Dinner is served....

[Eep3501]

I will hand it to you CTOM, You make some sure enough pretty baits. I made up about 5oz of some clear plastic with 1/16 tsp of the party glitter to try my hand at the hand pour portion in a Jacobs mold of the 1-1/2 inch shad body stinger tail 10 cavity mold, and lets suffice it to say I need a lot of practice. I will be using and reusing that plastic till I get it right. This process makes some very nice looking baits when executed right. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us not so imaginative folks.

[ctom]

Eep.... use old plastic and practice the hand pouring using spoons of various shapes. Teaspoons work best for crappie sized baits.  I have bags of old plastic that discolored in reheating or remelting that I use to stay in touch with the technique. I'll get a picture of a spoon that I favor for hand pouring bellies and post it here tomorrow.

[ctom]

Here is a picture showing the spoon I use to hand pour at the top with a modern teaspoon on the bottom. I found this spoon at a thrift store a long time ago but have since seen quite few. I actually have three of these that were bought together. I think I paid a dime apiece.

Notice the more pointed tip of the old spoon. This is super handy for controlling the flow of plastic when hand pouring smaller cavity portions.

[Eep3501]

Yes Sir, I can see where it's a better shape to pour with. Thank you. I need to hit some thrift/ antique stores and see what I can find...Thank you again.

[ctom]

If you keep at this injection stuff long enough you'll find all sorts of little 'helpers".

Those 2-1/4" Fry baits seen in the couple pictures in this thread have been some super good crappie baits for our boat. They're even better with a chartreuse tail.

The only downside I have found in making them as described is that the bright yellow belly and red throats done with the plastic dip want to bleed over time, even with the clear cover dip. I make a single mold-full of these when I need more and plan to use them up within a couple weeks.

Immediate ice-out and again in the fall when water temps are plummeting are the two best times to use this color pattern, my fishing buddy and I have found. I do know for fact that large crappies feed heavily on sunfish fry of an inch, inch and a quarter, under the ice and is one reason I started making this pattern to use as close to ice-up or ice-out as possible.

And these lil flat side baits are murder on the large crappies during the same time-frame. The orange on pearl in the lower left is an Ultra-light Rippin Rap. The others I airbrushed on blank baits. And they all hammer nice crappies. I don't think I have put a crappie smaller than 11" in the boat using thse guys.

[Eep3501]

Them sure are some purty looking little crank baits...