aulrich

I love fishing from my Kayak, at this point I have 2 Jackson kayaks, a Big Tuna and a cuda 12. Purpose build fishing kayaks are fantastic. Around here the Hobbie pedal drives are very popular though more expensive. there are a couple more brands that have pedal drives. In general it pays to go with the bigger brands Jackson , Hobbie, wilderness systems etc the accends you can get at BP will float you but that is about all Even though pedal drives are all the rage (and I can see there usefulness), I can tell you paddles still work .

So I picked up an airbrush kit on the weekend, mostly for the compressor, but as far as I can tell it has one speed and it constantly runs , and to get a lower pressure I I just bleed off air. is that normal. I am use to my wood working compressor, it might run once an hour.

Given black splatter on white, the bait would look white with gold spots, but at certain angles it will flash gold. Or at lease that is how my duo/ inference colors work

At this point ETex thinned with denatured alcohol 1 part, 1 part 1 part, resin , hardener and alcohol. (mix resin and hardener as usual let sit a bit then thin) repeat full strength the next day. But I have heard you don't need to wait to recoat over the thinned etex. For my next batch I plan to do this Coat as usual with thinned etex but instead of putting on the rotator and forgetting about them, hang out for an hour and retouch dry spots as required. After an hour or so put a second coat of full strength etex, hang out for a half hour and manage heavy spots and smooth as required as the lures are rotating. I am also considering tinting the undercoat white

I have mixed up my own paints using base and pearl powders, I don't see a problem trying it in top coat, in my experience I can say a little goes a long way.

Nice looking bait.

I was noticing that too as I was digging through some of the catalogues. How about those various "Wonder Breads"

So, I have some reef runner KO's I had bought last fall and I finally have the change to use them coming up. On the list to paint list we have the standards (Side/back) Silver /blue Silver/black Perl/Flow Yellow Perl/Flow Orange Perch Firetiger So what else should I try, I did see at HD some glow paint (rattle can and brushable) White fish and perch are the bulk of the baitfish there

Here is a picture showing the internals that LakerTaker has sent me. That is a lot of ballast and more to the center than I would have expected

42 grams, that must have a significant ballast in it, I have not measured my balsa knock off but my guess is the shape displaces about 20g of water. The raw blank is all of 17 grams. Lakertaker about how wide is the bait

Cycle time is not to bad at least to the roughed in body stage, I could come close to molding if de-molding time is 15 min or so.

So have to admit, I saw the shape and said to myself that I had to have one, the trout like profile has some use around here. So this is the first, I should not have rounded over the face so much. I do have a thought on replicating the fin, but I kept it to the formula for this try.

So I have been thinking about this Here is the first try, but I did mess up the size since it's 90mm The circles are where I would start with ballast it's a similar size to a bait I make it has 3 000 buckshot for ballast. Bend up wire to match the hook hangers and tow points and sandwich between two layers of 1/4" balsa. The top profile can be a slightly weight forward torpedo, but I would taper fairly quickly after the ballast. Keep the bit on top in front of the line tie basically flat. but round off everything else. Now the promo text say that it's claim to fame is that there is no rattle. and this one as it sits there is none. but cut a chamber and add a BB you can add one and it will sound different than a typical plastic lipless. On youtube look up the channel "the handmade Fisherman" watch the phox minnow set of videos it show the basic process of making a laminated lure body.

Nice looking bait!

It looks like a fairly standard lipless shad, though it may be optimized for vertical jigging, since the line ties seem a touch back when compared to a typical casting lipless. So what attributes made it a great jigging lure. how fast did it sink, did it sink nose down , Rattle?. I have been playing lots with laminated balsa lipless lately, that method should be able to clone the performance pretty easily.

That does make sense , and thanks I did do the dunk test, that is how I know the goal weight is 60 grams or so. The big issue with the laminated baits is you need to commit to the ballasting as you are gluing up. I was trying to reduce the trial and error nature of this. The current version I came in at 56g raw so hardware paint and 4 coats of etex need to get me just over that 60g mark, it's on the drying rack now with the first coat of etex so I can get a ball park of the per coat weight.

Well the first attempts were pretty rough. oddly as already stated thinner would be better I guess SWMBO had heavy duty in the kitchen, though it was easy enough to file flush. Upside there are more texturing options I used a section of brad nails and attempted to give the illusion of a lateral line . Yes look at it funny and it wrinkles I used my side profile template at full size, next time I will make a copy and trim it so I don't have to glue it down to the curve. I think doing a round bait that way would drive me to drink. Properly done I think it will look better than the tape, but like I said the first ones are rough but I am pretty sure they will catch fish.

Yes , I blundered into that fact, the first batch of this shape I had found the biggest splitshot I could find, made them up, then tested if they would sink. I was a bit disheartened when they didn't, that was until I used them in a shallow spring pike bay. The only issue is repeating the error.

Usage would be pike through the season. So 4'-20'+ and through the ice. Likely I will be making floater/diver, slow and fast sink so I guess if I am going for a slow sink and the displaced weight is 60g do I build it to 58g letting hardware and epoxy tip it over to 61g-62g. The reason we are upsizing is that there are few if any lipless with any size even at 3.75" its on the big side. I have not started on the 200% version yet Is that a standard hard resin or lightened somehow, micro balloon etc.

So I Have been playing with a lipless bait shape upsizing and down sizing. The middle is the original and there is + 50% and -25% this bait is a laminated build, the original was made using 1/4" balsa 3.75" long. So yes up scale is 3/8 and down is 3/16. the original was weighted with 3 large split shot. when I up sized it, the closest equivalent to the splitshot was a .495 muzzleloader ball. Ass it turns out the body with just one coat of epoxy but no hooks and split rings floats. I did measure the displacement of the body is about 60ish grams of water, the lure is about 54g. Now just for the fun of it I made two other versions one each in basswood and poplar. and they weigh in at 65g and 74g respectively they pretty much sink like stones. So do I just use the basswood version or do I find a way to sneak in a few more grams of lead. Both could be an option as well since the heavier one would work in deep water better. But if I sneak in some more lead how close should I be to that 60g should I be