I don't really count at this point, since I'm rather dormant as a lure-builder at this moment (no workshop! I miss building...), but hopefully within the next six months or so I'll be able to get back to my old lure-building ways. I was a PVC fan-boy; loved using that stuff (funny thing, PVC dust smells better and better the more you inhale...) because I was impatient and didn't like waiting for wood sealer to cure. Or dealing with woodgrain.
I think a lot of the really good builders kinda stopped coming online quite as much as the market and forums began to be saturated with knockoff lure blanks that anyone could paint and market as "custom". The skills required to build a lure from scratch are less in demand since a lot of guys, IMHO, are lazy and don't want to bother learning to build from scratch and would rather just paint something someone else made (more so in the US than overseas). Many of those who enjoyed sharing their years of knowledge and skills began to find that there weren't a whole lot of people out there who wanted to learn. So, less time online from the veterans.
That's my read on it, anyway. Perhaps I'm mistaken, or perhaps things have changed again in the last few years while I've been absent from the online lure-building community. I do know that there at the end, right before I got burnt out, most of the guys who would ask for help were asking primarily about painting rather than building. Hence the deductions above.
Anywhoozle. Cheers, y'all! Been a while.