whittler

I have almost 2 full quarts of Target Coatings, EM9000 and Em9300 that I would gladly give to any baitmaker who wants it to try. The cavet is, with $3.50 per gallon for gas you would have to live within 2 miles of me to even make it worthwhile, unless you are doing a gymn floor or furniture. On their website the stuff is wonderful but on any anything that gets near water not so much. At a little over $30 a quart it is not worth the price of shipping. Stick with the epoxies or DN.

Well over 50 years ago when I carved my first bait. My father used to carve his own topwater baits and I guess it and my love for fishing just carried over. I have been woodcarving most of my life but only started seriously making crankbaits about 10 years ago, decoys, birds and caricatures comprised most of my carvings for a lot of years. Yesterday posted a couple replica fish carvings in gallery, hard bait section.

Spring pins are an easy solution, you can find them in hardware and automotive stores.

Woodenfeather, great tutorial, always glad to see what others are doing with the router. The router is a fantastic tool for bait making and with proper holding fixtures it is also safe. I sure would like to see some of your baits made from PVC, the stuff machines like butter and your never cutting cross grain. Pvc and the router wwere made for each other.

I most humbly apologize for my complete lack of skill and knowledge, both as a baitmaker and a bass fisherman. It was a simple experiment, not an attempt to lead anyone astray.

Here is a short article that I wrote for BigIndianabass on color but if you will look at the results there is something very interesting that stands out. This is not anything scientific just a lot of idle hours to test a couple ideas. This was done over a couple years time frame. Depth was not a big issue in these tests since most of it was done in shallow water but is certinaly a factor on other bodies of water. Living in east central Indiana I do a lot of smallmouth fishing in the three main rivers in my area. Most of my fishing is done using crankbaits about 80% of the time, maybe not always the best choice but it is what I enjoy most. The subject of color, color patterns and the detail of crankbaits is always a main topic of discussion anytime fishermen get together so I thought I would do a little testing of my own to see if it really makes any difference. The testing was done with a 3 color bait, one of my personal favorite colors, but using several variations of the same colors. The baits used were the same, Mdl. A Bomber Square bill in the 2” size, no alterations were made except for color. All the baits were tested and tuned to make sure they ran true before any alterations were made. If your asking why the Bombers, they were in the bargin bin at Gander Mountain. The colors used were dark brown, chartreuse and orange and no other details were added. All the colors were airbrushed and no topcoat was used, since I would be repainting them often and a little paint loss was no problem. I tried to make about the same number of casts with each bait before changing each bait and at any given session they were all the same color and pattern. Experimenting with these baits over the last couple of years and have found a few interesting things. No matter which order that the paint was applied made any difference in the ability of the bait to catch fish. Brown back, chartreuse middle, orange belly or any combination to these colors on the bait. No eyes, gill or fin detail was painted on these baits just the color order. Also tried a couple with the colors painted from front to rear. While doing these tests I made a small cut on the bottom of the lip each time a bait caught a fish so I could keep a record of each fish caught by each bait. At the end of all this I found that 2 of the baits had caught over 90% of the fish. 1 bait caught 55% and 1 caught 35% and only 2 of the others caught more than 2 fish. I have since made the same tests, same baits with a firetiger color combination, black, orange and chartruse and got almost exactly the same results. My conclusions are that action is far more important than most other factors, with color being and detail way down the list. One other thing if you have a crankbait that just flat catches fish DO NOT alter it, do your modifications to another bait and try to improve it, don’t mess with what works. Your mileage may vary.

At the end of the day you only have your name...... protect it. Very well said, sir.

[Great folks to do business with, have bought from for years.

Just tried this. Have a 30gal. tank on my compressor, 150lbs. at the tank before going to my regularor and airbrush. Unplugged the compressor and started spraying and after 24 baits were sprayed with primer and the first of a three color paint scheme my pressure was still at 80lbs at the tank. Just by that I'm guessing I could have sprayed another 10 before the pressure went below the what was needed. I would think with a 5gal tank at 125psi you should be able to shoot 6 to 8 baits with no problem, thats prime and paint.

I have already stated in an earlier post my thoughts on the con men, liars and thieves who sell knockoff baits as the real thing and it has not changed. Check out E-bay – crankbaits – custom – ending soonest and see what this trash is selling for. There is almost a whole page of knockoff repaints without any bids and the couple that are selling are selling for less than $4. If there is an original LC, Megabass, DT or other brand name bait and it’s in the original package then there is a drastic difference in price. Some of the sales pitches make it worthwhile reading just for laughs. Have won a ton of money with this bait = won a beer bet with my brother-in-law just last weekend. Won a lot of tournaments = but nothing that can be verified. This bait works better than the originul , this is in bold red letters, hope he operates an airbrush better than spell check. I makes some fun reading, fiction of course.

For the strongest hardware on a bait I recommend twisted stainless steel wire. The device pictured is a test block that I carry with me to the tackle shows I attend to demonstrate the strength of twisted wire over the standard stainless steel .092 screws. The block is solid oak, 12” long and ¾” deep there are twisted wires in .032, .041 and .052 epoxied in holes in the block, in the center there is a .092 stainless screw. I use 400lb. cord to pull up on the various eyes while standing on the ends of the block. I have never had anyone pull out a twisted wire but the .092 screws will straighten out in a heartbeat, I have to carry a lot of extras. Don’t guess, TEST.

JFOWLER,if you are willing to pay the shipping I will be happy to send you nearly a full quart of EM9000 (the waterproof stuff). If your refinishing a coffee table the stuff might be fine but if your doing baits I have to agree with Riverman. This bait is PVC, painted with waterbased paint, heat set and allowed to cure 3 weeks before fishing. After 20 min. and 2 small bass this is the result. If you soak the lure 4 hours you can roll the milky looking stuff off with your thumb. Beleive me, stuff is not the term for it I would use in person