BLOG: The lost art of backyard lure making

WE live in a throw-away society with a penchant for acquiring an ever so increasing amount of goods and services.The trend is also apparent in the fishing game – what we gain with the convenience of easily accessible mass produced goods we lose in motivation and skill; it’s so much easier to buy something these days than to make it yourself.

One of the consequences of the trend towards consumption is the dying art of backyard manufacture. I don’t hear of too many younger folk building rods and suspect that backyard lure making is a dying art.

As a kid I remember hunting around the house to find a mop or broom then sitting behind the shed with a blunt hacksaw trying to hack off a few inches of broom handle to carve out a lure. Before making the lure I’d grab a file and round off the edge of the shortened broom to cover my tracks, but would come unstuck when mum went to sweep up around the house and found the newly shortened, weathered broom sporting a cleanly sanded tip.

The blanks were carved using a blunt knife, filed with a file that was suited to filing metal and smoothed with worn out bits of sandpaper. Paper clips were usually used as eyelet wire and a cassette tape holder was destroyed to make the bib. Under my bed I had a little timber box with some tools and lure blanks along with a tube of really strong glue – it was a closely guarded kit and I would constantly eye off the old man if he ever mentioned the need to glue something.That blunt hacksaw was used to cut a slot for the bib and I would somehow managed to manually bore a couple of holes into the blank for the eyelets because we didn’t have a drill.

I only ever had one hook on my lures because making the hole for the middle hook was really hard work and I wasn’t confident that it would be strong. Any paint lying around became my favourite colour and I’d somehow manage to rummage through the fishing kit to find a spare split ring and bronze treble that some other lure didn’t need.

Filling the bath up with water was a momentous occasion and I’d sit there with a few lures then tune them after reading about it all in the mags; the end result was usually a really basic looking little thing that would wiggle or swim at a slow and quite specific retrieve speeds - the sense of achievement was immense and I’d fill the bath at every possible occasion to check that the lures still worked.

Those initial experiences spawned a number of creative lure making pursuits but more importantly added to the learning curve and appreciation for all things fishing.

Last night I tied a few saltwater flies for an assault on the local bonito and salmon population – I used a bit of old braid to bind some flashy stuff to a hook and used some fast setting epoxy to build a head which was really tough to work with. A pair of vice grip pliers held the hook securely but weren’t ideal. I have a few store bought flies and am on a steep learning curve with fly gear, however, a fortnight ago I enjoyed a fun day in the saltwater using similar flies I’d tied myself – the flies looked average but appeared translucent in the water and appealed to the fish that were feeding on whitebait making the day far more memorable.

While we all lead busy and hectic lives it’s worth taking a few moments out to sit down with the younger generation and encourage them to discover and innovate – let them tie their own knots, rig their own outfits and afford them the time to help with making a few lures. And don’t get angry if the broom is hacked short or there are timber blanks lying around in the bathroom because through the eyes of a young fisherman, a bathtub is the world’s best test tank!