Making Lures
- Thread starter baby bass
- Start date
making lures is an addictive time and money intensive hobby. My first suggestion is to not get started and save your wallet 
My second suggestion is to cross over to the dark side and throw caution into the wind and hit up tackleunderground.com, a great lure making forum.
I've made crankbaits and swimbaits out of wood, tied flies, crafted wire lures (mostly inline spinners) and poured my own soft plastics. By far the most successful at catching fish for me have been the homemade soft plastics, but I've also put more time and money into it. I probably spent $400 or so to get into soft plastics, but with a 5 gallon bucket of liquid plastisol (the base that you heat up to cook and become the solid flexible plastic material), but it IS really easy to make baits that will catch fish.
Basically you can get started making soft plastics with some raw plastisol, a pyrex measuring cup, a microwave, some molds, and some plastic dyes to color your baits.
The cheapest to get started was making inline spinners. For under $50 you can make a whole bunch. For a little more you can get lead molding equipment and cast your own spinnerbaits.
For the wood stuff, a band saw really is necessary IMO, so that's an added minimum expense of $100, not to mention other carving tools, materials (wood and metal/plastic hardware such as screw hangers, split rings, and crankbait lips), and the BIGGEST expense for me: painting supplies. An airbrush, compressor, and paints will run your hundreds of dollars. You can paint without an airbrush of course and get great results, but I get MUCH more happiness out of painting with my airbrush.
Fly tying and fishing is a hobby unto itself, neither one I'm particularly experienced at. I mostly fly fish for bluegills, so really just about any fibers tied onto a small hook with some thread will catch fish. You can get into fly tying for <$100, but if you don't fly fish it's not exactly the best way to get started making lures that you will use. For bass and such, bigger flies (particularly poppers and long streamers) are really cool.
My second suggestion is to cross over to the dark side and throw caution into the wind and hit up tackleunderground.com, a great lure making forum.
I've made crankbaits and swimbaits out of wood, tied flies, crafted wire lures (mostly inline spinners) and poured my own soft plastics. By far the most successful at catching fish for me have been the homemade soft plastics, but I've also put more time and money into it. I probably spent $400 or so to get into soft plastics, but with a 5 gallon bucket of liquid plastisol (the base that you heat up to cook and become the solid flexible plastic material), but it IS really easy to make baits that will catch fish.
Basically you can get started making soft plastics with some raw plastisol, a pyrex measuring cup, a microwave, some molds, and some plastic dyes to color your baits.
The cheapest to get started was making inline spinners. For under $50 you can make a whole bunch. For a little more you can get lead molding equipment and cast your own spinnerbaits.
For the wood stuff, a band saw really is necessary IMO, so that's an added minimum expense of $100, not to mention other carving tools, materials (wood and metal/plastic hardware such as screw hangers, split rings, and crankbait lips), and the BIGGEST expense for me: painting supplies. An airbrush, compressor, and paints will run your hundreds of dollars. You can paint without an airbrush of course and get great results, but I get MUCH more happiness out of painting with my airbrush.
Fly tying and fishing is a hobby unto itself, neither one I'm particularly experienced at. I mostly fly fish for bluegills, so really just about any fibers tied onto a small hook with some thread will catch fish. You can get into fly tying for <$100, but if you don't fly fish it's not exactly the best way to get started making lures that you will use. For bass and such, bigger flies (particularly poppers and long streamers) are really cool.