How To Make Your Own Fishing Lures

Part 1:

Why build your own lures

There are actually a lot of reasons why avid fishermen make their own fishing lures, often depending on the type of individual and time on hand. Creative anglers with plenty of time to kill during Winter evenings, are the kind who will tinker more with making lures.

While many others make fishing lures just for the sake of making something worthwhile, most often the reasons revolve around the following factors:

Cost-cutting;

You will agree that the price of lures can be prohibitive at times, particularly if you live far from the tackle stores and don’t have the money to buy in bulk when you do visit one. And, as we have seen over the years, many famous brand lures, though effective, include in the price the costs of advertising and promotions, which is of no concern to fishing.

In effect, you’re buying a portion of the manufacturers marketing even if it does not catch any fish (only fishermen).

Making money;

Many lure makers sell their homemade lures, especially if they have been proven to be consistently effective and catch fish on a regular basis. Many now-large lure-making enterprises started out in someone’s garage, begun simply to save money, test a theory, or improve on existing designs.

Availability;

Sometimes the kind of lure you want is not what is sold, probably different in weight, color or design. While lure manufacturers have their own design teams, who for the most part, simply improve on proven designs, you would have your own ideas about lures that work in your area.

So what better way to prove them than to make your own lures?

Personal satisfaction;

There is a kind of personal satisfaction when the lure you made yourself catches fish. It is an accomplishment in itself quite different and separate from just catching fish. You might call it, as many psychologists say, ‘psychic reward’, the fulfillment derived from having made something successfully, and the pride that comes with it.

Part 2:

Step by Step lure building

The first step in making your own lures is to conceptualize a design. Most designs are based on existing ones, but there are those that are total departures, such as the Japanese Inchiku jig lures that do not generally resemble anything Western. But they were truly effective, and even spawned lures of similar designs such as the Asari and Lucanus jigs.

Also, if you are familiar with the Gotcha lures, you can easily see that they were radical design take offs from the conventional fish-like lures we often see in tackle stores. Yet they catch fish, and that is what is important.

After having a design concept, the next thing is to study whether the concept is workable by understanding the fundamental reasons why the lure could be effective. Body shape, appendages, parts, color, movement and a few other factors in the water are all analyzed as to their probable effect on the target fish. Large lure manufacturers have laboratories to do these, but you as a home tinkerer have to make do with the local pond or swimming pool.

Next is creating a prototype or sample, something with which you test out your theories on what is effective by incorporating them into the design. You might have to make variations of the prototype to come up finally with a ‘proven’ lure design. Only then can you say that you have created a fishing lure.

How to make in-line fishing spinners

In this ebook, we shall deal with making in-line spinners (and spinner baits later), those thingamajigs of metal bodies and spinning blades made to look like fleeing baitfish like the minnow, at least to a predator fish. We will explain the various principles that operate in a spinner, and why certain components are used to make the thing work.

The parts of a spinner;

I

 

The simple lure above is an example of a very simple fishing lure that you can make and it is held together using the lure body which has a hole in one end to accommodate this application. The advantage to this particular configuration is the hook can be changed easily.

Essentially, an in-line spinner has five parts: body, wire form, blade, clevis, and hook.

Some designs, however, include beads in the wire form and/or feathers in the hook.

These additions are there to make the lure perform better in its movement. For instance, the bead or beads are often placed right before the clevis to act as a smooth pivot or bearing for the clevis, so that the blade would spin faster or more precisely and won’t get hung up on the wire form. The beads are also sometime used to form the body of the lure as well.

By adding feathers to the hook it helps disguise the hook and acts as a tail with enticing movements. The feathers also acts as an attractant, and are often Black, White, Orange or Yellow to add to the visibility of the lure to the fish and be easily seen by the fisherman.

Some spinner designs eliminate the clevis altogether, attaching the blade to rotate around the wire form directly, as exemplified by those spinners made by Panther-Martin. These ‘sonic’ design spinners have their own advantages and disadvantages like the others.

Spinner body

The spinner body provides the bulk and shape for the lure as well as, in many instances, weight for casting and sinking. The sink factor is important in that it helps the spinner reach the desired depth more or less quickly, as needed, which translates to how long your lure will stay in the strike zone in the given time frame. Shorter time in the water translates to catching less fish.

Some spinner designs utilize plastic, metal or glass beads that are lighter than lead and will cast or sink less effectively as lead, but often these materials were chosen because they produce the desired clicking or clacking sounds underwater during the retrieve. They may likewise be of the desired color to produce flash or mimic the baitfish’s coloration.

Body styles are often differentiated by purpose: attraction or for weight. Attraction bodies are usually more fish-shaped, such as the bullet, tapered or cones, more often colored or painted to simulate the prey fish or baitfish in the area. Sometimes colored beads are also used for the same purpose.

On the other hand, spinner bodies employed as weight may just be a series of heavy beads, lead weights shaped and painted to look like fish, or a piece of metal like brass or stainless steel (which can double as attracting body also).

However, many materials used in spinner making are chosen for attracting and weighting purposes.

The spinner body is the part that gives the spinner its form, so that it varies according to the kind of fish it aims to represent. Most in-line spinners are made of brass, copper or stainless steel, since these metals are rust-proof and shiny. They likewise provide the weight needed for casting, sinking and they tend to run true when retrieved.

There are spinner designs, however, that use lead for the body, often formed to resemble fish heads, complete with eyes and gill plate lines. Such designs can be more effective under certain conditions, like when the fish are more finicky, having been pressured heavily for a while, or when the water is a bit murky.

Hook

 

The hook is the most important part of the spinner, being the business end where the fish actually gets caught. Selecting the best hook to use in making your own fishing lures ranges from being the most important decision you can make to not being very important at all. There are many different styles of hooks to choose from.

In-line spinners are more commonly equipped with treble hooks at their tails, attached to the wire form using closed or open eyes, or via split rings, but some styles use single hooks either rigidly attached to the wire or by conventional means, i.e., split ring or eye at the end of the wire. Single-hook spinners are easier to weed proof and thus are the preferred style for weedy areas.

If you are in an region that does not allow treble hooks, all of your homemade lures will be fitted with single hooks.

Spinner Blade

After the hook, the spinner blade is the most important part of a spinner, since it is the main component that ‘calls’ the fish, the attractant. Without its blade, a spinner is simply a moving object in the water, most of the time with exponentially reduced fish-catching capability. A bladeless spinner would still catch fish in some waters at certain times of the year, but the lure won’t be as attractive without a spinner blade.

The spinner blade attracts fish through its flash as it spins, reflecting light in all directions just like an injured small fish struggling in the water, and also via the vibrations it makes as it moves, which is felt by the predator fish (via its lateral lines) and taken to mean easy food. (At least that is what scientists say.)

Thus, the choice of spinner blade to use is very critical when making an in-line spinner or spinner bait only from the point of view that you want to make fishing lures that catch fish.

There are several types of spinner blades characterized mostly by shape, and further defined by color or pattern. The most common ones at both extremes are the Colorado and the Willowleaf designs.

Colorado Spinner Blade

 

 

The Colorado Spinner blade looks like a tiny spoon with the handle cut off. It is rounded at one end and a bit pointed at the other. The Colorado design creates the most vibration because of its parabolic cross-section, and is thus favored for use when the fish’s vision is rather limited, such as in low light conditions or when the water is dirty or murky.

Also, spinners with Colorado blades normally run shallower than those of other designs and the blades usually spin at slower speeds at an angle of about 50 degrees.

The Colorado Spinner Blade is also available in a Deep Cup Version that catches more water and creates more turbulence in the water.

Willowleaf Spinner Blade

 

 

At the other design end is the Willowleaf spinner blade, which, like its flora namesake, is long, with a flatter cross-section and pointed at both ends.

Willowleaf Spinner Blades are used when flash is most important like in clear waters. They tend to run deeper and start to spin at faster speeds than the Colorado types, because of less water resistance, usually spinning at 25-degree angle, give or take one or a few degrees depending on factors other than shape.

Indiana Spinner Blade

 

 

The Indiana spinner blade is a hybrid of the Colorado and Willowleaf spinner blade designs, the Indiana spinner blade incorporates some characteristics of both, such as the long and narrow shape of the Willowleaf, and rounded end of the Colorado. Hence it works with a little effectiveness of both, proving versatile and adaptable to most water conditions in virtually all seasons.

The Indiana Spinner blade spins at 40 degrees, and its name originates from the state where its first manufacturer, Hildebrandt, was located.

Tomahawk Spinner Blade

 

The Tomahawk Spinner Blade design is a departure from the more common spinner blade designs, in that it resembles with some imagination an Indian tomahawk, and is also sometimes called a hatchet blade. Tomahawk spinner blades are more erratic in terms of movement in the water and therefore produce a quite different vibration in the water during retrieve, attracting fish that would otherwise ignore the common vibrations produced by the more conventional spinner blade designs.

Dakota Spinner Blade

 

 

The Dakota spinner blade design is an innovative one by having a split blade which creates more vibrations and flash, spins easily at slower retrieve speeds and at about 30-degree angle, that shows the blades’ color, and resists water less. The Dakota spinner blade was invented primarily to catch walleyes.

French Spinner Blade

 

The French style spinner blade is rather oblong with a stamped dome bulge. They are often in smaller sizes used to catch small Pan Fish and trout, though larger ones catch walleyes and bass. The French spinner blades are more widely used today than ever before and there are many commercially made spinner lures that use French spinner blades.

Propeller Blades

 

 

 

Some in-line spinners use propellers rather than blades to produce flash and vibration underwater, just like several designs of hard body lures. Propellers also create a buzz when spinning in the water that can serve as a powerful fish attractor.

To provide us with further options, each spinner blade style can have additional features like a dimpled surface (called ‘hammered’), scaled, fluted (with corrugations or flutes in the blade surface), painted, polished and prism-taped. Prism taped means the blade is covered by a piece of highly reflective prism tape then lacquered to minimize water damage to the tape surface. The prism tape reflects light and gives a spinner blade additional flash in the water.

Super Glow and Spackle spinner blade patterns also glow in the dark.

Choosing the right blade design for your DIY spinner depends on the characteristics of the water you want to use it in. In predominantly stained waters, you would be better off with the Colorado spinner types, especially in the yellow color patterns such as gold, chartreuse or copper. And of course, in clear bodies of water, Willowleaf spinner styles will be much more useful.

Wire

 

 

The wire form or shaft is the unifying component of a spinner because all other parts are connected to it, from the hook in the tail to the clevis near the forward line tie eye. It also defines the lure’s form, establishing the basis of whether the lure will be an in-line spinner or a spinner bait, which is generally a different lure.

To make spinner run true to form, strong wires are often used that resist bending or deforming upon pressure from a fish struggling to free itself or by snags. Stainless steel wire is the most common choice in various thicknesses (stated in gauge numbers) depending on lure size.

The wire form will generally come in one of 3 different configurations, straight wire, open loop at one end and closed loop at one end. The choice of wire configuration is dependent on how much work you want to do when building your own homemade spinner lures. You can also get rolls of stainless steel wire so that you can cut custom lengths for your lures.

Clevis

 

This component is the U-shaped part that holds the spinner blade and enables it to spin around the wire form. There are many styles including the shackle, wire, quick change, and folded.

The most common is the shackle type, this clevis comes in the stirrup style or the folded type. The clevis is basically a bent piece of metal with holes at either end through which the spinner’s wire shaft is threaded.

Choice of the Clevis is also a matter of personal preference, and the size is governed by the size of the spinner blade it is going to be used with.

Stirrup Clevis Size Chart

Clevis Size	Colorado	Indiana	Dakota	French	Tomahawk	Willowleaf
1	2/0, 1/0, 1, 2	2/0, 1/0, 1, 2	7, 8	1/0, 1	1/0, 1
2	3, 3.5, 4	3, 4	1, 2	2, 3, 4	1, 2	3, 3.5
3	5, 6	4, 5, 6	3, 4	5,	3, 4	4, 5, 6
4	6, 7	7	5, 6	5, 6	7
6	7	7
8	8	8

Folded Clevis Size Chart

Clevis Size	Colorado	Indiana	Dakota	French	Tomahawk	Willowleaf
2	2/0, 1/0, 1	2/0, 1/0, 1	1, 2	1/0	1, 2	1/0, 1, 2
4	1, 2, 3, 4	1, 2, 3, 4	3, 4	1, 2, 3, 4	3, 4	3, 3.5, 4, 5
6	5, 6, 7, 8	4, 5, 6, 7 ,8	5, 6	3, 4, 5,	5, 6	5, 6, 7, 8

Making the in-line spinner

Making the in-line spinner is very easy, even for mass-production, particularly if you have the correct tools and equipment such as wire former, jewelry pliers and end cutters.

The most important tools for making your own fishing lures is just a couple pair of pliers of different types. The first type of pliers you will need are called jewelers pliers and they have round tapered jaws for forming smooth loops in the wire. The other types of pliers you will need are chain nose pliers to hold the loop while you close the loop, and a pair of needle nose pliers to form the wire around itself. The last tool you will need is a pair of side cutters to cut off wire tag ends.

If you like you can also keep a small pair of tweezers handy to help handle small clevises and beads.

If you are going into the business of making lots of lures, a handy piece of lure production equipment you will need is called a wire former and it is used for bending the wire into eyes open, or closed in the correct sizes consistently and perfectly. If you are making spinner lures to sell, and when exact duplicates are needed, you will need a wire former.

If you are only making a few spinner lure for your own use you can get away without using a wire former.

Step 1 

First, make a ring or loop near one end of the wire using your wire former or pliers. The length of the wire may be two inches (2”) for small spinners to four inches (8”) for larger ones. Calculate the length but err on the long side because it is easier to cut off an extra length of wire than add some.Most DIY spinner makers begin with the tail ring or loop, the one where the hook is attached. Form the loop about an inch or so from the end but don’t lock it closed, leaving a length parallel to the original wire.

Slip the hook into the loop.

If you want a closed tail hook eye, slip the hook first into the loop before closing and twisting the wires to lock the eye. Alternatively, you can omit putting in the hook prior to closing the loop, and instead opt for using a split ring to attach the hook to the whole rig.

This way you can easily change hooks without cutting the wire or the treble hook eye.

Step 2

Thread onto the wire form one or two locking beads that will hold the loop closed when in use, then the body of the lure, whether it is a series of colored beads or a body form as you wish. If it is a form body, slip a metal or plastic bead afterwards to act as the bearing for the clevis.

Step 3

Insert the clevis into the hole of the blade of your choice and thread the wire through the clevis holes, making sure the blade’s concave surface is inside. Form the line tie loop about an inch or so, or enough to let the tail bead clear the hook loop tag wire above the clevis and twist it closed.

Snip off any extra wire.

You now have an in-line spinner ready for fishing.

You can also start with the forward line tie eye, close the ring and twist it locked, insert the components in reverse order, and form the tail loop for the hook. You might also want to twist closed the eye with the hook to hold it more securely, but this will not let you change hooks without cutting the ring’s wire or the treble hook or you use a split ring to hold the hook.

You can also bend the end of the wire’s tag end to make a small safety pin snap that will clip and hold onto the main wire and prevent the loop from opening up under pressure.

The snap makes it easy to change hooks should the need arises. However, the snap will place the hook much farther from the body and blade, which might reduce the effectiveness of the lure.

Some spinners place the blade after the body, particularly the weight-forward spinners but this is suited to more specialized fishing.

Selecting The Components

Now that you understand the very simple process of making an in-line spinner, it is important that you choose the correct materials for your components. Although it is easy to make new lures to replace those you made incorrectly, and you can do so in the field while fishing if you carry your tools and some spare parts, but you would be wasting time better used actually fishing.

Better do it right the first time.

Here is how to choose the right materials, but remember that in the end, everything will still be a matter of personal choice.

Wire

As stated above, a stiff wire is necessary if you want to have a good spinner. Using .026 gauge wire is recommended for all purposes, but there is no rule that forbids you to use heavier wire up to 0.31 if you so desire for medium sized fish like trout or walleye. If you are making heavy lures for say Musky you can go to .051 size wire.

Smaller spinners may use .026 which is the lightest wire suggested for use, even in Pan fish sized spinners, but again, you be the judge what wire to use based on the fish that you intend to catch.

You may choose whether to use straight wire in pre-cut lengths, or coiled in a continuous roll you can cut as desired. Though it could be wasteful to buy wire forms that exceed what you need, but it is also difficult to straighten bent wire coming off coils. So again, your personal choice.

Preformed wires are available from http://ospikagear.com if you want to reduce work, but often it is important to perform the necessary process to have the feel for the thing. A lot of DIY anglers actually prefer to make everything personally because of this. Plus, there is the satisfaction derived from making effective and successful lures.

Hook

As mentioned above, in-line spinners are usually equipped with treble hooks, especially for the smaller sizes, but you can use single hooks just as effectively. In many instances the latter is preferred under certain conditions, such as in waters where weeds or underwater vegetation are plentiful. Single hooks are less prone to snagging as well as easier to make weedless.

Almost any hook style is usable for in-line spinners, long-shanked styles are preferred. Some fishermen, on the other hand, choose to put short-shank hooks in their spinners, claiming that the catch rate increases when the hook is nearer the lure body or blade. A long-shank hook is more likely to miss when the lure is grabbed sideways or from underneath, which often happens.

Perhaps you can try both methods and see what works better for you.

A major consideration is that the hook should have a large-enough eye for the hook to move freely around the wire shank, except when it is attached rigidly as in some designs.

A hook locked in some awkward angle to the lure body will make the lure move through the water erratically.

When choosing hook size, just make sure the hook is not too large as to unbalance the lure, letting it sink butt-first at zero movement, nor too small that it altogether misses the fish’s mouth at the strike.

Many lure makers use hooks whose gap is about as wide as the blade or just a smidgen less, a pretty good rule of thumb in any event.

Experts recommend, though, to never using hooks less than size 10, even in ultralight fishing situations. Smaller than that and you’d probably be catching fingerlings or fry.

Body

For trout, avid lure makers recommend brass or plastic, beads of 2 mm up to 6 mm sizes. If using brass beads the weight will help you cast the lure much farther than with plastic beads, and let it sink quicker to the desired depth. But you may add plastic beads also, particularly the bright-colored ones, which will enable you to see the lure as it is retrieved and react to strikes quickest.

Beads as spinner bodies are normally selected for three reasons: bulk, color, and weight. Beads for bulk or spinner bait body are more often plastic since they are there simply to give form to the lure. Although no fish resembles a truncated worm with wings, the beads may represent an underwater creature such as an insect nymph that is food to some predator fish like bass or trout.

Colored beads may also approximate the coloration of baitfish on which the predator fish feed, so it will help to choose such colored beads. As for adding extra weight, metal beads, often in the correct colors of flash, are the beads of choice.

The styles of Lure bodies that are available http://ospikagear.com are, to say the least, myriad, ranging in shape and form from barrels through torpedoes to bullets and everything else between. Some even look like a series of beads strung together or a stack of diminutive plates, in plastic but mostly brass. Choosing which to use can be bewildering at times.

However, the principle of balanced flash and weight will help you select the correct materials for the body, depending on the kind of fish you are after and probable sizes, and the average water depth you’d be fishing in.

For instance, walleye fishermen in Lake Erie use weight-forward spinners much more than the balanced lures of trout fishermen. The reason is that this style of spinner works great for suspended fish, trolls accurately in the correct position and creates minimal line twist. It consists of a molded head usually made of lead (painted or not), often a French spinner blade, some hollow metal or plastic beads and the hook (single or treble) strung on a straight wire harness. This lure uses .031 gauge wire or thereabouts, depending on the actual size of the spinner itself.

Spinner Blade 

Here we come into the most critical part of making in-line spinners. The choice of blade style, size, color, and the design to use is not easy to say the least, but common practical sense will tell you to use a blade size that approximates the average size of baitfish in the area.

This is because spinners are made usually to resemble, or give an impression of, a fleeing baitfish, an easy meal, although some kinds of fish habitually attack lures larger than what is expected. But of course you cannot expect a five-inch trout to hit a four-inch spinner, would you?

You can also take a look at your favorite commercially made fishing lure and match the colors and patterns on the commercial lure.

So use a spinner blade appropriate to the average size of predator fish you are after. As to style, you can refer to the above information which design might be more suited to your kind of fishing and locality, based on water and maybe weather conditions.

Generally speaking, colder weather calls for slower retrieve speeds, so the Colorado or a blade of similar shape with a lot of flash will be the one of choice.

Conversely, in clear summer waters, the Willowleaf design would be the appropriate blade, being made for faster retrieves in greater depths.

Clevis

There are a few different clevis styles, from the stirrup or shackle type to the quick change one made of plastic, and the folded clevis. Each type is usable for use in in-line spinners, but not all will be appropriate or truly effective.

For instance, plastic clevises may be too large for spinners in the smaller sizes, whose blades will have difficulty spinning the relatively heavier clevises water resistance-wise. Better to use the finer and lighter wire or stirrup clevis. The idea is to achieve a good blade-to-clevis balance: the blade should not too heavy as to bend the clevis closed, which should not be too large as to resist the blade’s tendency to turn or spin.

The folded clevis is basically a metal ring folded in the middle to create a U-shaped form, while the wire clevis has a coiled part through which the spinner wire is threaded. Some wire clevises have tiny locking hooks at one end to facilitate opening and closing and, thus, changing the blade.

Other components

As stated above there are other components used when making in-line spinners that makes an individual spinner different from the others of the same general description. An example is the feather or hair used to dress the hook, both to disguise it as well as give it an enticing tail-like appearance.

In some designs the feather or hair is replaced by a short length of colored tubing, usually for the same reason.

Some trout fishermen design the tail feathers to look like a fly fishing fly, while others even actually attach a whole fly to the spinner. Though the fly is technically not a true component of a spinner, the tandem often is effective: the spinner acts as attractant and the fly the bait. Which only proves creativity can be successful, and it should not be overlooked in making in-line spinners.