urethane type varnish or an oil based wood primer as
both tend to repel water quite well in my experience.
In this case I used some white wood primer as I had a
small amount left over in a tin on a shelf in the garage.
I used a brush to apply the primer but would have
dipped the lures instead if I had had enough of the primer to do so. I applied two coats of primer allowing
24 hrs between coats and sanding the lures thoroughly
before each coat was applied.
Balancing the Lures
The lure in the picture above obviously needs some
weight added to it, in this case I want it to sit horizontally in the water, slightly nose down and with the
back of the lure only just proud of the waters surface.
Adding some weight a little at a time and changing the
hanging position of the weights on a trial and error
basis resulted in the balanced lure shown in the picture
below - perfect!
To balance the lures I am going to need a container of
water, some hooks, split rings, an assortment of lead
weights and some method of attaching the weights
temporarily to the lures. I took the hooks and split
rings off a similar sized lure I have that I don't use
much. I'll need to do some research to find out what
the best hooks for these type of jerkbaits would be but
for now I'll just use what I already have. The first
thing I did was attach split rings, hooks and a large
cross-lok link to the lures and drop them in some water to see how they would sit without any weighting.
The picture below shows one of the lures floating in
my kitchen sink (just about deep enough for balancing
surface lures) before any weighting is added to it. As
you can see the lure is sitting slightly 'nose up' and
keeled over to one side a little.
How I Attached the Weights for Balancing
Attaching the weights for balancing is quite easy. I
simply tied a short piece of fishing line onto a suitably
sized elastic band, put the elastic band on over the lure
and slid different sized drilled weights onto the line
keeping them in position with a small split shot. When