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Rattle can and Sharpie paintjobs.

Love that smallmouth paint job! The pike is really nice too. I love that crappie color on the right too. Incredible job man!

Thanks. The smallie has paint brush bristle tail fin. The pike tail fin is a trimmed turkey feather. You can just barely  see it at the edge of the pic. Fins on the other baits are silicone mats.

Is the top one a mackerel? Not 100% sure what it is. Looks really natural either way.

Chain pickerel. It is 10 inches long and weighs 4 ounces. I fish a 100 acre pond that is loaded with 12-18 inch pickerel.  Every so often a big bass will smash a pickerel being reeled in. I made that bait quickly for that pond.  I could not come up with an easy way to make a stencil for pickerel markings. So, I just drew the markings on the rattle can paint job with a green Sharpie. I drew the markings, let the Sharpie ink dry, and re-drew them a second time to make them show up better. Sometimes you have to do a second layer on Sharpie ink or it doesn't show up well after clear coat. It has fooled a few bass and several pickerel so far. It dives deeper than expected because the sloped nose acts as an extra diving lip.

Yeah, I do similar stuff where I make baits specifically for certain bodies of water. I am currently building a 6.5" pine/cedar glide bait for a couple ponds that are less than a mile from me that have some 4 and 5 lb largemouth in them, I haven't caught any out of there, but I have caught a ton of bass between 10 and 12 inches, but I have seen 3 and 4 pounders in them. And the ponds are less than 5 acres. So i decided to build a glider that would appeal to the larger bass. I am going to try to rattle-can a rainbow trout on it. Any thoughts on a clean way to do this? I have a couple ideas, but I am curious if there is a better way. Thanks man!

There is a rattle can rainbow trout clipped at the bottom this pic. It is also in pic 2 at the top. What I do is:

1.  paint+primer flat white base coat on whole bait

2.  pearl mist on belly with belly directly facing nozzle. Sometimes I skip this and keep the white bottom for stained water.

3. You can use a fine mesh here for scales if you want. Metallic silver or Shimmer Metallic silver (Krylon) with back(top) of the lure facing nozzle at slight angle so the paint hits the shoulder and fades down the sides. Give a good dry time here.

4.  Use low adhesion masking tape to mark a stripe area down each side of the bait. Spray a few light passes in pink. I found a can of ‘English rose’ color that makes a good rainbow trout stripe. Here you can also do something like paint the stripe purple, keep tape on and let dry, apply mesh, and hit same are with pink so you get purple and pink in the stripe.

5. Spray the back of the bait with a green with the center of the back directly facing the nozzle. The top will get hit and fade onto the shoulder. I have used army green, camo green, dark olive, forest green.

6. Dot with black or purple Sharpie. Or hand dot with small brush. I have used small cans of Rustoleum here because I have a bunch of them.

7. Optional-  you can do another light pass of the green on the back here to blend in the shoulder dots a touch.

8. Optional-  hit the sides with a quick light pass of Krylon Glitter blast in gold or silver. Keep the nozzle a bit further away from the bait. Only looking for a light dusting here.  I do a practice spray away from the bait to gauge the spray flow so I don’t cover the paint job in glitter.

I have done a bunch of rainbow trout baits. I sometimes change the colors a bit depending on what I have and what is on sale. It is easy but there is some drying time in between steps. You can use a hair dryer to speed this up if you keep the coats light.

Sounds good! That sounds (and looks) like it works great! Thanks man!