Primitive Low Cost Diving Lure

[diemai]

Hi , folks ,

Many of you may doubt , whether this is serious or not , but I just had to try it !

Some months ago I had already mentioned the site My linkin another thread in here ,...... after having looked at it again recently , I finally decided to give this one a shot , ........I have had this idea on my mind for years already , but never put it to practice so far !

Not much to say to it anyway , ........the lure consists of a wine bottle cork and a Cola screw-on bottle top , that makes up for the diving lip , .........guess , that an "ordinary" kinda lip glued into a slot would work either well !

The two cylindrical ballast weights are borrowed from a curtain weight band .

The lure is thru-wired , so even bigger fish won't easily have a chance to get away , even though they might shred the entire lure to pieces !

The harness is epoxied into a slot(front portion) and bore(rear portion) , ........tools being used are a "Dremel" with drill bits , cutting disc and router bits , a coarse sanding wheel to cut the angle to the Cola bottle top and a carpet knife for breaking the edges of it , .......off course also pliers and sidecutters for the wire work .

Finally the finished lure(cork portion only) was dipped into modelling dope , just for a LITTLE protection !

With a little practice the lure can be done within well about 15 minutes , off course without curing times !

One could tie on sucha lure for fishing snaggy swims or make tricky casts into obstacles , ......won't hurt that much loosing it !

Watch it swim :

Here are some more pictures #1 to #5 showing different views of that lure !

greetz , diemai

Edited December 24, 2009 by diemai

[Capital Fishing Lures]

Deimai,

The video is also awesome. The lure swims really good too!

[BobP]

Neat stuff, Deimai

[Zolja]

Now this is a ghetto lure . I bet if you made it in two piece setup, it would swim too. Just make first piece the same, then instead of rear hook, just add another through wired cork.

Zoran

[sinyo]

great lure.....

i think it is not primitive but new breakthrough to create inexpensive lure

not just that, it's can be a model for young children to start building a lure

[rofish]

Diemai,

That lure is also food for thought. I refer here to that cup shaped bottle cap. Imagine picking up some water in a cup from a water tank, by moving the cup along the surface of the water. If the cap can create a wobble like that to a totally unhydrodinamical piece of cork, why couldn't it be used for poppers?

[diemai]

Thanks a lot for your comments , guys !

@ Zolja

Been thinking about a two sectioned as well , .......problem is , that right now I do not have enough bottle corks stocked anymore , and I do not drink wine !

@ sinyo

Nice idea about the children !

@ rofish

I wanted to build a diving lure ,....... a popper also works , it is displayed in the first "boozebait" link , but with a metal beer bottle top instead !

With this plastic screw-on softdrink top it would surely generate a different , most likely deeper and louder noise , I suppose !

greetz , diemai

[Jio]

Good thinking and building again Dieter!

What do you think; should Coke gonna be better than Fanta or Sprite top?

[diemai]

@ Jio

Thanks a lot , Janne !

Actually I had gathered those screw-on tops in various colors , ...black , red , blue , yellow , grey and green ,.... all from different kinds of softdrinks delivered by the local Coca-Cola company(got them from the bottle return boxes at the beverage slot machines at my work) .

But I need to look after a new source for wine bottle corks ,........... the workmate , that always used to give me some , is no longer there , .......and I've packed up on drinking for some years now ! !

greetz , Dieter

[RiverMan]

That's really cool.................good kid project.

RM

[KcDano]

An excellent idea! Nice action! Right in line with current green movement as well.

[philB]

Dieter

I love this little lure. Great fun and innovation not only that but collecting the raw materials for construction will be fun as well .

philB

[diemai]

Thanks a lot again , guys , ........actually tonight or somewhen tomorrow after having recovered would be a good occasion for gathering some lure material from the party remainders !

Wishing everyone a happy , healthy and prosperous New Year , .............greetz , Dieter

[mark poulson]

Thanks a lot again , guys , ........actually tonight or somewhen tomorrow after having recovered would be a good occasion for gathering some lure material from the party remainders !

Wishing everyone a happy , healthy and prosperous New Year , .............greetz , Dieter

And a Happy New Year to you.

That lure moves great.

I have rat lures that don't swim that well!

You are, indeed, a very creative person.

Now the big question. Soda tops, or water bottle tops, which are clear/opaque?

[diemai]

Hi , folks ,

Yesterday I've been fooling around with some bottle corks again , went to test them in my bath tub today .

Sorry for the bad quality , hopefully one day I would learn , how to handle a camera !

greetz , diemai

[mark poulson]

Dieter,

Those lures look great.

If you add a plastic worm as a tail on the lipped crank, it would make a great rat! Unless, of course, the tail killed the swimming action. But, with that lip, I think it would work fine.

It's pouring raing here (finally) so I'm not going to venture out into the garage yet, but I have an artificial cork on my desk, ready to go!

[GDille]

I guess great minds think alike, I built this one yesterday, and it has a slow wag, but I did not have a large area to test it in, just an aquarium. It took about 30 min with curing times to complete, the color was put on with permanent markers.

[diemai]

@ GDille

That's a nice one you've made there , ..........have you put any ballast weights in it's belly ?

@ mark poulson

Thanks Mark , .....actually I already have a similiar design on my mind :

To stay with cheap material I'm thinking to cut a curved kinda grub tail out of a plastic carrier bag with fingernail scissors and fix the base of that tail into a vertical slot at the rear of the cork body ,........locking it in place with two crosswise wire pins or even toothpicks .

That bottle cork lure would off course have a diving lip as well , but only one belly treble .

When making this last video , I finally figured out , that the very high buoyancy of these plastic corks just lends itself to go try making topwater lures out of the stuff , ....so yesterday I went to start out with a "Globe" style lure , ..........the biggeset effort of that one actually was cutting out the propeller blade .

It consists of one whole cork for the rear part and another half cork for the spinning front portion , so it is about 2 3/5" in total , actually a very tiny "Globe" .

Gonna paint and topcoat that one , so it would still take some time to finally get done !

OT : Just watched the news , seeing parts of LA flooded , ........hope that you are well and did not get your feet and especially your carpets wet !

Thanks , .........greetz , Dieter

[diemai]

Here are two pictures of my latest bottle cork "Globe" lure blank , .......not much effort at all grinding the material to shape with a "Dremel" coarse sanding drum .

But at first I'd furnish the fittings for the wire harness , easier that way to determine about centered holes !

Drilled them from either side freehanded and eyeballing with the "Dremel" , the exits of the bores are reinforced by glueing in some kinda small grommets , that I had found on the scrabyard of my work years ago , ......guess ,that some small pop rivets would serve the purpose as well ?

Only problem is , that the small wood screws holding the homemade prop blade do not find final grip in the artificial cork material , one should twist them in very careful not to tear out material with the screw's thread .

What I did to still maintain a good bond is to extend the entries of the screw holes a bit , ....for final assembly after painting I'd just twist in the screws with some epoxy glue , that would also set into these bore extentions and bond the screws sufficiently to the plastic cork material .

greetz , diemai

[mark poulson]

That lure looks very interesting. Should call up the pike.

You're right, it is pouring here. And the forecast is for rain all week.

We're high and dry, at least in the house, but the yard and street are saturated.

I'm sure you're used to weather like this, but we haven't had sustained rains like this since the winter of 2004-2005. The areas that were burned in the last brush fire, the Station Fire, are really facing terrible flooding and mud flows. And some of the areas from previous fires are in danger, too, so it's going to be touch and go around here for a while.

Fingers crossed.

[mark poulson]

Dieter,

I found out pretty quickly that the artificial cork shapes okay, but doesn't hold screws very well.

I'm thinking I may have to use crazy glue to strengthen the screw holes, or go to a thru wire setup.

Edited January 20, 2010 by mark poulson

[GDille]

Diemai,

I put a weight in the belly and and a lighter weight in the tail. The tail works against the top and makes a very good struggling look. I finally got the idea to test my baits in the hot tub with all the jets off. Overall the bait dives about a foot, and floats back up to the surface in about 10 seconds, and the tail and body are twisting and jerking the whole time.

[Balls]

G'day all

Diemai

If you know any one who works in the Hospitality trade they normally have heaps of corks, both natural & the articial cork you are using, also Champayne corks etc, most of them just throw all the corks in a display box around some of the wines they sell with their food menus. Most of them would probably be happy to give you as many as you want & or save some for you, they only chuck them away anyway. I work in a Casino & have buckets of corks from asking them to keep them for me, I use a lot probably up to 50 in a couple of teasers I use for Billfish.

I use the cork for a couple of different applications to you, one application I use is to router/die grinder about two thirds of the middle out & have a thin hollow tube glued through the remainder of the middle. I mainly spray them fluro pink, fluro green, fluro pink & purple (my favourite). I rig skipping baits for Sailfish & small Black Marlin, a skirt sits over the head of the skip bait & slides into the rourtered/die grindered out cork, they are dynamite on Billfish & I don't cry when a Spanish Mackeral destroys them, they also make great teasers for Bill fish.

The Champayne corks I use to make my rod grips, I router/die grinder the middle out of the cork to suit the diameter of the rod blank & then epoxy the corks together in the jig to get the desired length, rough sand, fit to the rod blank before final sand.

The last application could probably be put into use for your purposes if you wanted to make bigger surface lures out of cork, the jig would just need to be made smaller. I just made mine out of scrap timber & bought a couple of lengths of threaded rod.

As a result of your concept when I get a chance I will play around with a couple of new style surface lures, probably weight the rear end & have to have a solid wire set up, other wise the Barra would destroy it, good luck with the cork hunt, cheers Balls.

[diemai]

@ Balls

Thanks a lot for your further input on this cork material , very interesting to hear , that you are using them on your local saltwater species as well !

Seems , that there are more possibilities about them , that I could ever think of !

Apart from having started to make lures from those corks recently , I have been using them for years now to make bobbers for float fishing at night for local European eel .

I'd just cut some straight and thinner hazelnut or willow rods outdoors , shave off the bark and let them dry thoroughly for a few weeks , .......drill an approbiate hole lengthwise centered through the cork and insert a piece of such wooden rod to act as a handle , so that I can grab the cork to sand it's ends to an halfround or oval shape on a coarse sanding wheel .

After I'd take a fitting piece of rod , drill a hole at the thicker end to glue in a homemade "twisted wire" eye , ......the other end I would sand to taper to little less that 4,5mm diameter .

Then I'd glue that wooden rod into the cork's bore , just about centered ,.......paint the top part in a hi-vis neon color(orange or red) and finally seal off with some clear laquer .

The 4,5mm dia. at the tip of the bobbers "antenna" is important to stick on a chemical light for night fishing ,...... these have that very diameter and come with a fitting piece of clear plastic tubing that I can now push over the tip of the bobber and the chemical light to have both connected .

These kinda floats have proven to be very suitable in waters with lots of dead wood and vegetation in it , as they are very rigid and don't break as easily as commercial floats and bobbers , when getting tossed through some kinda obstacles .

I am getting supplied with cork by some workmates , as I packed up with drinking for years now , .......if I should need larger amounts , I have found a webstore in Berlin , that sells supplies for beer brewing and wine making at home , they sell corks for 20 to 30 Euro cents each , and these do not even have cork screw holes nor any imprints on them !

thanks again , ..........greetz , diemai

Edited January 24, 2010 by diemai

[java]

Brilliance idea dieter...

Think i have to build this one, wondering... any luck with the fish?

thanks