I got a new mold not long ago to inject 2 1/2″ Crappie Flukes and gave it a go as soon as the winter chill was off it. I did a core shot using a “supposedly” thin pearl and with a blue/gold micro-glitter core. The pearl turned out to be a tad too opaque to really let the core color out but one can see it in the picture if he looks hard. The purple bait is a color drop bait made by hand pouring the cavities of one side of the mold. Then a couple small drops of raw colorant are placed at random spots along the half-bait. The mold is closed flat and clamped to the bench top and an injection of clear is made to finish the process. As the injected plastic flows in it randomly spreads the colorant dots making some really nice looking baits. Two or more colors of colorant can be dotted on the half-baits to make some real eye popper baits, but I kept it simple until I knew the mold was going to behave. Happy with this mold.
Yesterday I picked up the companion tail mold to the bait mold. I gave it a good washing to get machining oil and cuttings cleaned off and then injected a re-melted Junebug as a test plastic. All’s good on that front so I’m a happy bird. After trimming the tails from the injection runner I started imagining how some eyes would look at the head end of the tail section but there wasn’t enough room to secure an eye favorably so I heated up some re-melt chartreuse and dipped just barely the flat, cut end and let it cool a bit then re-dipped to get the nifty rounded head. Then I added 3 mm eye and dipped the head end in clear plastic to seal the eyes. The resulting baits measure spot on at 1 3/4″….a perfect size for cold water, post cold front and down-sizing crappie angling. Basically the one mold will make its own baits as well as the tails for its parent bait. Two bangs for the buck. I like that. And it just goes to show…there’s always room for improvement.
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