Karma

nice. Just bought myself some stencil making material earlier. I cant wait to get back home and do some stuff without freehanding everything.

yes I have been looking at photos of bluegill, I am trying to figure out the perfect pinkish/purple color that some of them have.

looks great

A few more, I had some time at the house last night and today before I had to hit the road again. I created a few. This is my first popper and I love it. Sadly I got a little too eager to get it off the drying rack and examine it and I took a chip of paint off the belly. I can repair it, I just felt dumb about it. Should have waited... I made two of these guys, I was going for a chartreuse shad pattern and kind of messed up, from what I originally was trying to do, so I got a little created and salvaged them.

thanks! I have learned a lot from trial and error lol. It helps a lot if you make a checklist to go through in order to create one properly. For example, making sure the eyes are set before you start mixing your epoxy.... I also do a dab of glue on the eyes so they don't move while applying epoxy. Also make sure you remove the masking tape on the bill before removing the masking tape. Otherwise it removes paint when you remove the tape with epoxy over it. Two of Navy buddies like my mistakes though. I keep a box in my little bait shop. Any baits that will still work but have minor defects I can't rework and sell to a customer, I throw in it. When the box gets full I ship it to them so they split it.

looks good, is that a holographic bait?

agreed that second one is sharp. If you could repeat that pattern and lay a scale pattern on it, it would be killer.

A P100 respirator from Lowes. I think I dropped $40 on it.. the gloves, just cheap leather work gloves. I make hundreds of football jigs, finesse jigs, arky jigs, swim jigs.... I think you will be ok.

I have never heard of anyone exploding while pouring lead.... I mean, I guess it could happen if you were cooking your meth in the same shack but I am pretty sure you are going to be fine. I use a Lee pot melting pot that pours out of the bottom when I pull a lever, wear googles and a respirator, thick gloves and long sleeves and no open toed shoes, if any of it goes flying through the air its usually going to be a very small drop and will harden before hitting you but it will still be hot.

I have only been in one of their stores and I was not impressed. Then again I am not very impressed with Academy or Bass Pro for that matter. Cabela's is about the only one of the major retail stores that have people in each department that know their stuff. I am hoping that with this the Bass Pro Cabela's deal falls flat on its face.

You can buy one of the plano spinnerbait boxes that are the same size as the standard 3700 boxes and replace one of those empty 3 boxes with it. They are excellent for storing spinnerbaits (obviously), jigs, chatterbaits etc. I grabbed a random picture of one off the web, the jigs and chatterbaits slip right down into the notches just as easily as the spinnerbaits do.

We have a problem here with a local camp during the summer that tries to claim that their property line extends 10 feet into the Cumberland River on the Cordell Hull Reservoir.. despite being told several times by local and state officials that they do not. I didn't know it at the time but apparently they are notorious for calling the local sheriffs office and game wardens to the point where they pretty much ignore their calls. They have a private dock and have built what is probably an illegal walkway bridge over the waterway with a fence under it keeping boats out. Its not that big of an area, but if the camp pushed an angler over they edge, they could probably take the camp to court over it and win. It sits in the corner of the river with some nice log piles (can see in left corner of photo below), a private dock and the previously mentioned walkway bridge on stilts and is obviously for those reasons a bass magnet. I was fishing off of it last summer when a camp counselor came out and told me I was trespassing and that I needed to leave before they called the police. They ticked me off so I just shrugged and ignored him and was catching several fish which seemed to upset him. A Sheriff's deputy arrived, walked out to the dock and said the camp had called and reported that I was trespassing and that I was armed. I told him that I had been doing nothing other than what he seen me doing at the moment, and I was a deputy in the neighboring county, I am always armed. He motioned me to the dock check my ID and asked if I had stepped on their dock or bumped it with my boat, I informed him that I had not. He asked if my lure had smacked their dock or their moored pontoon boat, again I informed him that it had not. He just said ok then, have a nice day deputy we shook hands and that was that. He told the guy that I was not trespassing, I was below the high water mark and had not damaged their property in anyway. This only angered the counselor more. part of me says to just let it go and not fish the area any more..... but the dark side of me says fish it dusk till dawn just to irritate them further. That area is a gold mine on a tournament morning for those of us that know about it.

Navy Fire Controlman USS Hopper, 2006-2012

I like the blue. As far as the clear coat goes, I went to lowes (like in the photo below) for $30 and got myself a rotisserie motor and some 2x4s and a couple of bulldog clip from walmart. I used the 2x4s to make a little stand and used some old tobacco sticks from our barn to put between the grapple hooks there and drilled the bulldog clips into the tobacco sticks. I would post a picture of what I created, but to call my carpentry work shotty would be a compliment. Anyway.. the point being, a drying rack does wonders for the clear coat process.

some more today... my favorite so far is the shad. The red lipless crank, the photos don't do it much justice. It has a thin layer of gold on it that reflects the light when its hit just right. You can see a bit of it on the lower gill plate.

i layed a white base paint over the gill plate and then put the blue on with low air pressure. just flicking the trigger.

x2 on Barlow's. Great website to order molds from as well. They will give you a chart of different hooks that will work for most molds.

honestly I get a lot of my supplies from ebay, depending on what types of jigs you want to make. There are guys who will sell, for example screw locks for the do-it shaky head molds, 500 for $26, same with wire keepers. Most retailers want $10 per 100. I also buy a lot of skirting material from there. Deals are out there.

Last week I made a large order from Amazon.... I ordered an airbrush kit, complete set of wicked paints, and 5 different type of crankbait blanks. After watching lots of youtube videos on it and getting some confidence. I finally got to play with it today and took my time, made three. Except for the mesh I used for the scales on the second one, all by hand no stencils.... What do you guys think? First one I made, having never before touched an airbrush. I was going for a small simple sunfish look http://i.imgur.com/8T5Jp0s.jpg Second one, didn't really know what I was going for here, just kinda let my mind wonder..I used an old net from a cheap made minnow trap to create the scale pattern, but I went a little too dark. A little dab will do ya on these paints kids. http://i.imgur.com/vWyvm6Q.jpg This one is my favorite. I got the basic idea from a youtuber and went from there. http://i.imgur.com/oHwSVlP.jpg http://i.imgur.com/aZeD2nr.jpg

I have the same problem with the lead moving around the jig head on the smallest shaky head. I just stopped making it, its too light for me anyway.

which mold is the lead still moving on the hook with? or is it with more than one mold? I always use the highest heat setting on my lead pot. Give it the better part of 30 minutes to heat up, if not more. When you pour the lead, I try to get the nipple of the pouring pot as far down into the mold hole as possible, sometimes you will pour too much but you can just throw it back in the pot when it solidifies. This is especially true with my weedless round head jig mold on the 5/16 oz. If I don't do it that way the lead does not form the collar properly. Also try to pour it at a slight angle, experiment to find which one works best, I never pour with the mold flat and even.

Alright here are a few that I have made for some customers in the past few months...although the photos are not taken from the best angle or lighting. This one is a green pumpkin with some orange and black living rubber football jig, in either 3/8 or 1/4 oz These were made for a woman who wanted them done in two of her favorite sports team colors..... This is one I called Kentucky Craw and this one is a black and red. For some reason I think this color would be more popular, but I rarely see jigs in this scheme

Just being honest though, is making your own eyes really worth it? I have a guy from Michigan I buy mine from on ebay and get about 250 of them for $5. I almost would think that would be worth it when you consider the time .... I dunno. Anyone else thinking the same with me on that?

I actually seen the way of doing it with a toothbrush earlier today... pretty cool. I am looking forward to giving it a go next weekend when I get home.

I just bought all the equipment to start doing my own earlier today. those random black dots on the body of bait, are those part of the stencil effect or is that something you free handed with the airbrush?