Santa arrived early

Santa arrived early, ordered a curado 301dsz, its a new style curado, my old one is excellent but they just brought this out in a new size so i have replaced my calcutta 201 on my dave lumb fooler. Managed to sneak in braid and a few lures as well without santa knowing about it.

Got some reaper tails, and spoke to dave lumb about how to fish them, gonna give them and creatures a blast next year, have mastered jigging other types of lures the last two years but gonna try these new ones next year. Just waiting for some stand up jig heads to arrive frm lumby then we are cooking with gas.

A river runs through it

Long ago rain fell on mud and became rocks,

1/2 a billion years ago,

But even before that, before the rocks, are the words of god

And if you and i and listen all our lifes we might just hear those words

Menteith 3rd November

26lber from Menteith, fantastic, Me and Si had a balls up of a start, pushed off couldn't get the engine down, ran into rons boat, the fuel pipe came off squirted about 2 pints of fuel all over the place, lost the cap of the engine, then we eventually got going.

We started trolling around the islands, Si had a few to 11lbs, then we drifted around the island where i got 2 on castaic sbt 8" rainbow trout, then we drifted past a hump and a dock and i got one on a platinum castaic 8" rainbow trout. Atfter this we found a wind line where it was very still i had a 16 then a 26 one a chartreuse squirko, Si then had a 18 (new pb) of a 6" kickin shad. After this we caught a few fish on the other side of the island Si on perch replicants me on the same sbt castaic

Caught a fish with a salmo skinner in its mouth, no trace or anything, a bit odd




New gear tested out

Squirko, got the 26 on it so canny complain

http://www.smokeysmuskieshop.com/RapidCat/catalog/pagetemplate.cfm?template=/RapidCat/catalog/productList.cfm&GroupId=4060&Current_CompanyId=1196

Creatures and Reapers

Tried to pour these moulds and it went pear shaped, the balsa blanks were painted with spray filler to smooth out there surface i used aerosol cavity wax as a mould release which never worked as you can see above as its all stuck in the mould. The top one was poured with one full pour of about 300ml of resin, it was so hot whilst the chemical reaction that cures the resin took place the cardboard around the mould was smoking. The second was done in three stages so as not to let the heat build up as much, however this worked the opposite and the heat of the second and third pours warped the first pour which is the surface the rubber gets poured onto.


I am going to try to put a bit work into these moulds to see if i can restore the mould surfaces, but i have another ace card up my sleeve to try before i give up.

Saturday Trip 20th Oct

Bloody lovely day, pike fishing was crap though, only managed one on a yellow perch Castaic, it was just a jack but at least it was a fish. Just after this a huge brown trout of about 5-6lb came up off the reef and looked at the same Castaic, bloody lovely fish, I would have preferred that than any pike of any size.


Later on in the day there was an almighty bang like a shotgun going off, it turned out it was a outboard engine, it banged then went on fire, and nearly took the boat out with it, the guys chucked the outboard into the water and put the fire out on the boat, we had to rescue them and tow them back to the boat hire place for them to tell the guy they had ditched his engine.







New gear tested out


6" Yellow Perch Castaic, This one caught the fish today so I can't complain, i was trying to save it for the lake, it will need extensive supergluing


8" Castaic Platinum Swimbait, the worked very well until i rigged a stinger then the action went from it, then the hook retaining magnet fell out of it, maybe write to Castaic and complain about this lure


Lindy Fish Handling glove, these gloves are great except they have changed them and put a big bloody seam down the index finger which makes them hard to use, maybe write to Lindy as well


Goretex XCR Trango Jacket, I have been trying to change my fishing clothes into mountain walking clothes as my pike fishing is going to take a different turn next year, i like hiking into the mountains to find my pike, fishing clothes are cheap crap and too heavy. This jacket is the ultimate waterproof outer shell, pockets, breathable pit zips etc etc, what more could you need

Old shads/castaics

I've been fishing a lot of shads and have loads of chewed up plastic kicking about, being a horder i knew there was no point in chucking in out, so i decided to make a couple of moulds to melt this plastic down and pour my own lures, here are two prototypes, one is more or less a creature, the mould will make creatures and creature spins, then the second is a reaper type lure but with the twist of an added tail for extra attraction

Custom painted ERC Tripple D's and Double D's

Menteith lure day is looming and so is the sale of my house so all my airbrushing gear is being packed asap, time to get the finger out and turn some white bits of plastic in to something remotely fishable. Got the blanks from musky mania along with a pile of others, good cheap way to buy them if you have the know how to paint them.

Alastair Mcphee rates these lures as some of his best so i got some colour patterns from him and knocked these up quickly before the Menteith day out.

Musky Mania Blanks http://www.muskymania.com/