Slow Progress As you may have noticed production is somewhat slow progress lately. There are many reasons and some excuses. Maybe first of all Piketrapz has never been about producing lures instead this is my way of sharing the products of my hobby. Sometimes production will simply be slower due to other priorities. This is also one of the main reasons I do not build to order, you would find yourself at the end of a slow progressing waiting list and I don’t think that is fair to any of us.

Hybrids Maybe it is the ultimate solution the stinger problems on softbaits to simply skip half of the software part replacing it with a hard body. No wights screw eyes or stingers to bother about that can break or work its way loose. The soft part remains where it makes the most difference, in the tail. Next these will go through a test period to fine tune swimming action and prove their fish catching abilities.

Finished This one took a lot of time but was also a lot of fun to carve. No photo finish or foil instead this one is covered in silver metal leaf. Perfection in imperfection when every scratch from the knife shows through the metal leaf. The lure is a starter lure design weighted upside down with one hook on the back for weedless action. This is the same design as I used for the lure building contest last spring.

Baby Perch A couple of Baby Perch from the latest batch. I don’t make that many of these but I wanted to try out a copper foil under the Perch laminate to match the colours of Perch from darker waters. With some copper flakes on the back it turned out real nice. The pictures show a copper foiled version and an alu foiled version for comparison. The copper foiled one will be a sponsor lure for St:Anna Pike Open.

Generic Jerk Some of you have been waiting for shallow versions of the Generic Jerk. The Generic is now available in three buoyancy levels. Shallow (SH) that will swim just under the surface leaving a wake down to about 50cm. Hover (HO) is a sinking bait, but just barely sinking. The Slow Sink (SS) has a few grams of negativ buoyancy without hooks and will sink slowly. You can read more about the Generic Jerk on the project page.

Piktrapz Jack Since Karma 16 I have many inquiries for the Jack and now finally have a few in stock. This is the natural coloured version without rattle chamber. I have started to mark these with the buoyancy, Slow Sink (SS) and HOver (HO). All Jacks built this far have been slow sink, the hover version is new. Hover is not a suspending bait, it is sinking bait but has more buoyancy and will sink significantly slower than the slow sink.

A batch of Baby Generics You may have seen the prototypes before but this is the first production batch of the Baby Generic. The production version is basically the same as the prototype, just not with the epoxy and paint defects. This one I got right from the start. Also, I started playing with video. The idea is that you will get a better feel for the bait on video than using only pictures.

The latest batch of piketrapz A new batch of piketrapz is out. This one delivers jacks and generics. They passed their swim test here today and are all somewhere between very slow sink and suspending here in the brackish water of the baltic sea. Since I use a quite heavy titanium leader they can probably be made suspending by using a lighter leader, it also means that in freshwater they will likely be slow sink versions.

Back in the workshop My summer break has been a little longer this year but now I am back in the workshop. The hand has healed well but instead my drywheel has been giving me trouble bending an axel causing epoxi to end up in the wrong place. Hopefully that is now fixed, we will see tomorrow. I noticed something interesting weighing the next batch, I have oak that have lower density than the beechwood, usually it is the other way around but 20 year old oak can dry up really well.

A first laminated cast This is a peek of project that has been going on for a while now, a Piketrapz softbait. I have just finished the first silicone mold and done a few tests casts. The first Piketrapz softbait is a little roach, these are about 70g with an internal wire rig. Prototypes for evaluation I have made a few prototype casts for evaluation, eyes are still missing. I will be evaluating both airbrush + dipped baits and laminates depending on color scheme.