Karma

preach on brother. I bought a quart of Createx opaque white and I painted 3 houses and the pentagon with half the bottle and 3 gallons of reducer.

When I first started to airbrush I ordered an entire kit off of Amazon. It came with a compressor, 2 gravity fed airbrushes of different diameter, 1 airbrush with the jar (I actually still use that thing for base coating)... and several bottles of paint I think for around $150. Get a kit like that and some cheap blanks to start with. It will get addictive. You can also check out lots of a guys painting baits on youtube and can learn some techniques and how to do different baitfish patterns and stuff there.

I dabble in custom plastics... I have a few molds, I mostly recycle my old baits. A friend of mine who has helped me a lot is the plastics guy around here so I try not to cut into his business. He is also a 70 year old vet and its how he supplements his income. With that being said, he had some guys asking him about various molds last spring and to make them happy he went out and ordered them. Now, he only does hand poured baits so they were not overly expensive as with the injection molds but to him they were pricey and none of those guys who asked him about the molds ever placed any orders for them. He was pretty upset over the deal. Luckily enough just a few weeks ago he got a few orders on them that he told me were large enough to cover the investment but the lesson learned here is what others have already mentioned above.

90% are the same culprits. Green Pumpkin (or some variation of), black and blue (or some variation of) and a few of the brown (or some variation of) patterns. White is fairly popular this time of year. A lot of people go crazy with all sorts of neon chrome, bright chartreuse with metallic. I think 90% of that is just because people like the way they look. Some guys are spending more time shopping the bait stores than they are on the water. There is a reason why these colors are classic and your great grandpappy had them in his tackle box.... they work. Don't over think it. Kind of like the Heddon Torpedo. Everyone's grandpa had some of those in his tackle box. I am pretty sure Moses was catching them out of the Red Sea on a Heddon Torpedo. It was catching fish years before anyone had even dreamed of a whopper plopper.

I made all of these from a 32 oz (i think) gatorade bottle full of various old torn plastics with a small amount of new plastisol. I didn't sort the colors out, just various colors. I poured them out of the gatorade bottle, ripped them up small and tossed them in a measuring cup, put a little plastisole in there, mixed them up a little and tossed them in the microwave for 45 seconds at a time until they were all liquid. Then I used various direct injection molds. When mixing colors you are usually going to get either a black, dark green, green pumpkin or brown color. These worked great and they had a scent to them from some of the plastics I had melted. I shipped most of these off to Texas for some old Navy buddies and their kids.

I just got the poison tail molds and even though they were a bit of an investment, I do love them. I even started making a chatterbait model with the mold. I just trimmed down one of the weedguard hole pins to sit flush in the slot with the bottom of the jig head.. slightly opened the hook of the eye big enough for the blade to fit in. That works best, but you can also connect the blades with a couple split rings... sorry on a rant. They are expensive but imo, they were worth it. Best place to get them is from Barlows. They are $37 each there, compared to $53 each from Do-It.

^ what he said. You can get white, red, yellow and flat-black for around $6 each. Not a great color selection but it is still very cheap. You can also mix them if you have the ability... red+white and you can make a pink etc...

I have an 04 Wrangler... on of my other toys... The roll bar on it connects to the windshield and has a cross beam across the top just behind the drivers head. I took a 2x4, cut it to rest across on top of the rear roll bars near the rear of the Jeep, covered it with some extra carpet and then on the inside of the roll bar, drilled a couple holes and through the 2x4. I will run a heavy duty hose clamp or sometimes one of those heavy duty zip ties that have a steel in them through the hole and around the roll bar. Throw the kayak on top of it, on ratchet strap secures it to the rear bumper, the other to the front. I can always take it down during the winter when I am not going to be using the kayak. I would post pics but I am on the road away from home.

yeah I thought about it. Just got a new 55 gallon tank in my house.... on the other hand, I can just go out to Dale Hollow and catch more of them. I know where they like to hang out.

this is a longear sunfish... for future reference a pumpkin seed looks very similar but has a red/bright orange marking towards the back of the black ear marking. I caught probably 20 or so the other day to bring home and stock my pond. My bass are hungry

I have been thinking of buying that herring head underspin jig mold by Do-It molds but I have not pulled the trigger on it yet. Good looking mold. I know nothing of underspins, one of the mold options the offer for it seems pretty heavy. What weight do you guys normally fish on those?

I never take my sunglasses off when he has a rod in his hands since that day....

I have a bass pro auto-inflate. Yes, once you use it, you have to buy a rearming kit - $20-$30. I like the auto-inflates because they are less bulky and more comfortable, especially on the hot days we have in Florida or Tennessee and I will actually wear it all day/night when I am by myself. When I am with someone else, I tend to only wear them when the boat is moving or at night I will leave it on all the time. You never know when some clown on a party boat is going to plow into you despite your nav lights, uv lights and deck lights at full blaze......

My partner managed to get a size 2 treble through my right cheek on a cast. He had to reach inside my mouth like I was a big bass and cut the barb off, then it slide right out. I'll be honest, it didn't really hurt. I didn't even realize what had happened until I felt the lure bouncing off my face and seen the look of horror on his face.

that makes a lot of sense and we have a bench vise we use in the shop.

I was talking about the last photo you posted, but looking at it more closely it looks like it was just the angle of the photo.

I have been wondering if it would be possible to 3-d print a mold. I was wondering how well the plastic would hold up to the heat, looks like there is some melting where the injector inserts in the one photo or am I mistaken?

Thanks for the feed back. I seen a video last night that I thought was interesting... I don't know if this is possible with a do-it style mold but it would be great if I could do it this way... I don't think he would like the idea of it just being tied on there, he could just as easily use a drop of superglue when he put the bait on the jig to hold it in place. I guess I am just going to have to break out the dremel here and hope for the best.

hey guys, I have a customer that is an FLW pro, he buys a lot of jigs from me and just came to me with a request. My arky head / flippin jig mold is model #FLIP-3-AY. He has been requesting me to find a way to include a wire bait holder much like the football jigs I make for him (pictured below). I am wondering if it would be possible to use something and create a slot in the mold for the wire keeper, but I would hate to destroy the mold. I was hoping that someone else had done or at least attempted something of the sort. He has been talking about putting my logo on his boat next season so I really want to make him happy!

they look pretty good to me from the distance but we need more close ups. I've been thinking of adding a poisontail to my molds.

some savages running about on BassResource.... was kind of asking for it though.

...... ..... I have swam into cold water for a $5 Academy Sports Crankbait.....

I don't really think it would be if you were just making them for yourself. The cost of airbrush equipment... blanks depending on the quality are around $2 each. I sell a lot of mine for side cash and by no means am I going to get rich off of it, but I can buy some new toys.

I think I have finally gotten my bluegill where I want it. I wish I had taken pictures of a yellow chartreuse 2.5 I made, but the last time I seen it a 30+ rock fish was taking it to the bottom of Cordell Hull never to be seen again after the line snapped.

my latest... Tennessee Shad Jerkbait Midnight Special 2.5 Squarebill Crankbait Raspberry 2.5 Squarebill Crankbait