Make Your Own Fishing Lures From Home DIY

Make your own fishing lures to save you money, have bragging rights about your amazing talent. Making your own lures can be an exciting hobby for any fisherman.

Make Your Own Fishing Lures From Home

The ability to make your own fishing lures is an important and key skill that will come in handy when you have to go out angling on a budget.

Fishing is a great hobby that inspires among many things, creativity. Yes, walking into a shop or ordering your own lures online is easier but definitely not the most enjoyable.

Making your own lures can serve as a creative outlet helping you tinker around with different materials while creating something useful.

There is nothing as satisfying as seeing a bass falling to the trap of a handcrafted lure that you created by yourself.

That moment, when you pull the fish out of the water and unhook it from your own custom lure, will help grow your self-confidence as an angler.

The self-confidence results from the fact that you’d know that you caught the fish through your own effort without supplementing with purchased lures.

You might ask why one would make your own Fishing Lures instead of going out to buy them.

If you check above, I’ve already given two reasons why, you might be fishing on a budget, or just to get creative, not to mention for bragging rights on Facebook.

If you are reading this article, chances are high that you fit into one of these two categories. It’s either you want to make lures in order to save a little bit of extra money or you want to make your own lures for creative purposes, as a creative outlet. Either way, regardless of which category you are in, the following information is going to prove oddly useful and will help you to make your own fishing lures like a pro.

Getting Started Making Your Own Lures

There is no one size fits all approach on how to make your own fishing lures. Everything depends on your needs and how you want to go about it. However, most people approach this process in two ways, using two distinctly different materials.

Some people use wood to make wooden fishing lures while others use soft plastic to make soft plastic fishing lures. In the following few paragraphs, I’m going to segment the article into sections to clearly show you how you can achieve both.

But before I do that, there are some common things which may be cliché but still important which apply to the process to make your own Fishing Lures regardless of the material you opt for, be it wood or soft plastic.

On the common things, the first is having a suitable work area. A dedicated corner in your home or your garage can be of great use. When you take the time to make your own fishing lures, especially the wooden ones, chances are, you are going to be doing some drilling and cutting.

The tools are complicated and require you to work with intense focus. If you are not focused, you might end up hurting yourself which may turn pretty bad. Find a place to work in and gather all the necessary tools you will need. Having the required tools will help optimize your workflow and will make everything simpler and easier.

Steps to Make Your Own Wooden Lures

Wooden lures are the most common type when it comes to making homemade fishing lures. In fact, most fishing brands, before they turned to use hard plastic, used to use wood due to its density which is less than that of water meaning it can easily float on top of the water.

• Step 1: Consider the options
• Step 2: Start Designing and Cutting
• Step 3: Refine your Shape
• Step 4: Pick up the Drill
• Step 5: Practice some Artistry
• Final Steps: Attach what needs to be attached

You can read more about these steps to make your own wooden lures below.
“The first artificial fishing lures made of wood in the late 1890s.” – Source: Wikipedia.org

Step 1: Consider The Options to Make Your Lures

There are a lot of options at your disposal when you try to make your own Fishing Lures and each one can of those can work effectively and help you achieve your goals.

A nice piece of wood can help you create either topwater lures or diving baits.

With wood, you can create some of the most common fishing lures including, stick baits, propeller baits, poppers, spinnerbaits, and thin minnows.

What is important here to just consider the best option that you think will work with your situation. You also have to consider the season of the year and your fishing environment.

If your ‘hunting’ ground has a lot of cover for the fish, then diving baits would definitely be the best option for you as compared to topwater

After considering the options and deciding on the type of lure to create, you have to choose the appropriate sizes. For bass, your lures should be about 5 inches long. And just a word of advice, the best and easiest option for a beginner is to create a crankbait.

Step 2: Start Designing and Cutting The Fishing Lures

Before you start designing, you will need to select the type of wood to use. Most anglers who create their own lures either use balsa or pine. These woods are referred to as softwood. They are incredibly easy to work with and don’t need you to use any sort of advanced materials to decently cut them and shape them into recognizable bait.

Now, to get started, you have to use your pencil. Look up some graphic images of your lure or place one on the table where you can easily see it to use it as a point of reference. The next thing you have to do is cut your wood into a rectangle that is at least 7 inches long and four inches wide (remember, we need 5!).

After cutting through, take your pencil and draw an outline of your lure on the wooden block showing the curves clearly as you are going to use these curves as a reference when cutting through the wood.

When done with the above and have a clear design, you should use a sharp knife to cut through, following your drawings. The goal here would not be to bring out a perfect product, but rather, just an abstracted version that will have to be refined.

Step 3: Refine The Fishing Lure Shape

The product from step 2 should look more or less like a shape-shifted bait and someone should be able to see what you are trying to achieve if you place it side by side with the design inspiration you would have used when designing the lure for fishing.

Next, you have to use your knife to cut through your wooden block, smoothing it out and handling any rough edges.

After that is done, the next step would be to use sandpaper.

To be effective with sanding, use this three-step process common among expert carpenters.

1. Use Coarse Grits Sandpaper – (those under #100) – This will help with refining the shape.
2. Use a Medium Grits Sandpaper – (such as #120 and #150) – This will smooth out most rough edges.
3. Use Fine Grade Sandpaper – (such as #220) This will give you the final smooth finish that you are seeking, and also make sure that the wood it’s clean enough for the following steps.

TIP: If this is your first time making this type of project you will not know how much sandpaper you will need.

I would suggest getting a variety pack like the 9 x 3.6 Inch Assorted Grit Sanding Sheets [icon name=”amazon” prefix=”fab”] From Amazon.

It comes with 102 pieces of assorted sandpaper with grit from 80 to 3000. This way you can see which Grit you will use the most or the least, and then re-stock accordingly.

Step 4: Use a Micro Drill For This Project

I know, this is a homemade tutorial, I would have opted for something like a hammer and some nails, but you will need a micro drill for this.

Before you begin poking holes into your fine shape, you need to start by marking out places on the wood where you will want your holes to go.

The basic holes are the ones for the eyelet screws, ballast weight, and rattle. Mark where the holes will be, then carefully drill them out.

The reason I advised you to use a micro drill is that you will be working with a thin piece of wood.

Using a larger drill can result in your lure being deformed impeding your progress.

TIP: We recommend for this project get the Electrical Pin Vise Kit With Red Micro Electric Hand Resin Drill [icon name=”amazon” prefix=”fab”] Amazon.

It comes with 10Pcs Collet, 16 Pcs Mini Drills (0.5-3.0 mm), 720 Pcs Screw Eye Pins for Resin, Plastic, Wood, DIY Jewelry, Key Chain Making, and Yes DIY lure creation.

Step 5: Practice some Artistry

When you are done with the holes, you will have to prep up your artistic mind, it will be time to add some color and create your own ‘fish’, lure. Painting a lure is different from painting something like a home for example.

Remember, you will be using the lure in lake water which means you wouldn’t want your paint to come off from the lure whilst you will be in the middle of your fishing trip.

To make sure that your painting doesn’t fall off, start by using a sealer that is preferably colorless. The sealer will help protect your wood from getting damaged due to water.

When done with the sealer, paint your lure in your desired color. When doing this, try to not steer away from nurture by a wide margin. Use colors that come in the ocean, colors like green, red, blue, gold, silver, or yellow.

After you are done with the painting and can now recognize what you have created, put a waterproof clear coat on top of the paint.

The waterproof coat will ensure that your paint won’t fall off when exposed to water.

Final Steps: Put Your Fishing Lures Together

Remember, in step 4, we mentioned that you have to drill some holes. The most important and basic holes needed are the eyelets. You need two, one for attaching the lure to your fishing rod and the other for attaching the hooks to the lure. If you are making a bass lure, then the thread of your eyelet’s thread should be somewhere in between 2 and 3 cm.

Also, be sure to use stainless steel for your eyelets to prevent rusting.  This will prevent the fishing lure from rusting after being immersed in the water

After you are done inserting the eyelets into the drilled holes, you have to attach your hooks. The best option for hooks is double hooks as they don’t usually require you to use split rings when attaching them to the eyelets.

If you do the above correctly, then you will have your very own DIY Custom made Wooden Fishing Lures that you can use to venture out and catch your own bass, trout, or any other fish you are going after.

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Steps to Make Your Own Soft Plastic Fishing Lures

The process to make your own Fishing Lures out of plastic is easier and less complicated than that of making wooden lures if you have the right tools at your disposal.

• Step 1: Choosing the plastic
• Step 2: Adding some heat
• Step 3: Molding Your New Fishing Lure

You can read more about making your own soft plastic lures below.
“Soft plastic baits are incredibly effective for catching fish.” – Source: Keepamericafishing.org

Step 1: Choosing The Right Plastic

To get started with making soft plastic lures, you need a microwave and a Pyrex jug, preferably a small one.

For effective results, you have to purchase plastic that you can use. The plastic comes in little cubes that are easy to manage. I recommend the PLASTISOL Fishing Lure Making Plastic Cubes from Amazon, The Starter KIT comes in a 6 Pack which gives you over 16 oz (1 Pint) Total Resin.

This plastic must be headed to at least 170 degrees before setting. For effective results, be sure to shake the plastic.

Shaking the plastic will help loosen any particles/sediment that might have settled at the bottom of the container which explains why this has to be done. Besides shaking, one other thing you can do is to use something to stir it, preferably made from glass or stainless steel to mix the plastic out.

Step 2: Adding Some Heat

After shaking and mixing the plastic, the next step would be to heat the plastic. The plastic has to be heated as I’ve said above, to 170 degrees before you can leave it to set and solidify.

To heat, you need to use a microwave. A burner or stove can get this done, the difference is that the heating will be slower and you would need a metal container that can effectively transfer heat.

Heating plastic is a three-step process. You need to heat for about one minute and check to see if the plastic is now in pure liquid form with properties similar to those of water.

If that is not the case, keep heating the plastic at 170 degrees in 15-second increments until you achieve a watery consistency.

Step 3: Molding Your New Fishing Lure

Before molding, some people prefer adding some glitters and color to the liquid plastic before it solidifies into a mold. That can work as well if you want to make your custom lures attractive.

You can get some Soft plastic lures molds from Amazon to make your own Fishing Lures come in many shapes and sizes, the key is finding the mold that is perfect for you, your situation and fishing conditions and working with it. It’s a simple process.

Alternatively, you can just let the soft plastic solidify and set without adding the extra details and everything would work just fine.

You can get some cheap molds to use where you will pour your liquid plastic to let it set creating a great new fishing lure.

Check out this video below that will give you more information about making your own plastic fishing lures.

Making Fishing Lures Books

Would you Enjoy to Make Your Own Lures? Lure making is The Art and Science of Spinnerbaits, Buzzbaits, Jigs, and Other Leadheads you can learn how to make your very own spring bass fishing lures.

Check out the list of Making Fishing Lures books below:

If you are a person whom a DIY project excites you and saving money to boot will make your day.

You can get any of these spring bass fishing lures books and learn how to make your very own, Spinner Baits, Jigs, and many other types of bass lures.

Conclusion

Make your own Fishing Lures the DIY Method is a great avenue for exercising your creativity, practicing a new hobby, and saving a few extra bucks.

There even are opportunities for you to make money from this activity when you become sufficiently experienced at it.

You can make your own fishing lures and sell them via sites like eBay and Amazon and make a few extra bucks. Talk about monetizing your hobby or you can just enjoy them yourselves while trying to catch some fish.  Either way, it’s a win-win situation!

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This Fishing Post was Made in CATEGORY:  Fishing  DESCRIPTION: Make your own fishing lures to save you money, have bragging rights about your amazing talent. Making your own lures can be an exciting hobby for any fisherman.