Our Outdoors: The Lure Making Learning Curve

It’s been just over a year since I started making my own spinners for pike and muskie fishing. The rewards of putting them together have been great; I’ve honed my assembly skills, worked with materials on a large scale and become more knowledgeable in the process. Above and beyond that, my brother, his friends, my friends and I have landed a number of fish of both Esox species, along with the occasional gargantuan largemouth, on my homemade lures. With each fish caught, regardless of who landed it, I have taken pride in the fish-catching ability of those lures that came from my vise.

However, there were those creations that didn’t perform so well; the hooks tangled, bits of bucktail fell out of the skirt, the blades were too small for the body, or vice versa. It was when these lures failed that I put a note on my mental drawing board as to what to address in the coming year. As I moved onto a new batch of bucktails this spring, I haven’t forgotten the lessons of last season in preparation of this year’s offerings. Here are some tips for lure making that will help you out this season in your quest for big pike and muskie.

Shrink Wrapped

By using shrink tubing, the rear treble hook on a homemade spinner will stay in place, preventing the lure from fouling, so it's in position on every retrieve.

On several lures that I tied up last season, the rear treble would constantly tangle with the front treble, which was positioned halfway up the lure between the spinner body and the skirt. In the process of casting, the rear treble was able to swing freely about the split ring at the end of the spinner and it would hook into the other treble, messing up the retrieve and rendering the lure worthless for one whole cast. That doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when you cast a large bait 2,000 times in a weekend, that can end up being a lot of wasted effort, and ultimately it can mess your chances up with that one monster fish you’re after.

The solution, upon examining a variety of commercial products, was simple and inexpensive. A pack of heat-shrink tubing, available in most home-improvement stores and frequently used to cover wire connections, provided a way to keep the rear treble straight on my lures. By sliding about an inch of the tubing over the bottom eye of the spinner, the split ring, and the eye of the hook and shrinking it into place with the heat of a butane lighter, this problem has been solved.

Bigger for “Bigs”
I had a lot of follows last summer, particularly early on in the season. My brother on the other hand, had a lot of follows with a higher percentage of them turning into strikes, either at boatside in a figure-eight, or in a mad rush as the spinner neared the boat. Logging considerably more time on muskie water than me, he reported that the big fish – pike over eight pounds and muskies over 40 inches - came on big lures, with most being drawn to lures with five- to seven-inch skirts and large blades.

Go big or go home. This year's Flashabou models are decked to the nines...or tens and twelves. With big blades, big bodies and big hooks, bigger IS better.

Smaller spinners, or thinner-profiled baits, produced a great number of small fish but they rarely induced a following big fish to take a swing at the offering. While consistent action was nice, the quality fish we were looking for could not be found on our smaller lures. My brother suggested upping the size of our presentations for the “Bigs” - as he refers to any fish over 40 inches.

“Make all flashabou spinners this year,” he suggested in a phone conversation. While I was unwilling to go all the way, due to costs and other factors, I agreed that big-fish baits with thick flashy eight-inch skirts were in order and they would make up the bulk of our baits for the season. By the time I finished half a dozen, I was convinced that these baits were the only way to go.

Coupling the monster profiles of the eight- and even ten-inch flashabou skirts with big #10 and #12 blades, and 7/0 treble hooks, I upped the size of our premier lures to match what my brother saw on the water in terms of the appetites of big fish. “Forget small fish, we’re only going for the ‘Bigs’ this year,” my brother said with a smile, after looking over the lures and giving them his approval.

Reuse and Recycle
Another hardware-store puzzle piece has made virtually all of our spinner components reusable, in case of a bent shaft or a damaged skirt, all it takes is a snip of the wire and the components can be reassembled on another spinner shaft. Now, thanks to a three-dollar roll of lawnmower throttle cable (again, available at most hardware stores), all of the bucktail and flashabou skirts that adorn the bodies of the lures can be recycled or replaced with the flick of the wrist.

By tying the more-expensive flashabou on a cable cylinder, I am able to have a nice round skirt that is easy to work with and can be proportioned better than say, on a treble hook or a thin thread bed on the shaft of a spinner. Plus, the cable can be moved from spinner to spinner, assuming it will survive an Esox attack, saving money on future baits. I can’t wait to break down the old “drawing board” baits from last summer and incorporate their components with the

Little things make a huge difference. Throttle cable is a hollow wire form that allows for slidable and combinable skirting on wire shafts.

new skirts I have tied up, further saving on the cost of these lures.

Other Tips and Tricks
Cement, cement, cement. One can never use enough head cement when assembling big baits. Certain bucktails were in need of Rogaine by the time a few fish latched on to them last summer. Hairs that were not both solidly tied and glued into place fluttered down the water column and the note went on my mental blackboard – more cement, stronger wraps, and even more cement.

The commercial lures I examined throughout the off season also pointed out a flaw in some of my bigger baits from last year. Most every commercial lure placed the blade within one blade-length of the skirt. This, I learned, was to generate a greater amount of disturbance closer to the pulsating marabou, bucktail or flash, creating more of that moving appearance in the water. All of my new baits incorporate this change.

Finally, never be afraid to experiment when making baits, particularly if all the parts can be harvested from a failed model and reused on a new one. By doing so last summer, I was able to come up with a spinner design I have not yet seen in any conventional tackle catalog. While it is far from revolutionary, it certainly is unorthodox. I’ll test its effectiveness this season and let you know next year if it’s patent-pending.

Here’s hoping these tips will improve your hooking percentages and get you interested in the hobby of lure making. There’s no reward on the water as fine as landing a trophy on a lure you put together for just that purpose…in our outdoors.

Lead Image - The Author's brother, Ben Simonson with a 40-inch muskie caught on one of the lures made last spring by Author.  Photo provided by Ben Simonson.