pirkfan

Bear is having a Thanksgiving sale which is 10% off his products with a few exceptions. This system is included in the sale and according to his site, you can save $100 while the sale is on.

I bought some of the Spike-It paint about a year ago. It came in metal cans with a metal seal and a metal cap with liner over that. When I used some of it, I was careful to pry the metal seal out and save it. Put it back on the can after I was through painting and burnished it down with a smooth rod and replaced the cap. I know it's still liquid because it sloshes in the metal cans, so seems to work pretty well to keep the solvent (which I'm pretty sure isn't acetone...maybe MEK -methyl ethyl ketone) in the can. It does a nice job, but you do need the retarder to thin it.

You can just clamp a piece of tinfoil in the mold where you want a slot. Granted this isn't a production method, but if you just want a few lures with hook slots, it works very well, and doesn't require modifying the mold

Bears Baits makes a 6 inch K grub (I'm pretty sure the K stands for kalin look-alike) which is big enough to suit your purposes....Bear measures his grubs to the curve of the tail so it's really about 8 inches when straight, and the body is very near to an inch thick. However if you go that route you're going to need an injector as well so you're looking at an initial investment of around $135 before shipping just for the mold and injector. I have this mold and I've used this bait for both halibut and ling cod. They like it. A less expensive option would be the lurecraft twin tail grub mold http://www.lurecraft.com/catalog.cfm/molds/plastic-molds/twintail/5x482:974 I have a similar mold and it works well for both species. They're easy to pour, and the initial outlay is much less than a 2 part aluminum mold. Halibut and ling cod really don't care if one side is flat. The mold, 4 oz of glow in the dark powder and a gallon of their saltwater plastic will run you around $110 before shipping. As you probably know, the problem with grubs is their tails getting ripped off. Having the mold allows you to save the bodies and remelt them to make "new" baits. Since most of the plastic is in the body (and these things do take a lot of plastic), you can see some significant savings. You might actually consider purchasing medium plastic and a pint of hardener. This allows you to mold smaller baits like swimbaits and grubs for rockfish that are more flexible, and yet make plastics tough enough for the bigger baits. This hobby is addictive....you WILL want to make more kinds of baits. By the way, if you're anywhere near Corvallis shoot me a PM...maybe we can get together and I can show you these bait molds

I've caught a lot of fish on the Do-It casting spoon over the years in all sizes. 1/4 oz is particularly effective for Kokanee. It has a nice slow rotation action on the steady retrieve and also works well for vertical jigging. The flutter jig is much more specific to vertical jigging and has very little action on a straight retrieve, but a great...well....flutter on the vertical drop.

Surprisingly, the coiled torsion straightened wire kind of wants to be straight. If you take a curved piece of it and just pull it through thumb and finger sort of pushing into the back of the curve with your thumb at the same time, it will straighten out. Might take a few passes, but it works. Hope this makes sense.

Just looked at the Hilts mold site, and although you'd have to buy two molds to cover your bases, their site says they DO have molds that cast those sizes. Would still be way cheaper than a SC or custom mold. http://www.hiltsmold...SinkerMolds.htm

A lot of Bear's hinged molds have fixed plates, and removal really isn't much of a problem

Actually a Presto Pot is pretty cheap, around $20 at WalMart, and for another $10 or so and a little ingenuity you can add your own spigot.

I use a hot air gun to heat mold cavities when too cold to get a good pour. It's not going to get hot enough to damage either the hook or mold, and after a pour or two, I just heat the hook with the gun before placing in the mold, because the mold cavity is hot enough

I have not had personal experience with this problem, just knew from reading about tin before I started using it, that it existed and so avoided pure tin. The temperature must be below 56 degrees for the change to initiate, so if you're using tin in Hawaii...no worries, and bismuth alloyed with tin will prevent it, From what I've read, it's slow to initiate even in the cold, but once it starts, it accellerates fairly quickly. Lots of videos of it on the internet.

I've powdercoated tin quite a bit (my avatar is a tin lure with the back powdercoated black). Just set the curing oven at 350 degrees and there's no problem. I don't bother painting it most of the time however, since it's a bright shiny metal and never corrodes...caught lots of fish on bare tin jigs and slab jigs. Although tin doesn't corrode, if you use the pure metal (instead of a 95/5 tin/copper or 98/2 tin/silver alloy(lead free solders), it will suffer from tin pest in cold weather and painting the lure won't stop this as it's not oxidation, it's a change of state of the metal.

This is just an educated guess but I know that skeet and trap ranges periodically "mine" the ranges at their location to remove the lead (at one ounce per shot it builds up pretty fast). It's going to be a hard lead alloy because soft lead would deform too much in the shot string.

It's a Do-It "shad bait lure" mold. I just made my own wire form which had a straight wire at the tail instead of a loop, bent an eye in that wire and tied on a crystal flash tail (well sort of crystal flash...it's actually some christmas stuff I found at a craft store). I use them primarily in salt water.

jaggedtoothtackle.com has the 34185S (stainless steel 60 degree jig hook) in sizes 2/0 thru 4/0. These hooks fit the Do-It RHO-5-A heavy hook round head jig with little or no modification. Very corrosion resistant hook.

You don't need to remelt them, just take a paper clip, straighten it out, heat the end red hot and stick through the eye, melts a smooth hole through the powdercoat

I've got 2 Lee bottom pours a hot pot ladle type melter, and a hot pot II melter, plus a 20 lb hybrid bottom pour/ladle melter called "the ultimate inferno" that I got from Hilts molds years ago. If I had to live with just one, it would be the hot pot II because it will pour large (saltwater) jigs which are a problem for the Lee pots unless you get your molds very hot. Best world, you have both a Lee and a Hot Pot II, each has advantages with certain molds

I use a piece of dowel that will fit in the hollow cavity of the bait. Hold the dowel, paint, then stick the dowel in a block of styrofoam to dry

I make this type of swimbait, very effective trolling for albacore or casting to jumpers. I personally like the Lurecraft 665 mold (4 inch) which matches up well with the do-it Shad 9 mold in 1 and 1 1/2 oz, but I'm sure others styles work as well. #681 makes a 3 1/2 inch bait which matches well with the 1/2 and 3/4 oz Shad 9. There is a seller on eBay who also sells silicone molds, some of which have the square paddle tail.characteristic of Big Hammer baits. Do a search on there for "hand pour silicone" in the fishing section (I don't have any of these molds so can't speak to quality, Lurecraft silicone molds are excellent)

When I over pour I use a rotary pizza cutter on a cutting board to trim the "flash" Works very quickly and tends to follow the edge of the bait

Bear has also added a super minnowi that is different than the twitchy minnow, it has a horizontal tail like a super fluke and because of this the mold sides are asymetrical, you would be able to do an open pour for the belly or back, and then close the mold and inject the rest of the lure

If you like senkos, top pour two piece cnc stick mold is a pretty good place to start....pours easily, makes nice baits and doesn't require an injector. For swimbaits, an open pour rtv mold isn't a bad idea either, easy to pour, requires minimal equipment, inexpensive and will definitely catch fish.

I like the Mustad 34185S (stainless steel) hook for this jig. This hook only comes in 2/0-4/0, and those sizes just happen to fit this mold like a glove (2/0 in the 1/2, 3/0 in the 3/4 and 1, 4/0 in the 1 1/2)