversely like to make shapes it would not be possible to reproduce on a lathe, some of the other elements of lure making I'm not so hot on, painting I do by hand and it's variable and I use a 2-Ton Devcon finish that sometimes comes straight off and sometimes sticks like s*it to a blanket and I've not entirley understood why yet.I know some flouro and metalic paints don't bond well with it. As Big Splash says to make a lure to the degree of fine tuning that he describes is bound to make it a bit special and therefore expensive and like art work at the moment my lures are more disposable than that. If your interested Jed I wrote and article with pictures ! for the Lure Angling Society magazine we have here where I describe a lure I reckon I invented how's that for cheek ! have a look and see if you've ever seen anything like it. go to www.lureanglers.co.uk then click magazine and in the articles section click "Patent Pending" If you can forgive me for such a pretentious title.

This is a similar issue to my work I've been a violin maker/restorer (mostly restorer) all my working life I used to have heated debates with collegues about how to price them I pretty much charged the same rate to make a new instrument plus materials as I would to restore or repair something old.This seemed to annoy as others who thought I ought(like them) to add a kind of premium based on my skill, violins are still made the same way by hand carving technique as they have for hundreds of years.Fine words but no good if no one buys, I enjoy making my own lures and using them making any shape in wood is easy for me (they don't always work)but if I charged what they really cost I'm sure I would never sell any it may be different here in the UK but there only one or two who make new hand made lures for a slightly increased price and they struggle to sell for a good profit and mostly have real jobs full time. I prefer to give a good friends one of my home mades but only if I know he'll use it regularly and not worry about losing it on a snag. It's a bit difficult for me to judge the scene for you over there since there does seem to be an expensive bracket in the market for gorgeously made stuff that just does'nt exist over here(for that I'm jealous) but pricing and value for money related to the cost of production and other entirely arbitrary values and vague notions of worth look impossibly difficult to justify sometimes......a bit like violins actualy based more on what you can get than any kind of yardstick that everyone recognises.

I made some very deep dives for trolling in Lake Nasser in Egypt for nile perch,they were pretty big about eight inches or so nessecarily big ! for such huge fish.With three heavy duty hooks plus big metal bill naturaly it was a sinker as well,this I think was what got the effect I wanted the bill was a big square shaped one I got the idea from looking through Rollie and Helens gatalogue can't remember the name of the lure,impossible to cast and retieve though just too resistant, so really only a trolling thing I'm sure a modified smaller similar lure would be good.

I use my home mades whenever possible almost all my wire baits spinnerbaits and in-lines also most spoons. Jerkbaits and surface lures almost 100%, nowerdays I even make a dawg rip-off using a plaster mould and my old melted down bits. A lot of my deeper cranks are home made, one area I still use store bought is any time I need something like a squirrely burt or shallow invader or any of those light hollow plastic lures that are so hard to replicate in wood.

Should any one reply to my post and I don't reply quickly it's because I'm going later today to Ireland (I'm from England) pike fishing with some friends for a week.I'll be looking here when I get back. Having had a lot of trouble registering for some reason (I think I spelt my own name wrong or something ! )I managed to re register with a different new e mail address and password. Having finally got on here I don't want my memebership to laps for want of contributions.