Adventures in lure making #2 - first wooden lure!

[mainbutter]

Well I wanted to experiment with carving wood and airbrushing and through-wire construction, so there were lots of firsts with making this lure!

It's carved from basswood using some basic hand tools and a dremel. Through wire construction gives it a little bit more toughness against big fish and preventing stress issues with the joints.

It's far from perfect, but I had fun making it and learning a bit about the tools at my disposal. The next one will be worked on fast and furious and will be tons better.

[mrklean]

nice job on your first wood lure, gotta start someplace

[Borch]

Interesting lure. Have you run in in the water yet to see how it does?

[mainbutter]

I did bathtub test. The tail section has some very nice wobble to it, but the head and middle section don't have too much movement on a straight crank. Not ideal but at least I got the tail waggin'!

the lure is weighted just barely buoyant(not by design, by accident, it was intended to be a slow sinker), with the tail end being fairly buoyant, the middle being neutral-ish, and the head being a definite sinker. What this means is that the lure sits at about a 20 degree angle down, when sitting still.

I ended up popping a lip onto this lure, and it still doesn't have much head waggle but it gives it some downforce on a straight crank or quick tug. In addion, the weight in the head causes the lure to turn 90% if you instantly give slack during a fast retrieve or after a quick tug. The net effect is that with good rod movement and retrieval skills and knowing how the bait moves, you can make it dive & wag the tail, stop and pivot, dive and wag the tail again, stop and pivot, and then slow float to the surface and present an interesting head-down angle to any fish that might be watching.

The short of it is that I think I can make this lure catch some fish

[Borch]

Good luck with it!

Time to feed it to something.

[-ebby-]

Looks good! on your next one i would shorten the gap in the joints quite a bit. It sounds like you have it weighted good (more in the head less in the tail)

[MN Shutterbug]

Looks good to me. Although, I do agree with shortening the gaps. But then, what do I know. I'm not a fish.

[mainbutter]

Yup the wide gaps were an experiment, and also just made construction easier for me.

I've got another through wire swim bait carved and the wire harness all constructed. It should be ready to rock and roll in a few days