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I know Fred’s grandson and his nephew. They are great people. He built great baits.

A large bead would do the trick Personally If I am going to use a skirt, bucktail, or other dressing I will use a coil over directly attaching to the wire

My takeaway from all this (lots of good discussion here!): take time to develop your bait to make sure it catches fish. Don't spend a ton of time during development and testing on fancy paint schemes, but then once you figure out how to make the lure catch a ton of fish based on shape and action, start working on your paint and presentation to make it look sweet to both fish and fishermen! But if it's just for personal use keep the paint as simple as you are satisfied with.

no

LOL, this almost reads like an article I read in a fishing magazine in the 70's. I don't think anything has changed, except the color patterns and the names. Soooo, I will toss my 2 cents into the pot. I am a fishing manager at one store for a fairly well known company. I have walls and walls of various lures. Some times the colors are so close to each other that you can't tell them apart without reading the package. It would be one thing if it was one brand trying to copy someone else's color, but often it is the same brand with super minor changes. If you are even slightly color blind, like my past store manager was, you can't tell them apart at all. So, why do we need so many different colors? Well, I don't know, but my life would be easier if it were not like this. I expect that it is to catch the fisherman, and sometimes it works, and sometimes I just have pegs and pegs of lures that don't sell. I have been known to buy the unpopular colors on clearance for myself and I do as well with them as other more popular colors. Does color matter? Of course it does. An internet check can provide information on how far colors penetrate into the water, and I don't care how fish see color because I know they cannot see a color if the light energy cannot penetrate to a specific depth. It just drives me nuts when I see a red color on a lure designed to be fished deep. Red is the first color to be absorbed by the water and it penetrates even less to almost none at all in dirty water. It is popular because it stands out and looks good to Humans. On the other hand, while blue penetrates the deepest, not a lot of natural food is heavy on the color blue (I guess they want to remain hidden - LOL). If you were to see one of my baits, they would be photo transfers for the most part, not because I think they are better but because I stink at painting. Nevertheless, I too have found many of my simplest non-photo baits work better, if I match the colors to the depth and water clarity and time of day. I don't sell baits, I make baits for myself and friends. I can't make enough to make production worth while and that is not why I do it. But, a friend is a noted "Bass Pro" who shall remain un-named do to sponsors. He has used one of my baits and won a couple of tournaments, and I promise that the lure is removed and hidden before anyone can determine that he was not using a sponsor's bait. I don't have a problem with that at all. So, back to the original question, Catching-Fisherman or Fish? Some color combinations have proven track records over history that just work, and often the combinations are not specific patterns but combinations. As previously mentioned, light underbelly, flashy sides, dark back is a winner. The firetiger color has been a proven color. The Coachdog patterns, olive with black spotted frog, orange back with gold sides are all proven colors but have lost favor with a lot of fisherman. It will be interesting to see if the Sexy Shad will join the ranks or will fall off over time. I will vote on this old thread as having mixed feelings. I know that at times color is very important, but paying attention to other details is often far more important. I know that sales are driven by catching Fisherman, not catching fish. Most of the buyers of the mass produced lures buy on looks, not function (even when function is explained). The dedicated fishermen that buy your custom lures are probably more interested in function with color being secondary. Given an option, I sell function with color explained and secondary. I seldom get that option.

When I tried it, Solarez always cured hard within 5 minutes. But the end product isn’t always a slick hard dry surface because a small part of the Solarez resin can end up as a liquid on the surface of the coating. I think if you wipe the coating with some alcohol it will resemble what you’re looking for more closely.