Some of Todays Painting

Some Recent Ones

A Couple Dozen Paddletails

Experimenting With Color

    A little color experimentation sometimes yields a cool new look.....but will the fish  agree ??
   All of these experiments start with no coloring pigments in the plastic.....I only used glitter, which makes the bodies translucent, that makes them very good in clear water and/or in high pressure situations.
    The first photo is blue scales over firecracker glitter body...not sure what to call this one yet but we'll figure something out.

   The color in the second pic, to me it looks like Grape Jelly

    This color is Purple Cisco

   The last one is what I'm calling Emerald Smallmouth.
   This one is pretty versatile.
   As is, it's a smallmouth bass but by just adding a white tipped fins and tail it becomes a walleye pattern.....or...exchange the white for orange and it could be a sucker pattern

Another New One .....Well, Sort Of...

   A couple friends, that I go to Canada with, have been requesting that I make them a chatterbait that has a larger profile than the standard Ribbontail version that I normally make.
   This request sounded like a pretty simple task.....but..... I quickly found out it was a lot more involved than just adding a chatter blade to a Big Boy frame.
   First I had to add extra ballast to make the Big Boy body run straight, without it's signature tilt, at high speeds....then I had to modify the chatter blade to compensate for the added drag of the much larger, heavier body.
   After several attempts and many changes I got a couple working Big Boy sized chatterbaits....these will be tested soon on our annual trip to the north country.
   If this testing goes good then I may also add this one to my lure lineup. 

First Painting of the New Ones

 I did a little testing yesterday of the 2 new bodies.
Before I did any painting on them I wanted to know if they would work as designed...... I'm happy to say they did swim very well, so I painted up a few for further testing. Now it is time to see what the fish think.

   The photo below is for size comparison.... the body in the center is the 15" size.
   The new style at the top was based on the 15" shad body but has a narrow, fast moving tail. When laying curled up it measures about 16" and when stretched out, like in the pic, it's a little over 19".
   The bottom one uses the body of my 12" shad with the addition of the tail from a Big Boy. This one is about 15" curled and about 17" long when swimming.

A Few From Today

Something New ??

It has been quite some time since I've had any new styles, so I took a little time lately to create something a little different.......different for me anyways. These are 2 sizes and styles of a curly tail shad. These are the first ones out of the new molds and will be available very soon ........ providing the testing goes good.

More updates will be coming as soon as the testing begins.

Nice Hybrid

Here's a photo of my buddy Terry with the largest of several nice wipers we caught during a 3 hour outing this week. This fish was 25" long and weighted 10+ pounds. With the overcast skies and the light rain these fish were up chasing bait on the surface. Seeing several fish this size breaking the surface chasing bait is really something to see.

A Few Random Fish Photos From the Past Week