A Peek Into My World

Here's a few random photos of my shop.
I know it looks like chaos.....and it is....sorta.
Maybe a semi-organized chaos.

A New Model....What Do You Think ???

Here's a few pics of a body design I been playing around with for over a year. This body is a paddle tail design in the shape of a little musky or pike. It measures about 13" long with a diameter of about an inch or so. The long fast tapering tail section with the over sized paddle tail should make this one have lots of tail action on even the slowest of retrieve speeds. I've had thoughts of making this a shallow version, similar to my 8" model....and I also thought about weighting it to be used deeper in the water column. Either way I think it would be a very versatile bait. As of right now I don't know if it'll even make it into production or not, so I figured I'd show you all a few pics and hopefully get some feedback as to whether or not you folks would like to see this one become a reality. Any and all feedback greatly appreciated.
You can post feedback in the comments section or send them direct to me via my email.

Future Hope for Past Failures !!

The first version of the reaper tails I made for the tubes didn't turn out exactly as I had hoped. While they worked great, I ran into issues when attaching them to the tubes rigging so I had to redesign them, however, the original version, while not compatible with the tubes, worked very well as trailers for spinnerbaits and jigs. Here's a few photos of some spinnerbaits and jigs that I added them to. These trailers really bulk up those baits and provide a look the the fish haven't seen before..........sometimes that's all it takes to trigger a fish to bite is to show them something a little different.

Tube & Tail

Another little project I've been playing around with is a 7" tube. These are Tora tube and were designed primarily for bass fishing. I poured a couple different styles of tails for them. One of the tails is a fish shaped forked tail and the other is a large reaper style tail, After experimenting with various internal harnesses I've settled on cable as the best option. These have a 150 lb. test, 21 strand cable as the rigging. The hooks are Mustads, the chin hook is a 3/0, the center hook is a 7/0 and the tail hook is a 2/0. These are about 13" or so and weigh 4-5 ounces.
Here's some pics of some that are unpainted, some I did a little painting on and some that are painted and waiting to be assembled.

More Patterns

This was the tray of unpainted jerk bait bodies that was in the last post. I'm still playing with colors while trying different patterns on the new body style.
Some turned out pretty good but some need a little more refining.
All in all they're coming right along.
Colors ( left to right)
shiner
Dr.Carp
Orange Tiger Copper Scales
Super Sucker
Silver Crappie
Perch
Un-Named
Firetiger Gold Scales
Firetiger Silver Scales

Another Sneak Peek

Here's another look at my new Hollow Belly Jerkbait. After getting the internal harness issues figured out I'm still working on the proper weighting. Since these four are for testing purposes I decided to do a little test painting on them too. While the paint work turned out decent, I wasn't completely satisfied with the way they look and I feel I need to make a few stencils especially for this body shape.
The last pic is another batch that's headed into the paint booth........hopefully they will come out looking a little better than the first four did.

Some Wild and Crazy Colors

Here's 20 different bright colors, some are what I call "Natural Bright, some are just Bright and a few are Super Bright. Most of these colors have been posted before but there's a few that I've never shown before.
This Fine Fellow wanted 20 different bright ones and gave me a free hand to do whatever I wanted.....which I took as an opportunity to get a little wild and crazy with the paint gun. It was cool to be able to just shoot whatever colors I thought might look good and try some color combinations that I've been wanting to try but never had the chance to.

New Model......Version 2

After very limited testing of my newest soft plastic jerk bait design it became obvious very quick that there was a design flaw in both the body and the internal harness. While the bait worked decent I felt that with some modifications it would have better action in addition to being less prone to tangling while casting it. After a considerable amount time brainstorming I made some design changes to correct those issues. Here's a few photos of the 2nd generation body style.
This design would be what I would call a Hollow Belly Jerkbait. The body of this bait is hollow much like a tube. With the popularity and the effectiveness of Hollow Belly Swimbaits over the last few years I felt this would be a natural progression of hollow lure styles. I have seen several designs of jerkbaits that use tubes as the body with a add on tail section but this is the first that I've seen that the body and tail are one piece.
Now all I need is some time to test this newest design to determine if I've helped it or if I need to go back to the drawing board and start over.