Home made lures and jig heads

Hi all,
As per title this is about how to make your favourite lures and save yourself a lot of money.
In this bit I will be showing how to do a floating lure and how to make an articulated wobbling jig head.
The jig head is considerably easier to make and works very well. The jig head bit is at the bottom so you can skip to the bottom if you don't want to read a pile of stuff about lures.

Where to start.
To make the lure you need a few things, Obviously pic your favourite lure. But I would pick an expensive one as there's not much point making cheap lures as the effort and materials will out way the cost.
So I dug out a top notch lure that catches bass very well, it has a great action hasn't let me down yet.
Wright you got your lure now you need some thing to make a mould.
I got some bricoleurre mould paste. [I have no connection or received any discount for mentioning them]

But this stuff is really excellent but is far from cheap. It is E30.00 per kilo. But you get a good few moulds from it depending on the size of the lure.

 

What is it.

Well the lads that sell it tell me it is a type of heat proof silicone/cement.

It doesn't go hard until you mix the activator trough it.

But once you do you need to work fast as it goes off very quickly. After 15 mins it is solid.

 

So where to start.

First off is to either get a small box or make one.

So you got your tub you fill the tub minus the activator so you know how much paste to mix so you don't waste anything. Then you mix it with the activator fully. So quickly get it in the mould case and press the lure half way into the paste as you are making 2 halves. Once it has hardened tidy the mould surface and cut 2 decent notches out of each side, so they are easy lined up when finished.

 Then simply once the paste has hardened take the first half out of the mould case and refill it with more paste.

Before you make up the second half you must lightly grease the face of the first half so they 2 halves don't stick together.

Again simply press the first half onto the soft paste mixed with activator, and allow to set.

 

If all goes well.

If all goes well you should end up with something like this.

As you can see my effort wasn't perfect but it worked well.

 

What next.

Well you hopefully have you mould now and the next item you need is a 2 part plastic resin.

You cam get this from most lure making sites. It is also about E26.00 for the 2 bottles. You get a lot of lures from the 2 bottles.

First you need to very accurately bend the wire frame to match the hook mounting points. I used a

good galvanised wire. It was roughly 1.5g heavier than the wire used in the original lure.

Plus this lure has a counter weight ball bearing inside of close to 3g so I added about 2g of weight to the end of the wire above the forward hook position.

To try and get it as close as possible to the original I weighted it minus the trebles and it weighted 17g. So that was handy I weight out the 2 parts of the mix and weighted out 19g of plastic resin as I was assuming it would be very difficult to get the same even layer to the body.

With that the mix was poured into the mould.

At this point I realised I should have worn gloves.

I am an impatient sod so I just held the mould and poured the 19g of resin into the mould and about 15g poured out the bottom all over my hands lol.

 

I quickly mixed more and as the first mix had just about blocked the leaky spots I poured it in again and began the process of moving the mould about to spread the resin evenly about the mould.

It will take about 30mins for it to cure and another hour to be fully hardened.

This was the first attempt, I was quiet pleased.

The copy and original side by side. A slight trim and it was done.

I did this a few more times and I ended with 3 lures. But I wore gloves and wrapped the mould in duck tape and I had no leaks or spills.

I gave them a basic spraying and down I went to test them. The results one was perfect, one run to the side and one the counter weight came loose and was in the back of the lure. They where easy enough sorted and I expect them to do well.

 

Articulated jig head.

Recently I was at an angling show in France and there where numerous lures being drown all around the place, but there was one lure that caught my attention was a jig head that had a fantastic action.

It not only had great swimming action it also wobbled brilliantly as well.

But they where terrible money. 2 jig heads where near E5.00 and the soft bodies where E9.00 for 3.

For me that was way over the top and where I fish I could go trough at least 3 bodies a day with Pollock and other fish smashing them.

So I just bought 2 packs one of each size and as above I made a mould.

 

 

Not as good as I hoped.

I made a dozen of them and they looked very well. I then tried them out down the pier with a standard shad and they had very little action. I got the original out and tried that and it was the same.

It seems they need the shad body that is made for them. They still do the job but don't have the action that hooked me at the show.

 

Not giving up yet.

I was mulling over in my head about trying the head of the lure above for a jig head to get some more action in the lures but I doubted it would work as I believed the buoyancy  of the lures body was partly responsible for the lures action.

But later while on face book chatting, John Griffin asked me to try the lures head as a jig head. So I thought to hell with it and gave it a try.

 

How to start.

It is a lot easier to make the jig head mould. I just made a top section of the lure so I could make a mould of the head. So 12g of resin was poured into the mould and left on its head to get a solid head.

You do the same process to make the mould of the head as you did with the lure mould.

So here is the head and that's the mould in the back ground I made from it.

I was quiet pleased with it and ready for the lead.

 

 

So this mould that took 12g of plastic to make now makes a 66g lead head.

I like to fish as light as possible so I cut the plastic head tight behind the gills and made another mould to make a lighter jig head mould.

 

It also came out well and the new smaller jig head when made weighted 43g.

I would like another lighter one but I was afraid I would loose any action if there was any.

 

The trial.

So again down to the pier to try the out and I was doubtful they would work but it was worth a shot.

I used the same shad I tried on the other jig heads.

I tried the heavy one first and to say they worked well was an under statement. They had superb action and I was delighted.

Again the lighter one was tried with the same shad and again the action was superb. The heavy ones I have them ready for the tope, cod, ling and deep Pollock.

The lighter ones will be used for bass, Pollock, sea trout and I will trial them with mackerel strip for turbot and rays.

 

Safety note.

Be careful with these moulds when opening the mould. As the lead does not set as quick as it does in metal moulds. Also they need to cool a bit after about 5 or 6 jigs as they get very hot and damage easier.

 

To recap.

So that's what I was at for a few evenings. I hope it helps you make your mind up whether to try yourself or save your money and buy the originals.

I will say the lure is difficult but its fun to try them and if they catch as they should it would be well worth it.

The jig heads look fantastic in the water and I think they will be the star of the lure fishing this year.

Thanks for reading