Thread: Lure Making

Nice work

I was able to survive the hot garage and pour some more jig heads. I colored up a few, added eyes, and over coated with BSI epoxy.

It was interesting. I used 2D eyes in size 5mm, various color shifting styles. 3D eyes look nice, but 2D eyes do a better color shift trick. I did not bake cure the paint as it was going to get covered over anyways.

I removed then attached the eye using a sharp knife, then maneuvered it into position, then placed jig head in my holder. The epoxy mixes very easily and gives plenty of time to do 30 heads or so. I then over coated the entire jig head with the epoxy and allowed them to cure up over night. This epoxy does not cloud over the eyes like the UV resins do. They eyes remain bright as they came, and are not going to fly off anytime soon.

The trick for me was to use a small craft paint brush and apply a thin coat, not gooped and gobbed on. I mixed in a small 3 oz plastic cup with a wooden stir stick. Like a popsickle stick. You really want to get a good mixing when you are using epoxy.

I use shrink wrap to shield the hook eye during the paint process. I used to remove the wrap as soon as the last dip was done. Now I leave the wrap in place and allow it to cool. This because the epoxy can and will get into the eye during the over coat process. When the jig is all cured up, I grab the wrap using pliers, on the edges of the eye, not the flat sides, and twist and off it comes cleanly and easily. Now I am not wiping at the little eyes when I get wild with the brush strokes. Doesn’t matter.




As you can see the skill at which these were fashioned is a big less than. Yup, I may never get the hang of doing them up just so.

Top row, far right is a gold looking paint with a red eye. The paint is called Nova Stone and it comes from Barlows exclusively. It is a mixture of clear powder paint and color shifting additives used in making plastic baits. The color shown is Sunburst. It is gold with red highlights as it gets turned about. I like it. I am considering getting two other colors, Eclipse and Bluegrass. It will work in a fluid bed, but I am a dipper.

I also dipped some of the heads into clear powder paint for that minnow head look to get real nice. Folks say that an unpainted head catches more fish for them. I don’t suspect deception as can be common amongst certain fisherman types. It isn’t that they don’t use a color, because lead grey is a color. So I just coat the heads to keep that shiny freshly poured lead appearance. Might order some tin to add to the pot to see how that looks in the shiny department.

Something else. This new mold is fabulous. I weighed one of the heads with the hook and nothing else. It tipped the digital scales at 0.06 ounces. That is exactly 1/16th of an ounce, if you do the math like I do. Perfect. I bought a mold from another company and it came with lead bait keepers on one half and none on the other. The none keeper side did NOT weight correctly. rather it was off by quite a bit. The jig head with keeper was close to 1/8th ounce, and without the keeper it weighed 1/10th of an ounce. I had concerns about the new Fat Guys mold, but they must have done the extra work to make the size different so that the heads would weight correctly. Did I mention that I love my new Fat Guys Fishing Big Eye Minnow head jig mold ? Bet I did.



This morning I started doing some work in the vise.





I like several of these, the rest are doomed and destined for the gifting pile. LOL.

You can see that I added some sequins to some of the heads and these really do give a nice pop when the head is painted jet black. That paint has teflon in it and is supposed to be used for things like shopping carts. Things that need to slide along the surface. I painted the head with the BSI epoxy and then simply attached the eyes and let cure up. I tried to use my thumbnail to pop the eyes off and they never budged. The UV effect these eyes provide is off the charts. They glow like little LED light bulbs. I suspect that I would be wise to stick with them and forget about natural looking eyes. The sequins are size 5mm, and fluorescent, and come from some woman on Etsy.

You can see that I added a HotRod (easily obtained from Slabanator Jigs) tail section
to and then fashioned up some Mareaboo green feathers in front of it. I am using some wire forms from Barlows. I lashed the screw to the shank of the hook, tied the jig, screwed on the bait and done. I trimmed a half inch off the bait to keep the overall length within reason.

You can see the so so boring old chenille type jigs. Destined to be gifted away. Chenille is like mulch around a house. It can hide a multitude of sin. Got issues with your jig, just wrap it with some chenille and wahlah.

I like the hollow wrapping style of jig. The purple with the yellow eyes is a great design. The Mareaboo looks huge and puffy but when wetted, it pulls inward and forms a fabulous profile. I troll, so my design concepts involve a constant flow of water across the jig. If I cast and did other retrieves, I would try to take that into consideration as I fashioned up stuff.

I am experimenting some with the natural colors now. Not as sexy as the bright colors, but might be a great way to go on certain days. Olive…..who knew that it looked as nice as it does over white.

Blue and White is a new combination for me this year. Wally Marshall said it is one of his all time favorites. Hard, I said hard to argue with that endorsement. He also like chartreuse and green and chartreuse and white. I always figured chartreuse looks white to the fish.




And now something special for the man from Tennessee that takes time away from his busy day to read all of my silly musings.






Found this stuff at Sam’s Club. It is an english bacon made from a cut of the hog other than the belly. It cooks like bacon, smells like bacon, tastes very similar to bacon. I like it on my BLT sandwiches. Man that is a sandwich isn’t it ? BLT….. I add a slice of cheese to mine and I always make two of them because. Well because. You know.

BLT sandwiches are great on a hot day. BLT sandwiches are great on a cold day. Great when it is sunny and great when it is rainy. I like them wrapped up and with me on the boat. I like my food to smell as good as it tastes.

I plan to research some and see what things I could wrap in this wider bacon. The dogs have been saying all morning long that they don’t need me to do all that. Just let them have some bacon just as it is.

One of the best things I ever did for myself was learning how to smoke meats. I have now added pickling to my list and it was whole lot easier to learn. My wife loves pickled eggs. The pickled shrimp did not turn out very good, but the watermelon rinds were a big hit. Rojio makes some nice items, too.


BTW- This BLOG thing seems to be going pretty well. Slab seems to be really enjoying himself. Maybe we should start one just for meat preparations.

Did someone say meat?

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Crappie.com Fishing mobile app

Woke up early and out to the bench I did go.







I watched a video on tying using a bump of chenille on the shaft to give the feathers some lift. Wrap in a clump vs. along the length of the shaft. Make the featherings flare out a bit more. I considered my shad profiles and thought this was a good concept. So some of these have funky bumps. Easy enough.

I also saw some more videos on using ostrich feathers. These are available all over the place. Most uses seem to be for weddings or clothing. There are a few videos about steelhead trout fly tying that utilize ostrich herls. I really like the look of some of those steelhead flies. They use bright colors, just like crappie fishermen do. I suspect that those fish see similarly to crappie. So stealing som of their proven designs and color schemes seems to make sense.

The feathers are priced according to their length. Long stemmed feathers get pricy, and short ones not so much. The feathers should be like spikes, not webby, and come mostly from their breasts. I think it is so cute that on Amazion they claim that no birds were injured in the harvesting of the feathers. That they wonder around their enclosure and pick up ones that had fallen off. That’s a lie. They whacked that bird in the head and stripped his feathers off and then processed the meat. That’s what I would do. Club the creature and done. Wring his neck. Get even for all the times he pecked me while I was feeding him. AH HAH

The short plumes come cheap, and in bulk. I had ordered some white feathers several weeks back and still waiting for them to arrive. I figure China. Anyways, they also dye the feathers and some of the colors will be most useful to me. Of course, fly shops will sell you a single feather for big bucks. I suppose they buy the cheap ones in bulk and repackage them. Feathers are feathers. That’s what I would do.

I plan to work with the white feathers and see if they are to my liking. You can search YouTub for steelhead flies ostrich feathers and find two or three videos and get an idea of what my idea is. Use them as adornments to a mareaboo fluff jig. Like fingers along the outside. It is a really cool effect. I just have to scale everything down some it will still be crappie friendly sized.

I agree with your assessment of WM and his colors. I find chartreuse and white very effective as well. And BLTs you say? We make them a lot here and recently had one with our first tomato of the season. Never tried cheese though. It’s just a toasted bun, bacon, lettuce and tomato with some Hellmans mayo. Sometimes we eliminate the lettuce

Nothing beats a quality tomato when making BLTs

Well last night my wife found the ostrich feathers in the old mailbox trick. Brought them in and I looked them over. These were the cheap cheap variety from Amazonian and while unimpressive, they seemed good. Not the quality I wanted, but for experimentation purposes, plenty good enough.

So……I sat down at the vise this morning and had a go of it.






Not too shabby. It was a close match to what I saw the steelhead fly tiers constructing with them. Nice long flowing herls. I just trimmed them off of the stem, trimmed the stem ends to length, and lashed them aboard. Two soft wraps, then adjust for position, then lock them down.

I added some Living Rubber legs to most of them so there would be a tail left if the fish savaged them. Not likely I realize, but just in case they did. LOL. I really like the rubber legs, and truth be told, they could be used tied on just like the ostrich and everything would be closely similar. Still the feathers provide so much more movement when I hold them up to the fan in the garage. Nice movement. Very eye catchy movement.

I also experimented with Funky Bumps and learned a few things about deploying these. The closer to the head, the more flare I get. That dark blue jig has the bump close to the head and the ostrich is really extended away. This is interesting to me and likely something I will experiment some more with. Bump towards the rear, and the flare happens there. Midway, etc. Been using about an inch of chenille to make the bumps. Some have about an inch of chenille as a collar. I know that Bucktail jigs have a thread collar but to me it looks silly. I know it works, but the head doesn’t seem to be properly attached. The profile is all wrong.

I learned that white ostrich is good, so colored ostrich feathers are bound to be so much better. I looked about and found some suppliers of what appear to be richly dyed feathers. Pink, purple, blue, etc. No fluorescent colors, which may or not be a bad thing. I plan to use more ostrich in my ties going forward, so I will be getting some more of it.

I also learned that I can use my Peacock herls in a manner that strengthens them enough to survive the ravages of an angry fish. Should one actually want one of my jigs. LOL. Anyways you fashion the ends to the hook shank, Then lash on a piece of thread at that point. Then twirl all the herls with the string, twisting up something resembling rope. Then wrap the rope about the hook shank to form up a body. Nice I know. I was happy to see that being done on a video. This may be a great idea for me to incorporate a peacock wrapping, transitioning into a Funky Bump. In case some fish were to examine the jig closely, see up the skirting materials, and spy something iridescent green. Lovely color and far better looking than bronze metal. I plan to test my ability to produce such a thing soon enough.

Been thinking more and more about eyeballs, and have come to the conclusion that the rhinestone eyes are the way to go. I mean I doubt the fish will be expecting a pupil to be there. The color they provide beats anything powder paint can produce. A bright flash of brilliant color that can catch sunlight and flash. The UV effect is off the charts good. Again they glow like little lightbulbs when hit with the UV flashlight. B O O M !!!!


Kind of nice out on the garage this morning. Fan is on lowest setting. Only two moskeeters. The breeze from the fan actually helps me keep the featherings in unison, properly positioned out of the way for my wrappings. You might wish to try that trick if you have issues with mareaboo being unwieldy. And the clippings just fly away when you snip snip. LOL.

I will have to look into getting some of said Bacon. I have been thinking of upgrading the Blackstone to a larger size. More area for bacon of course