Future Lurebuilding Plans

Ive allot on my mind at the minute where my lure building is concerned, so many things i want to do and lots of ideas. I've been in the process of buying a new light baitcaster outfit, so my lure building thoughts have been on things I can build to use with my new outfit. I wanted a baitcaster for casting Kopyto's at perch, small cranks at chub, and small lures of various types at local jack populations.

I wanted a casting range of somewhere between 5-20g so not fully ultralight, but still on the light side of 'light'. I'd been asked by a few on the LAS forum to build some really small jerkbaits, with the light baitcasting becoming popular at the minute I thought id give them a go. I have plans to make a few different sizes and want to really explore how small and light i can make a jerkbait. That is not where I started though, preferring to start 'small' before working to 'tiny' !

I had in mind that i also wanted to use smaller 3D eyes like i do with my other larger jerkbaits and basically wanted to make smaller versions, along with this I wanted to try abit of carving. This sort of ruled out Balsa wood as its abit too soft. The eastern Europeans use allot of lime wood in there 'wobelry' and also carve some detail with the use of lime wood.

I got hold of a small bit of lime wood to experiment with and try it out with a few different lures. I ended up making a small number of jerkbaits just under 3" and weighing between 10-20g although the exact weights are not known as i have not completed any yet. I tried different ways of carving and shaping them to get used to the properties of the wood. I wanted to get an idea of what would work best, what i liked the look of and what is practical time wise when making a small batch.

Below is a couple of photos showing a few different things I tried, i also did a couple uncarved/shaped so i can try out more stencilling at such a small scale, at the minute its all about trying things out and learning the best way of going about it.

 

I've also been finishing some small cranks that i started last year and never got round to finishing, which is another thing Ive been thinking about recently. I fished with a mate at the end of last year on his boat that he had just purchased, it made me realise that I didn't have enough suitable lures for that area of fishing. I don't have allot of deep diving cranks for casting and trolling as i generally fish shallow venues. So I have plans on making deep diving ultralights that will be useful on his boat. I've done a few in this batch below that are deeper divers than i would usually make, The cranks i usually make and fish with are for use on moving shallow water when in pursuit of chub and trout.

I've always been interested in trying new things and trying to do something a little bit different so try to experiment where I can. with the lures below I have used some holographic material that i found awhile ago and never used, you tend to buy things when out and about that might come in handy one day! And you often find it in the most unlikely places. This material wraps round the lure profile really well, and once coated with clear coat it just blends into the lure. It worked really well and gives off a nice twinkly effect when the lure moves.

Something else that's been on my mind is incorporating rattles into all aspects of my lures, I think a rattle is a definite bonus at times and by not having one as an option your limiting your chances to some degree by not taking advantage of the fishes ability to sense vibration and noise.

A simple way of adding rattles that I've thought about is getting hold of some brass pipe/tube, cutting the ends and folding a section over to seal a ball bearing inside, you can get brass tube in very small sizes as well as bigger sized so you apply the same to bigger lures as really small lures. I'd like to experiment with placement too to see where you would get most rattle going my the lures movement. I'd imagine you could also use the rattle addition to incorporate the ballast of the lure. That's something else to try and think about anyway, I did say I had allot of things to try!!