Home made fishing lures?

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Xplorer
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Home made fishing lures?

#1

Post by Xplorer »

Do any of you make your own fishing lures?

I have permits for 2 backpacking trips coming up soon and as I'm preparing my gear I had an idea about making my own lures. Although many years of trout fishing in the Sierra Nevada Mountain wilderness areas has taught me to fish with flies 95% of the time, there are times when the conditions lead you to go to lures. Most of the time I go straight to a small Panther Martin with a gold spinner, but if I'm at a large enough lake I might throw a few heavier spoon type lures out into deeper water to try to entice the "big one" ;) . This is where I thought I might be able to make my own :thinking . I'll still have about 60 flies with me. I'll still have 4 Panther Martins with me. But on this next trip the first lures to go on my line will be these 2 new "secret weapons" :zany .

One is titanium an the other is timascus :smlling-eyes . I'm hoping I don't get 'em stuck on an underwater tree stump of course. The water at 11,000 feet is really cold.
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I'll follow up with pics of fish caught on these in a few weeks if all goes well. :crossed-fingers
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skeeg11
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#2

Post by skeeg11 »

Those are absolutely beautiful!!! I'd be so afraid of losing those. :fearful-face

I mini-jig for trout so I tie my own, although you can buy tubes and jigheads in various sizes & weights and do very well. If interested in this finesse technique, google George Mead or mini-jigging for trout. For me it was positively life changing. :exploding-head
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#3

Post by Doc Dan »

Those look very nice. I'd be afraid of losing them. I've never made a lure, except for tying a few flies in years gone by. I knew someone who made worms, but that's about it.
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#4

Post by SpyderNut »

Those are beautiful, Chad! :) Very cool! I suspect they will work very well, based on the designs and vibrant colors. Please keep us posted! I might need to order one before too long. (The bass on my lake will never see it coming ;)).

My brother and I used to make handmade lures when we were in high school. We used hard-body Rapala lures as a template and then we would whittle the bodies out of balsa or poplar and then sand them smooth with sandpaper. Before attaching the treble hooks, we would spray them down with primer and sand smooth again. On some of them, we would clamp a scrap piece of window screen tightly against the belly of the lure and would spray the belly portion with silver or white spray paint. After it dried and the screen was removed, it would create a basic "fish scale" pattern. We'd then spray the tops of the lures with a darker color and then hand paint the eyes on, along with other little features. We'd use a small piece of plastic from a "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" tub to create the front lip. It was a heck of a lot of fun. I seem to think we even managed to catch a few fish with them, lol. ;)
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#5

Post by Mushroom »

Those look really cool! Nice work.

I've never made my own but I've considered trying to carve a simple balsa wood crank bait. This might just be the inspiration I needed to actually give it a try. I know could manage a spoon but at the pace I seem to lose the $5 brass spoons, I should probably avoid Titanium and Timascus lures for the time being. LOL

Good luck with the new "secret weapons!" I'm excited to see how you do!
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#6

Post by bearfacedkiller »

I have never done anything like that. Looks cool.

I carved a few crappy rapala clones as a kid. I have made spoons and walleye spinner rigs out of soda cans and vegetable cans as well. All just goofing off as a kid.
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#7

Post by Xplorer »

skeeg11 wrote:
Sat Jul 31, 2021 2:04 am
Those are absolutely beautiful!!! I'd be so afraid of losing those. :fearful-face

I mini-jig for trout so I tie my own, although you can buy tubes and jigheads in various sizes & weights and do very well. If interested in this finesse technique, google George Mead or mini-jigging for trout. For me it was positively life changing. :exploding-head
I'll admit, I'm a little concerned about losing them. But..they only took me about 2 hours to make..I have lots of titanium..and life is short :smlling-eyes . The joy of using lures I made myself is worth the risk of losing them IMO. The timascus was foolish based on the price of the material but I couldn't resist once I started to imagine how cool I thought it would look. If I make more, they will be Ti only in the future.

Doc Dan wrote: Those look very nice. I'd be afraid of losing them. I've never made a lure, except for tying a few flies in years gone by. I knew someone who made worms, but that's about it.
Thank you. Worms are the only type of fishing lures I had ever made in the past. I used to have a boat on a private lake and for 4 years in a row I would go bass fishing early in the morning 3 or 4 days a week. At that time I bought all the stuff needed to make my own worms because I was buying "too many". It turned out to be more work than it was worth and I went back to buying bags of RoboWorms. Aaron's magic (green with red flake) was the bass slayer! Dark purple for sunrise and sunset. Clear with silver flake at high noon on a sunny day. Aaron's magic the rest of the time. My bass tackle box says stocked with those at all times. :cheap-sunglasses

SpyderNut wrote: Those are beautiful, Chad! :) Very cool! I suspect they will work very well, based on the designs and vibrant colors. Please keep us posted! I might need to order one before too long. (The bass on my lake will never see it coming ;)).

My brother and I used to make handmade lures when we were in high school. We used hard-body Rapala lures as a template and then we would whittle the bodies out of balsa or poplar and then sand them smooth with sandpaper. Before attaching the treble hooks, we would spray them down with primer and sand smooth again. On some of them, we would clamp a scrap piece of window screen tightly against the belly of the lure and would spray the belly portion with silver or white spray paint. After it dried and the screen was removed, it would create a basic "fish scale" pattern. We'd then spray the tops of the lures with a darker color and then hand paint the eyes on, along with other little features. We'd use a small piece of plastic from a "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" tub to create the front lip. It was a heck of a lot of fun. I seem to think we even managed to catch a few fish with them, lol. ;)
This is the kind of thing I was thinking when I titled this thread. I knew people who carved their own "rapala" typle lures and I was tempted but never did it myself. Sounds like a fun project.

Mushroom wrote: Those look really cool! Nice work.

I've never made my own but I've considered trying to carve a simple balsa wood crank bait. This might just be the inspiration I needed to actually give it a try. I know could manage a spoon but at the pace I seem to lose the $5 brass spoons, I should probably avoid Titanium and Timascus lures for the time being. LOL

Good luck with the new "secret weapons!" I'm excited to see how you do!
Thank you. I may need the luck! Hopefully I don't lose them before I catch fish with them. The water is clear and about 36 degrees (high altitude snow run-off) where I'll be backpacking. I'm willing to go get them if they get hung up but it's going to hurt if I have to. :anxious

I hope this inspires you to make your own. I'll post pics of fish and fishing with them when I get back. I feel like there's a nice brook trout up there waiting to bite that small spoon.

bearfacedkiller wrote: I have never done anything like that. Looks cool.

I carved a few crappy rapala clones as a kid. I have made spoons and walleye spinner rigs out of soda cans and vegetable cans as well. All just goofing off as a kid.
The soda can lure idea is partly what I had in mind when I decided to make these. When I spend time in the wilderness, I always bring extra hooks and a few other things that I could use to make a quick lure out of a bug "if I had to". Being a person who like to make stuff in general, I've often considered making a hook and lure out of a soda can or wood and I always have a small leatherman tool with me (and knives of course) in case I need to do just that. These lures I made were sort of my version of what quick soda-can lures could look like if I could just make them in my shop and not in the forest :smlling-eyes
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#8

Post by TomAiello »

Where are you going?

I've done a fair number of backpacking/fishing trips in the Royce Lakes area. I had really good luck with the old Super Duper lures up there.

I've never tried making any lures though. Was the timascus left over from another project, or did you buy it just for the lures?
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#9

Post by skeeg11 »

Actually, Super Dupers are one of the easiest lures to make. Just get some appropriate brass strips from your local friendly neighborhood hardware store
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#10

Post by Xplorer »

TomAiello wrote:
Sun Aug 01, 2021 12:00 am
Where are you going?

I've done a fair number of backpacking/fishing trips in the Royce Lakes area. I had really good luck with the old Super Duper lures up there.

I've never tried making any lures though. Was the timascus left over from another project, or did you buy it just for the lures?
In about 2 weeks I'll be going over Duck Pass in the John Muir Wilderness. It's on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, out of Mammoth Lakes..just about 45 minutes up the 395 from Bishop (where I assume you head up to the trailhead for Royce Lakes?).
Then, 2 weeks later I'll be going back into the J.M.W. via the Bishop Pass trail that goes to Southlake and then into the back-country of Kings Canyon National Park and the Dusy Basin. The Bishop Pass trailhead is about halfway between Bishop and Mammoth Lakes.

The Sierra Nevada Mountains have been my go-to wilderness playground since I was a little kid. I try to get out there as much as I can. It's my happy place :smlling-eyes . These days I get to use these trips for testing knives and for design inspiration.
Since we're talking about my favorite home away from home...here's a shot from the last adventure in the Sierras.
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95% of the time I don't use lures at all in these areas. I've learned over the years that nothing beats flies. When I backpack up here I bring a lite-weight 4 piece rod and a spinning reel. I secure a small clear bobber on my line with a swivel and then add about 6' of 2lb test with a dry fly at the end. I can cast the bobber and fly into lakes and streams and retrieve it like a lure, then if the wind or rain ruins the surface of the water I can choose to tie on a regular lure if I need to. The versatility of this set-up works beautifully up there. More importantly, the flies are irresistible to those wild trout.

I cut that small strip of timascus off of a larger piece I have for another project. I would not have ordered timascus just for a lure because it's way too expensive. Frankly I'm glad to have found another potential use for timascus off-cuts ...thumb studs, decorative inlays, pendants, earrings, and now lures... I can't bare to call even a tiny piece of that stuff "scrap". After doing this, if I make any more I will just use regular 6/4 Titanium. It's far cheaper, I have a lot of Ti on hand, and it's easy enough to give it color through anodizing.
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#11

Post by bearfacedkiller »

15D81840-E290-4CED-A085-8A271C5BE835.jpeg
-Darby
sal wrote:Knife afi's are pretty far out, steel junky's more so, but "edge junky's" are just nuts. :p
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#12

Post by PineyBoy »

Everything here is saltwater and what we do is rigging for different species. It’s a whole different ball game.
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#13

Post by remnar »

Those look very cool! I might have to try this.

Good Luck!
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#14

Post by TomAiello »

Xplorer wrote:
Sun Aug 01, 2021 10:52 am
.just about 45 minutes up the 395 from Bishop (where I assume you head up to the trailhead for Royce Lakes?).
Yes. We'd hike in from the Pine Creek trailhead, through the pass and to the top of French Canyon. For a period of about ten years (ending almost 20 years ago now) one of my friends and I would do two weeks there every summer. We chose it because his grandfather had taken him there several times when he was a kid. Then we got busy with careers, families, moving to other states...I haven't been back in quite a long time. Maybe I should see if I can take my kids up there sometime. :)

We'd usually bring dinner for every other day, and eat fish on the in between days (and often on the days we'd brought food for, as well). Then after we got out we'd drive down into Bishop and buy those giant loaves of cheese bread at Schaats bakery. Good memories.
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Re: Home made fishing lures?

#15

Post by skeeg11 »

If the risk of losing those works of art is high, may I suggest swapping out the trebles for a single hook like a Siwash. Grappling hooks are treble or better for a reason. ;)
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