Custom painting lures

[Guest]

On September 1, 2015 at 6:16 AM, jolicious said:

I personally don't repaint lures. That's a bunch of hassle just for a hobby. Of course pink works, just like any other color when thrown under the right conditions. I buy blanks online for $2-$3 and paint them because A. It relaxes me and B. I can end up with 4 or 5 lures for the price of one expensive one.

I don't discriminate, I will repaint anything. The price of lures is small in the grand scheme of things. 

[Ham]

On Tuesday, September 01, 2015 at 6:16 AM, jolicious said:

I personally don't repaint lures. That's a bunch of hassle just for a hobby. Of course pink works, just like any other color when thrown under the right conditions. I buy blanks online for $2-$3 and paint them because A. It relaxes me and B. I can end up with 4 or 5 lures for the price of one expensive one.

In one of the photos you posted, it looks like there was a Deps Buzzjet Jr. Was that a blank you bought?

[jolicious]

41 minutes ago, Ham said:

In one of the photos you posted, it looks like there was a Deps Buzzjet Jr. Was that a blank you bought?

Yes sir. I think the site is "show me lures" or something like that

[jolicious]

2 hours ago, TrophyFishR said:

I don't discriminate, I will repaint anything. The price of lures is small in the grand scheme of things. 

And, truth be told, I am terrible at sanding the paint off of painted lures. That's probably the main reason I don't repaint

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, jolicious said:

And, truth be told, I am terrible at sanding the paint off of painted lures. That's probably the main reason I don't repaint

scuff them up & paint right over the old. Sometimes, I use transparent over store bought colors to create a different hue. 

strike king has a green gizzard shad color that I put a yellow stripe down the side & clear coat with purple flake. Its a good one.

I've stripped clear warts with acetone, but you gotta work FAST or you chance melting the lure.

Also, buying ghost type colors makes it easier to paint over.

 

[Quillback]

I don't paint lures, but just got an email about this free web presentation and thought I would post the link for you painters.

http://luremakingclassroom.com/custom-lure-painting/?ap_id=lpo

[Guest]

The paint booth is open for the winter. Time for bream & creek chub colored square bills. 

[Al Agnew]

On September 2, 2015 at 11:43 PM, joeD said:

Can a fish see the color of a topwater lure, specifically, the top , or back, of the lure, the part not submerged? 

From a fish perspective, in the water, the only thing visible would be treble hooks. I seriously doubt that a fish could discern whether the top of the lure was white or black or green or purple or frog or tiger or flaming skulls that say "joeD Sucks." 

I think we put too much emphasis on color, rather than movement and size.

You tinkerers' lures look great, by the way, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy any of them. I'm no different than anyone else. Hence, the multi billion dollar lure industry.

In certain circumstances they can.  If you have a topwater that sits on the surface at an angle so that the rear portion of the lure is underwater, a fish looking at it from beneath at a certain degree of angle with actually see the reflection of the top of the part of the lure that's underwater on the undersurface of the water.  In other words, they don't see the back of the lure but they do see a reflection of the back of the lure, and if you let it sit til the rings settle, they'll see a near perfect reflection.  If they are closer to being underneath it and looking at an angle closer to vertical, nope they can't see anything of the top, as the water surface will act as a window to the above water environs, rather than as a mirror.  In choppy water, they won't see a perfect reflection but will see shifting reflections even at a steeper angle.

Does that really make a difference, though?  I doubt it.  If color makes a difference in topwaters, it's probably only the color of the bottom and lower sides.  And I think the biggest difference in color that can be important is whether or not the lure is translucent. I usually opt for translucent colors in very clear water, more opaque colors in murky water.  In lures that run in the upper part of the water column, I like to have the backs be very light in color so that they are highly visible to ME.

[Gavin]

Al is correct. From a distance the waters surface is a mirror. Up close it is a window outside. Fish get many different views of topwater offerings, and not so much with stuff that goes deep. Colors may look different to them at depth do to loss of light, not sure if The UV spectrum comes into play our how that works out. Just figure light belly on top or dark and down and I do OK. 

[Al Agnew]

I make a lot of my own lures and of course paint them, but I've hesitated to get much into this thread because...I'm an artist and paint very realistic wildlife and fish, so you'd think my lure painting jobs would be great, but you guys mostly put me to shame.  When you do something for a living, doing somewhat the same thing as a hobby in your free time isn't as much fun.  So I mainly do down and dirty paint jobs, using spray cans for the most part.

Many years ago, I did paint some lures realistically, using acrylic paint and brushes, even going so far as to capture native minnows and faithfully reproduce their colors and scale patterns on lures like floating Rapalas:

The above are all I have left from those days.  They are probably close to 35 years old and the colors have darkened a bit in all that time.  The top one is a bleeding shiner, second one a northern studfish, third one a white tailed shiner (you can only use that one in south flowing streams, they aren't native to north flowing streams   ), bottom one is an Ozark shiner.

Back then I painted or repainted other lures with a brush:

The second one is the first Midge-oreno (manufactured version, not my own) I ever used, and that's probably about the fifth paint job for it.

These days, as I said, I use spray cans of paint of various colors, and use a few different techniques to get different effects.  These are done by spraying the whole lure with a background color, then giving the back a quick shot of one color, the belly a shot of another color, and finally using a stencil I cut out of plastic shelf liner wrapped around the lure and sprayed with a darker color...I've used the same stencil for probably ten years now and it has many layers of paint on it but still somehow works:

Here are some lures painted with the other technique I use extensively.  After covering the lure with the background color, the color for the back, and the color for the belly (or in some cases very thin layers of several different colors), I take a spray can and without pointing it at the lure, I just barely press the spray button until the paint sputters out of the can instead of spraying.  Once I get it sputtering well, which is a little tricky, I bring the lure into the range of the spattering paint, giving it that very random pattern.  That is usually done with a metallic paint, either chrome, copper, gold, or silver.

Finally, a few other lures...

The one on the left is another spatter pattern, but using black for the spatters.  Second one is spatter plus the old trusty stencil.  On the third one, the scale pattern is actually a piece of mesh I cut out of a bill cap I found that had an interesting mesh.  Last one is a clown color jerkbait that I modified by covering the bright yellow back with a duller green.  I often modify the colors of store bought lures like that.