fatfingers

If you fish that thing in the boat next to me, I'll probably be inclined to start doing a figure 8! Amazing work.

Try thinning the color with the appropriate solvent or clear. I use enamels and often achieve a transparent effect by adding clear to the paint. Go easy, don't add too much at once, but keep trying it on a piece of primered scrap till you achieve the desired effect.

Has anyone tried using the same epoxies that the rod builders use? It would seem like the stuff should hold up as well or better but I've never tried it.

I think it would be a great idea and I also think it would be a great success in a lot of ways. State or local chapters could share ideas one on one and even share local sources for materials and tools, parts, etc. Building is like fishing in a lot of ways. Its about the friendships and sharing of experiences.

The info you provided says they use if for bicycle helmets. Must be pretty tough stuff.

Not perfect? They're great! Take a hard look at some of the stuff sold commercially out there. They're all flawed if you look at them as close as we look at our own stuff. Oh and by the way, I'm liking the third one from the left a lot too!

They're all beautiful, but I particularly like the ones in the blues. Nice tight work, Dan.

I would use 1/16 inch because a walleye bait is usually smaller than a musky/pike bait and the thinner lexan imparts a better action and vibration. It's also less expensive and easier to work with overall. The bait pictured above is about 6 inches long and the lexan is 1/8.

Make your own line ties: Take a block of wood, like a 10 inch piece of 2x4 and hammer two nails into it just far enough apart that the wire fits in between the nails. Slip the wire between the nails and you have a great wire bender. Experiment by trying to duplicate the lip wire shapes and line ties you see on commercially sold bait. Its easy and you'll be making your own line tie wires in no time. Doing it yourself allows you to make a variety of different types and you can also use different wire strenghts and diameters. I use spinner bait wire for the line ties on musky baits. I'd recommend you buy only stainless steel wire or something similar. Rust and corrosion are your enemies.

If you buy some wire you can bend your own. Take a block of wood, like a 10 inch piece of 2x4 and hammer two nails into it just far enough apart that the wire fits in between the nails. Slip the wire between the nails and you have a great wire bender. Experiment by trying to duplicate the lip wire shapes you see on commercially sold bait. Its easy and you'll be making your own line tie wires in no time. Doing it yourself allows you to make a variety of different types and you can also use different wire strenghts and diameters. I use spinner bait wire for the line ties on musky baits. I'd recommend you buy only stainless steel wire or something similar. Rust and corrosion are your enemies.

By the way if you look at Rollie and Helen's Musky shop, they offer the lip configuration that I used. It's a #5 and can be resized for a variety of baits. I've had great success getting the #5 to run on a variety of bait body-styles. Its a dependable and insenstive lip, meaning that is isn't subject to tricky tuning, etc. If you feed out enough line on a bait with that lip, it will go deep enough to say hello to musky, pike, largemouth, northerns, and walleye at a variety of the depths where they hang out.

How it works is a function of the body configuration to some degree. It requires a bit of experimentation. Here's one that worked. I'm working on others to. My goal is to build a bait for musky (and another for walleye) that runs in the 4 to 9 foot depth range, but stays far from the boat during trolling. That way if you run the boat in wide lazy S curves, the bait will occasionally pass through more water that hasn't been disturbed by the boat and hopefully will partially eliminate the need for planer board (which I think are a hassle.) While the pattern on this one is plain-Jane by this board's standards, its a proven color pattern for musky on my waters.

Dean McClain Dean, excellent post. Just excellent. Cory, Stay tuned to this website. There is a spirit of sharing and comraderie here that is nothing short of amazing. You'll learn more in a few months than you might in a few years about how what you've seen is actually done. Be patient with yourself. Most of all, enjoy the ride.

I used it once and dipped the baits in it. I didn't care for the chalky feel it had. Also when I sanded it, lines remained in the primer coat from even the finer sand paper. Whoevers driving to Jed's place can swing by my place and pick up whats left of my gallon too.

Well, "bigger" and "smaller" are of course, relative terms. I'm not a real big fan of baits bigger than 11 or 12 inches, so to me, a 6 o 7 inch bait is "bigger" but not biggest. Smaller is 4 or 5 inches, and those can produce muskies for me sometimes when nothing else will. So, generally I use 1/8 Lexan on baits over 5 inches long and 1/16 on baits smaller than that. Occasionally, I'll use 1/16 on 5 to 7 inch baits in an attempt to get a sharp, tight vibration out of the bait even at the risk of having a lip break. To date, I've never had a single lip break, or an hook-hanger or line tie fail on any of the baits I've built and I do NOT baby them when I'm trolling. In fact, I am a big fan of bouncing crank baits off rocks and point edges hoping to trigger a strike. As to the quality of the polycarbonate, I have one local source for Lexan and its all I use, so I really don't know about what else is out there or how it performs.

By the way, I use electrical tape for my kill dots. I use a paper punch and punch the kill dot out of the tape and stick it on. Nice uniform round dots every time. The epoxy clearcoat blends them in nicely.

It works great, Trey. I sometimes use epoxy since I like to wind up with 3 coats or more on the final bait. But more often I use automotive clear, which may not jive with Createx-type paints. I paint strictly with enamels, which are thinned with lacquer thinner, as is the automotive clear. I wouldn't hesitate to put on a thin coat of epoxy if the automotive clear won't work over water-based paints, but I dont see why it wouldn't. Not sure though.

Sometimes its a good idea to clear the bait before changing colors while painting. I often clear during the painting process after getting the bait to a certain point with 2 or 3 colors and before I add the remaining colors and touches. That way if you have an error in painting, you can wipe off the error while preserving the work already completed.

I see what you mean. I worry about getting paint in the slot because I think that the epoxy may bind to the wood better when gluing the lip in, while at the same time sealing that area. But I worry mostly because of the beating the baits take from muskies and from hard trolling at higher speeds. As for the painting, if you seal your bait with clear or Devcon before you paint it, and you have any errors in the painting process, you can just wipe them off and start over. I sometimes even clear between colors in case I screw up the next color...just wipe it down and do it over.

Thats a great idea, Tigger. I sometimes use a magazine on the bench, when I'm applying Devcon epoxy. When I'm done, I just rip of the page.

Making them isn't that hard, especially if you're familiar with the equipment. I wasn't really all that experienced with equipment when I started. Its a wonder I still have my fat fingers.

FishThanks, do you get overspray in the slot? Is that why the lips are somewhat tight when you're done? If so, try putting in a piece of scrap polycarbonate prior to painting. I cut a piece of scrap just wide enough that its flush with the body. When you're done painting pull out the scrap "lip" and glue in the final lip.

You're right, Jason. There are other variables too, like body style and the type of lip you put in that can have some effect on depth, but mostly its from the lip angle.