Tigger

Pete I hope it works for you. That is a sweet bait! I love the sucker pattern. That's a catcher if you get it straighten out.

Thanks guys those were alot of fun to do! Doug you are right about the variations of bluegills. So manyyyyyyyyyyyy! I also agree the punkinseed is plain nuts to try to do. My airbrush is not good enough. A hand-me-down one. I may try it if I get a better brush some day. Mike I may sell them not sure about all of them. I did sneak one on ebay. But it is not about that. Just fun to try to create mother natures colors. I have more fun mixing the paints and sticking them in little bottles all over the place! LOL Yes I will be getting some teeth marks on them. Fatfingers is going to take me under his wing and really show me how to musky fish! Jason I did think about the basement. I have been posting alot there. I'll give it some thought. Thanks Swede. You guys chase the pike I think. Any musky's there? Thanks again everyone , take care John

Here is one more and a little largemouth bass I did also. It seems they are always hanging around together anyhow! Take care John

Hey everyone, Hope all is well. I decided to do a run of bluegills. They have a foil base but most of it is covered with paint. I still don't know why I keep doing it! LOL My friend Carl had some really neat pictures of bluegills he caught while icefishing this past winter. The bluegill were laying on the ice in the sunlight. There were about 4 to 5 different variations of colors. I decided to challenge myself with the matching! LOL They came out good but I will not show the pictures of the fish! LOL Rowhunter really did a knock out job on his and it gave me some inspiration to try some more. My wife thanks you! She hasn't seen come out of the basement for 3 days! LOL Take care John

Very nice job Row!

That looks really nice Jason. Cant wait to see the final product.

Bruce those are great. Talk about percision! I love seeing that kinda stuff. Thanks for sharing

Vc you are welcome! I am glad you made the 1-1/2 hr drive up. Your baits are amazing! I am glad I could help with the fan! Man you did not waste any time. To everyone out there, you will never meet a person as nice as Vc anywhere! He is almost to good to be true! A1 in my book.

How did I get in the middle of this???????? Husky I am flattered that you would mention me at all! There are times that I just log on and look through ALL the wonderful baits that everybody makes. I am just blown away. So many different styles and paths to go get to the final result. A fello cabinetmaker told once, "there are many ways to get to the finished look, who is to say what is right and what is wrong?". With the web and meeting someone like Fatfingers in person you can accelerate the learning curve. I feel a bit quilty after some responses of older luremakers that had to learn thru what little info they got from other lure builders along the way Preweb. They have earned it. Only time will heel that. Who knows? Everyone has their own style. I don't think I could do other peoples personal styles as well they can do it. Thats what makes everyones unique in there own way. The test tank would be great! Just tell me where to show up! My John

Thanks everybody! I love doing those life like patterns. The eyes came from Vandykes http://www.vandykestaxidermy.com/subcategory/29/ I buy the blank eyes and paint them myself. I use the ink paint pens from a craft store. The a couple of whifs with the airbrush in two colors. I found out that you don't have to put alot of paint on them to get the effect you need. John

Thanks everyone! This lure thing is very addictive! The tool that I used was a little sears craftsman dremmel. No flex line on it. Just a one piece. I got it when my father-in-law passed years ago. It was fun to try one. A ton of work though! I will not be doing to many of these. I wanted to try one. It is all painted on this one. A Fatfingers tip saved me on this one. Sealing the undercoats first. I must have used a bottle of paint on the side patterns! I kept wiping them off and trying them again. I finally gave up. I need to get a high quality airbrush I think. Mine works great for fades and template work. Mini dots and stripes on little lures is nuts with the one I got! I really do enjoy the "realistic" type painting. I you where to ask me to paint a prison convict pattern it would take days for me!!!!!!!! Is the spacing right? Is the line straight? all sorts of things. I lock up big time!LOL John

The final result

Hey everybody, Well I tried my first carved head. I have mixed feelings on doing them. You do all that nice detail and the heavy epoxy fills it all in! When I did my sealer coat I tried to thin the epoxy and got some kind of stippled effect. Not what I wanted! After much sanding I got it back on track. It is a musky, 8" floater. Here are some pics I took along the way. Take care John

Very nice Dan!

YOu can take old rolls of blueprints to use as a bench cover. You can go to any contractor and ask for some old ones. You can get sets up to 1" thick sometimes! You can make a mess,drill holes in parts and mix spot epoxy right on the paper. Cut with a razor at the binder and discard that layer when done. I really like this. A friend showed this to me.

I hear you on that! I dropped one a couple of weeks ago right on the floor with router shavings! I wiped it down and recoated it the next day. You can't tell. Good luck.

I found Naptha works great for thinning enamel paints for shading. It dries faster and doesn't seem to have a bubbling effect with the epoxy when you take the heat gun to it. As mentioned before. I started weighing my epoxy on a digital scale to mix it. I do larger musky lures and it works great! Once you now much to mix per lure it is like clockwork. I have only been doing one lure at a time. Not sure how you would do it for production batches.