Make Your Own Top Water Minnow Fishing Lures

Inspired by msolek's instructable and looking for a simple excuse to use my lathe, I decided to knock out some fishing lures. These are alternately know as"Stickbaits" and "Cigar baits".

You'll want to select a fairly low density soft wood for your lures, Spanish Cedar is a classic choice, but any cedar or pine should work fine.  Start by ripping the wood into 3/4 inch square by 6 inch pieces.

Use your lathe to turn the wood into a nice piscatorial spindle shape. If you don't have a lathe, I suggest you build one.

Since we're going to get these wet, it is necessary to seal the wood. If you have a particularly pretty grain pattern you could use a clear finish. I choose Krylon spray paint, since it was at hand. The thumbtack was used as a handle for painting.

Hint: Stick the tack somewhere where the hardware will mask the hole.

I purchased my hardware from Penn State Industries. I've had nothing but positive experiences with them.

The location of the hardware was eyeballed and the screw holes started with an awl, since the wood is soft, pre-drilling is unnecessary.

You'll notice I only used one hook, that's just a personal preferences, but lures with masses of treble hooks that tangle in the tackle box annoy me, yeah I'm talking about you, Helin Flatfish.

If you don't want to buy special hardware, I'd suggest just using screw eyes and maybe some ballast to achieve neutral bouyancy.

Okay, so I'm the worlds worst painter. ;-)  But grab some of your wife's nailpolish (uummm Yeah, it's the wife's) and decorate your lure. I used silver and some glow in the dark OPI I got clearanced at Ulta.

Umm, okay, where's the pic of a big fish?  Yeah, so I got skunked today, 3 hours of flailing the water with artificials and naturals and nadda, let's blame it on the cold front. On the other hand, they ran very true, the only tuning was to bend the lip up which made them dive deeper and wiggle tighter.

If I catch a big fish, I'll add a pic ;-)