Fantastic crankbaits made by Janne Ovaska
I have been fortunate to be able to try some of Janne's handmade crankbaits during my recent trip to Sweden. Janne is known as JIO on our forum. It was a real pleasure to fish with these crankbaits because they all had a beautiful action and the caught some nice pike as well. During the first day of fishing, I caught a pike of 84cm on it. This pike had totally engulfed the bait and it put up a very good fight. The next day I landed a pike of 77cm on the first cast. This pike slammed against the side of the boat several times so finally he broke the lip on this crankbait, rendering it useless for the remainder of the trip. I have never experienced anything like that before!
Here you can see the 84cm pike I caught on one of Janne's crankbaits in the "no-pike" color.
These crankbaits are made from abachi wood en they are fitted with a through-wire system, something that can be seen on rapala crankbaits as well. Janne however uses a typical Finnish crankbait lip called a "saddle"- lip. If you look closely at the picture below you can see that this lip has the shape of the part of a horse-riding saddle where you sit. The special thing about these crankbaits is that Janne uses a propionate lacquer to act as a primer. Read the article Janne wrote about this topic. It makes the bait more solid. Furthermore Janne uses airbrush to paint his magnificent color patterns. The colors he sprayed for me are truly pieces of art. Especially this color he strangely calls "no-pike", did really well in Sweden. Despite this name-joke (or should I say thanks to this name-joke?) this color produced a good number of pike for me. Until I lost it that is! Luckily Janne replaced this one for me!
In this picture you can see some of the crankbaits I'm talking about. The one on top is a new crankbait sprayed in that "no-pike" color, as a replacement for the one I lost. The middle one is the same one but in a "natural perch" color. The bottom one is that 16cm crankbait on which I landed a 77cm pike. Luckily Janne was able to replace the lip for me.
After spraying these nice patterns Janne dips his lures several times in a clear propionate lacquer. As a result, his crankbaits are very solid, they run true on every cast and they catch pike. What more do you need? Thanks again Janne!!
A small pike caught on one of Janne's crankbaits.
Dirk Van Nieuwenhove.