I was wondering if anybody else carved/made their own lures.  I have made a few.  My two latest are:

1) Devils horse a little longer than the factory ones.

2)  Nice little walking bait a little longer and fatter  than a zara puppy but shaped more like a shad...  (It walks nice!)

The trick with a walking bait is getting them weighted right.

I have carved spooks with rattles, pop baits, crankbaits, prop baits, and some off the wall stuff. It keeps me busy and out of trouble. ;D

I currently hold a patent for a saltwater bluefish plug that combines the the steel leader with a plug that slides ON the leader.  This allows you to grab the plug then slide it up the leader till it hits the swivel, then you lift the fish from there.  This keeps your hands away from the teeth.  The plug itself is very basic.  When blues are boiling on top, they will hit anything that is splashing across the top of the school of baitfish.  These will be marketed as a "2 in 1" lure for basically the same price as a leader.  We supplied 8 boats with them last year for a product review and they flipped out!  Should be on the shelves by Oct.

i hand carve some of my crankbaits, they dont look like a traditional crankbait, but the fish like 'em

I make some spinnerbaits for myself, just so i can get exactly what i want and not hafta search around to try to find somthing thats exactly what i want

I am about to start.

I designed a new art. lure, and I am now trying to figure out if I want to make a mold myself, or show the design to someone, and pay probably lots of $ for a computer die cut mold.

I have carved several.  Poppers, Cranks, Jerks.  ;D I have not moved on to phase two though.      Painting, and adding hooks.

Do you guys have a preferred place to order hooks, rings, eyes from?

Ric

Pour and use my own soft plastics: jerk worms, grubs, prototypes, slider worms etc.

I make a lot of crankbaits and do a lot of repaints of commercial baits. Sure makes wintertime pass easier.

Hey Whittler!  

I like that hunchback in the pic ;D

I get my suplies from Netcraft.

Ya'll are brave to do cranks and jerks I tried it once and the think kept turning over onto its side...  I would take a little off one side then it wouldn't be enough- so I would take a little more then it would be too much...  Then the bill wouldn't be perfectly straight...  then they eye was off center......  get the picture?  Maybe if I had a leigth (spelling...  you know the spinning thing that you can make things symetrical with rod builders use them)

Painting and hooks are not hard at all painting is something I do sometimes even to factory baits...

I have concidered going into soft plastics but everybody says its quite a hastle.

I have been making my own hand poured worms for about 5 years now. I currently have over 100 different colors, and 12 different molds that I use. I will admit to only using about 10 diferent colors in 4 or 5 different styles, but it's a lot of fun constantly experimenting.