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By Chris Tonberg Thursoman
So what do you do when the weather is against you?
You make you very
own custom made lures!
My favorite lure for cod and pollack is the big twin tail.
If you have tried these, you
know what I'm talking about. Those tails drive the fish nuts! Even on the slack tide they spin round a treat.
I've bought
lots of different types of twin tail and found that the best ones are quite firm and work far better in the water than the
cheaper softer ones. Only trouble is, because they are quite big (About 6 inches) they are not that cheap. I got to wondering
If I could make some my self.
As it turns out, this is quite a popular thing to do in the States and so I bought the equipment
I needed to get me started off, thinking at the time, this was the only place to buy what I needed. As it turns out I was
wrong and you can buy all you need from Oscar at Lureparts. I will tell you more about this later.
So here is the
equipment I use to get me started:
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| Making you own rubber lures |
As you can see I have my twin tail mold and a plaster mold I decided to
try and make myself. Also I have a bottle of liquid plastic, coloring, glitter, glow powder, milk pan and spoon.
Now
I will start by mentioning that it is possible to make you own plastic baits using a microwave. I tried it myself and did
not get on very well with it at all. you constantly need to put it in for a few seconds then stir etc, etc. My lures turned
out full of air bubbles and scorched. You are far better doing it in a pan and see whats happening.
First of all shake
the bottle like crazy for a while then measure what I need. For 2 twin tails I use about 50ml.
I also add hardener to get the right stiffness I want. (about 1/4 of a tea spoon)
I
then pour this in my pan and add coloring.(This also needs to be shaken)
Today I'm just making bright orange but I also
like to make glow ones too. You simply add the glow powder and stir before heating things up. You can make it as concentrated
as you like. And man they glow brilliantly!!!!
As you can see what I have here is a nice bright orange.
I like the
colour nice and bright and for that you need to add about 30+ drops.
Having then stirred this, the colour will look like
this:
As you will see in a minute this colour changes.
It's time to get cooking!
I've tried all sorts of settings and personally find that I stay with the one heat (No 4) on my hob. I've tried it on
3 but it never seems to get hot enough to do the job. But if you fancy a go you'll need to experiment with your hob depending
on what type you have.
Now as you heat up the plastic it will start to change colour:
It is important that when you get to this colour to start stirring slowly otherwise
you will scorch it. I believe Lureparts offer some magic stuff (heat stabilizer)that will prevent this from happening.
However,
If you stir like mad you will create air bubbles which is the last thing you want in your mold. A slow stir seems to work
well for me.
As the plastic heats up it will not only change colour but will also turn into jelly
Finally it will melt enough so that you can pour it easily.
At this stage the plastic will really start to give off fumes!
It is
very important that you keep the kitchen well ventilated.
I find that if you do not use hardener it does not smell nearly
as much but either way it's a good idea to cover your mouth with a dish cloth or something.
Anyway, it's time to pour.
It's
best to pour as close to the mold as possible to try and reduce air bubbles from getting in.
As you can see, glitter can be added immediately after this is done. Generally
glitter should be added in the mix to begin with but I find, for what I do, it has a better effect this way.
Because the
glitter is only on one side of the tails it will flash as it spins round. It's worth noting that you can't really get away
with using the kids glitter they use for this. The colour of the glitter bleeds into you plastic. Again Lureparts is the place
to go for that.
You now need to wait a few minutes till the plastic has cooled off before removing it. You can then
pop it in a shallow basin of water etc for a couple of minutes to finish the cooling off.
The beauty about all of this
is that nothing gets wasted. It can all be remelted again. As you can see if you leave your spoon in the pan the remaining
plastic will stick to it and come away really easy:
Here are a few pictures of some of my prototypes.
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