By looking at all of these perfectly built lures, the thought might occur that it is simple to build your own lures. And furthermore you may think that every handmade lure is a perfect one right away. Of course with the right action and a great catching ability.

Guess again!

There is a lot involved and many a lure-builder can vouch for that. When they look back at their early lure-building days and at all the no-good-to-catch-a-fish-on-them-lures, you would hear some great stories. But all in all it is a necessary and educational time, in which every lure-builder develops his personal style.

That is the reason for this review. For once we aren't talking about a perfectly built lure, but a crankbait built by a newcomer to lure-building, who developed his personal style from this crankbait.

Let me get one thing clear before we begin: this is a very good first, when taking into consideration that the lure-builder in fact never built a lure before. But as you can imagine there were some faults to this crankbait. I'll describe the main ones in this review. To start with, take a look at the diving-lip. It is placed too far to the back. Because of that, the crankbait will never achieve the right running-depth, but it will suspend slightly below the surface.

Next I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the scale of front part vs. tail part is out of balance. A better scale would be front part 2/3 of the entire length, tail part 1/3 of the entire length. When you look at the picture you can see that the tail part is a lot longer. This means that the lure's action is much reduced due to having too much resistance in the water.

Furthermore the treble hooks that have been added are too large. The hooks' shank is too long and the distance between two hooks on the trebles was too large. When you take a look at the crankbait from above, you should just see the points of the trebles.

Was there absolutely nothing good about this crankbait, I hear you ask. But of course there was, it lies very balanced in the surface. By saying this I mean that it tracks true.

You can catch pike on this crankbait, no problem, but it's up for improvement. And that is what we are all looking for. So now I hope you understand the reason behind this review. It is meant to point out a few important issues for the newcomers to lure- building. Absolutely not to discourage anyone who might considers building his own lures. By the way, I'm absolutely sure that we will be seeing some mighty fine lures in the near future!

Henk