mark poulson

Snax, Great looking lure. Congrats. How much do you have to do after the molding process? Do you still have to drill for the hdwe, ballast, and hinge pins? Are any of the fins poured in? So many questions, so little time.

Dieter, Nice finds. I've had some clear topwater poppers start to take on water, and used just crazy glue, the runny kind, to stop the leaks without re-coating the whole lure, but I'm always checking them to see if they are leaking again. The problem is the ballast balls rust, and turn the inside of the lure a rusty color. Interesting, but not what I want. So I decided to seal them, permanently. Here's what I do with lures that leak. Be sure you've gotten all the water out. I use a hair dryer to keep it heated for an hour, off and on, and then check it by holding it in a tissue and shaking it. If there's still water in it, I can see it in the tissue. If the seam is leaking, I brush on crazy glue, or epoxy, if I can find the actual spots where it's leaking. If not, I just coat the whole lure in another coat of clear epoxy, repaint, and add another coat of epoxy. Or I repaint it and then re-coat the whole thing in two coats of epoxy. The extra epoxy can make a suspending lure sink, but not enough to matter.

Dieter, I don't recognize the lighter wood, but the darker one looks like the Malaysian hardwood we use here for exterior decking. Really heavy and hard, like teak, and greys when it weathers. I have a lot of it sitting in my lumber storage area left over from different projects. I'll have to give it a try for lures.

Man, those are amazing!

I found some PVC decking at Stock Bldg. Matls. in Mar Vista. The smallest piece was 1"X5 1/2"X18', and I paid $65 for one stick! Before you pay for some, pm me with your phone number, and you can have a couple of feet of mine to play with.

Dieter, I've noticed that, with "globalization", lots of the broom, mop, and shovel handles are made from some kind of hardwood that is not domestic American wood. I never thought to try one for lures, but I will now. Thanks.

Out here in SoCal, most 3/4" and smaller dowels that are sold in lumber yards are red birch. I guess it's because it's easy to turn and finish. The larger clothes pole dowel stock, 1 3/8" and up, is usually douglas fir. You have a lathe, so you can turn your own dowels out of any wood you want. I don't know what's available back there, but pine and douglas fir are two woods I've had good success with. Pine is a good, strong, light wood for topwater lures. I dip the carved/shaped/drilled lure in Minwax Wood Hardener for 20 seconds, and the wood soaks up enough of the hardener to make it stronger. If you have predrilled the screw eye holes, the hardener wicks into the holes and makes the wood that the threads bite stronger.

Can you fish the power plant pond all winter?

Man, isn't it almost time for hard water back there? My Mom was from Detroit, and she used to say winter started around Halloween. One of the main reasons she and my Dad move out to Los Angeles after WW2. We have clear lakes out here, too. I've found that lures that have a good action, size, and matching color scheme, work. Recently, in the process of trying to refinish a crank, I stripped it down to the clear plastic, sparyed it with some irridescent violet Wildlife paint, added some nail polish with blue/green glitter, and cleared it. It came out an almost invisible ghost finish, but it is more visible in low light. Really works on finicky bass because they don't really see much of the lure, just the flash and hint of color. It's become my go to finish for jerkbaits and cranks when the fish are on the shad in the fall.

Most minnows are silver, or have a greenish cast, to blend into the foliage. Since these are reaction baits, having the paint scheme close is good enough. If it has the right general color, size, and good action, it will get bit. Exact matching paint schemes are really only important on deadstick, twitch baits, or for catching anglers.

That trench idea is brilliant. Make up a set of test trebles, with the points turned in like for prefishing, so you don't stick the tarp during testing.

Kudos, again.

I'd mount the eye tie slightly below the mid point on the nose. That lifts the nose on the pull stroke and gets it started walking. And it keeps a little more weight in the bottom part of the lure. You can also use heavier screw eyes in the tail to achieve different weighting. I can see that 1/2" diameter dowel doesn't leave much room for experimentation in terms of ballast weighting. If you're already having to downsize the hooks to achieve buoyancy, you're probably going to be very limited in what you can do. You can drill out some of the wood along the back, to make air pockets, and then seal the tops with some paper and epoxy. But that's really as a last resort, and probably isn't practical with lures this small. I think you're going to have to use the hook and split ring sizes like you're doing to balance them. Last, you can use a mojo type cylindrical weight, with the screw eye passed through it, in the tail if your lures don't walk well. Tail weighting is really important in a walking bait, or at least having the center of gravity (balance point) back of center. I like feathered tails, too, on my walking baits, but the feather can really affect the action of the lure. Feathers can dampen the walking action. Try to shorten the feathers if it seems not to walk well. Bait fish or bass fry that size don't have big tails anyway. A little mylar in the feathered tail will add flash, even if you wind up trimming it even with the back of the treble. Try all the experimenting on one lure only, until you get it right, and then do the rest. Those are too pretty to mess all of them up. And float test the new lures you're making with all the hardware installed before you put that beautiful paint job on them, so you can be sure they're balanced right.

As the father of two grown and growing daughters, I've had the occasion to buy ladies undergarments more than once. Telling the sales person it's for my teenage daughters didn't seem to stop the suspicious looks.

I think Vodkaman's right. When you put a lure in the water, the finish is going to look clear, even if you've scuffed it up with steel wool. Test a sample by scuffing it, and then wetting it with spit. The ability of water to fill in the scuff marks and any irregularities or flaws is a lifesaver for lures with bad topcoats.

They look really good. How did you arrive at the shape? What kind of wood did you use? If you didn't add ballast, I'd be surprised if they didn't float, unless they're some super dense hardwood. For walking baits, you will want the tail to sit lower in the water than the head, but not much. You may be able to adjust the way the lure sits by using different size trebles and split rings. Also, you can wrap some fly tying lead wire around the rear treble's shaft to add rear weight, or both trebles, if you need it. I've found that wooden walking baits need to sit mostly submerged, but horizontal, at rest, with 1/3 to 1/2 of the top of the lure's head out of the water. If they sit higher, they seem to roll and skid more, rather than walk. But, again, it depends on the weight of the wood to begin with. I typically use douglas fir or pine for my Lunker Punker type walking baits. The fir is a little heavier, depending on which piece of wood I pick up, so it needs less ballast. But it's also harder to shape. If you find you need ballast, you can use the hook hanger locations, drill them out large enough for the ballast, and epoxy in the ballast with the hook hangers in the center. I've retrofitted some baits, using egg sinkers and cotter pins, that I didn't weight right after I finished them, and this works, and minimizes the damage to the finished lure.

I generally use the size required for my hinges and hardware to determine the smallest section I can use, and go from there. I kind of follow a rule of thumb on four piece lures. I divide the lure into five equal sections. The first two are the head, since most of the ballast goes there, and the other three are equal, even though they get smaller in profile as they approach the tail. I don't count the plastic tail in my calculations, so, for example, for an 8" trout with a 2" tail, my body is actually six inches, and so each of the five equal divisions is a little less than 1 1/4". That makes the head 2 1/2"+-. I want as much swimming, snake-like action as possible, and that works for me. My three piece, 6 1/2" crappie shape has a body of about 4 1/2", and I make the three sections about equal. That makes each section, including the head, about 1 1/2". The shorter head wiggles from side to side more than with the four piece lures, but it swims well, and the tail section waves like a flag in a hurricane when I burn it. I use soft plastic tails, courtesy of Captsully, for most of my sectional baits, and make the joints open enough to see through. I think CalBassin is right, the size of the joints affects the action. The larger the gap, the more exaggerated the action. I've gotten fish on all my lures, so I know it's really the action that gets them, since my painting skills are poor. Now, for a twitch-type, dead stick bait, detail is critical. I use feather tails for them, since the feather moves even when the bait is still. As always, shaping and weighting can greatly affect how a lure performs, so there's no substitute for testing. But, as a general rule, if you stick to my formula, your lures will swim.

I can do it, so it's not too hard. Weight it so it sits horizontal in the water, floating, with 1/3 to 1/2 of the top part of the front section out of the water. Most of the body is in the water, just below the surface. The center of balance should be just behind the mid point. Round the bottom edges for less water resistance on the change of direction, or you'll be working hard to walk it.

Talk about the patience of Job! Truly amazing.

Welcome. Those are some great looking baits. You seem to be a natural.

Dieter, I have a friend who does leather repairs on shoes and hand bags. And guess what he uses to color the repairs and blend it in? Airbrushes! You could always tell her you're thinking of learning how to dye shoes and handbags, so she can have matching stuff at the drop of a hat!

Dieter, I have three brushes. All are gravity flow, which means the paint is added to a cup on top of the brush, and is drawn down through the nozzle by the air flow. My first one, which is an Iwata HP-C, has a variable flow trigger that controls both air and paint flow, plus a separate control of the max amount of paint flow. My second one is an Iwata knockoff from Airbrush City that has a MAC air volume control valve beneath the tip. I bought this for the finer tip to do detail work. My last brush, which I bought for undercoating and priming, is a Badger 360, can also be used with paint bottles in a suction, under the brush position. If I had it to do again, I'd just have the Iwata. $200+-, but now that I've painted for a while, I can use it for everything. The key, for me, is to thin the paint enough that it's like skim milk, so it passes through the nozzle without clogging. I even thin my pearls and opaques, and just do a few more coats. When I want to do a fine line, I turn down the paint valve at the back of the Iwata, and leave the pressure up at the 35psi so the tip doesn't clog. Or I use a stencil. If I can do it, airbrushing must be easy. And, if you use water based paints, cleanup is a breeze. One minute between colors, and five minutes when you finish for the day.

SmokeyJ, That's too cool! Thanks for sharing. When you reach Yuki Ito, remind him he has a long lost "cousin", Marki Poulson, here in Los Angeles, who would love to have some of his creations.

I'm no expert, but I would say that the sanding/saw dust is bad for you, just like any other dust, and the fumes generated when you machine it and it gets hot and melts are toxic. PVC is a nasty chemical when it's melted. So be sure you have good ventilation when you're using a power tool on it, and a dust mask.