Great Lakes Lure Maker

I live in Beaver Dams, recently moved here. I trap coyotes, and since moving, have no places to trap. (I see your in Addison) I run about 100 sets a yr, all season and can put a hurting on coyote populations. I sell the coyotes alive, to a dealer in Endicott, he comes and pics them up once a day.(only did this one season so far, got $100 each) I would be interested trapping them, and possibly teaching you how to, if your interested. It's a lot of fun! Almost like Christmas every morning. Never know what your gonna find on the trap line! Bobcats, fishers, reds, greys, and of course Coyotes. I have also hunted them at night, but it can be a long night with little or no results most of the time, then there are the nights they seem to jump right in your lap. I find that mouth calls can be used with more success than electronic calls. I use a loud siren to get them to howl back and locate them. Saves a lot of time than trying to howl and get a response. Another tip, Fresh mowed hay will bring in coyotes and fox. The hay is littered with rodents and snakes. They even run the rows in broad day light while the tractor is still mowing. I always carried a 243 with a scope when mowing hay. Its kinda like a shooting gallery some days.

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Motor out, fixed, and back in and running in just 2 days! That didn't take you long. Nice job Nick!

Great Lakes Lure co. makes 44's and other sizes that Sutton made. They sell for $4.00 each. made from Stainless Steel. Pm me if interested in looking at what we have to offer. Just a little history here, Kausch Trolling Spoons (now owned by GLLC) was the first lure company to make the 44, and other sizes Sutton made. Kausch dates back to the late 1800's and was quite popular by early 1900's. One patent in particular dates back to 1906, for the "Silver Soldier". This lure fetches as much as $400- $500 as a collectible in the original box. Without the box, usually sells for around $100. Original Keuka Wobblers sell for as much as $40- $60 as well. Kausch was originally from Bath NY.

Thank you! I have some Oakie Doakies available now (the double lure). limited colors, but more are in the paint and buff shop now. Just need to find the time to get them finished, but I can take orders that can be filled quickly. Heavy troll lures are on their way soon, as the metal was just ordered today. If your interested, pm me your email and I will send you color's, sizes, and prices. Jason

Update: Metal is ordered and on its way! We should be blanking lures soon! We purchased a small amount of .060 stainless, enough to run a few thousand lures. This is different metal and from a new supplier, so we are only gonna run a small run of lures this time and see how we like the product. We have approx. 540 of these lures spoken for, so we needed to get this process moving, and this was the quickest way to get some product out and buy some time to iron out the rest of the details. We should have GL4's ready by the time fall copper pulling season is good. As soon as the metal is here and were blanking lures, I will post some pics of this process. Hopefully it will be soon. Next step is pierce, logo and form all these blanks and send them to paint, or buff shop. Thank you, Jason

I generally run my sensitivity at 60-65%, to avoid clutter, rigger ball "echo" and other un-wanted marks. If i'm looking for thermocline, I will sometimes need to raise the sensitivity into the 70's, but I always go back to mid 60's as a rule. I don't use any noise reduction at this setting either. I find mine is always correcting sens with reduction on. Proper greyline will separate bait and bottom, when bait piles on the bottom. The picture Sk8man posted was about as good as you could expect to get. It can be frustrating to dial one in if you don't have fish to mark. I would start with less sens and increase till you get a good picture with as little sens as needed.

Wow, thats incredible! completely missed Watkins area. Like apb said, what a year for storms.

Very nice! The first pic almost made me spit my coffee out from laughing! She looks pretty excited. You got a fishing partner there!

Sounds like "more coffee" was a good call!

Nice job Mike! Your off to a good year, and putting up a good run for club champion. Good luck, and see you on Owasco in Sept. Jason

I'm with you both on the "shop around" idea. I figured we would have some issues to solve, but not at every level. When we left the first day, it seemed as though we were on the same page with things, and we should be moving some metal around soon, but not the case. It seems as though they use a certain metal for a lot of products they make on a regular basis, and didn't want to get involved with other metal. I think that we will go back to purchasing the metal, and just pay the piece rate for the blanks. Seems to be less complication that way.

Beautiful fish! As stated before, would be nice to here the story on how he caught it.

That would be the Oakie Doakie. That lure was designed by a " hydro dynamics" program at Dick's shop. "Bennett Tool and Die". It took us several years to get the right combination of nose and tail to produce its action. All of our dies were made by Dick's shop. Far as im concerned, Dick Bennett was the best! Always excited about making lures, and always provided the best quality dies you could make. He helped us out enormously, and I couldn't say enough about him. Wish he was still with us! Sent from my C771 using Lake Ontario United mobile app

Thanks guys! Were in it for the long haul now. There has been a lot of talk between my dad and I now for the last 5 yrs about starting back up again. I hope things go a little smoother, but overcoming obstacles is always part of the game. I have a feeling the paint process changes will be the worst of it. Jason Sent from my C771 using Lake Ontario United mobile app

Update on the blanking process. So, Part of the reason I wanted to start this subject was so others could see what goes into manufacturing fishing lures, but also to give you an idea how difficult it can be to get this process started back up and to deal with "wrenches" that get thrown into the process. Today's post will be one of the "wrenches" in this process. I dropped off 3 dies early in July and ordered 6,000 blanks. 2,000 each, with a rush on the #4's. I even dropped off enough metal to get 1,000 of them right away. After some negotiation of terms and prices we agreed to proceed, and we shook hands in agreement. All I was waiting on was prices of metal, if I decided to buy it from them, and when I could expect to receive the blanks. 2 weeks go by and no word, so I call there and leave a message. Next day, no word, so now I email him and wait. 2 more days go by and he calls to tell me he is having difficulties with the metal we want and has some other issues he would like to discuss. I ask him to brief me the details in an email, and I would get back to him with answers. Keep in mind 2 of the 3 dies he got were brand new, and the 4 die has only punched 300 blanks before it was shelved. Here is the laundry list of obstacles that were brought up to be solved. First is the dies themselves. It was suggested that we have them sharpen our dies, change the strippers on 2 to a different kind (these are the new ones), and switch from 1 1/16 stock width to 1 1/4. The only problem with that is we have 15 other blanking dies that are all ready 1 1/16. Another issue is the waste. We purchase this metal by pound, and we need to limit the waste, since this metal is expensive. In the end, we decide to have them sharpen the dies, and change the 2 strippers to a different style. Same as the 3rd die. Keep the 1 1/16 width. Total cost to get this done, $600. I run a check down right away to get this process started. Second problem is the metal itself. We have always used 440 grade stainless steel. This is knife quality steel, highest in rust resistance and the best choice for what we are using it for. They offer 303 and 302, and only a 2B finish. (very dull). Not exactly what we wanted to here. Another issue is they want to buy it in sheets and cut it to length. (now I know why they want to change the width) We have always purchased it in rolls and have equipment to handle it, and feed it to the press.This presents another issue, the quality of the finish. It already will require heavy polishing to get the desired shine if we use their metal, but cutting sheets into strips will put a lot of scratches into the metal. and we have a saying when it comes to polishing, "it's all painless, except the stainless". 440 stainless is very hard, and doesn't polish very easily. Minimize the polishing saves a lot of money and time. There were also issues about price. Buying their metal was some how 3x's what was expected, (and lesser quality) so we have an obstacle to get over to proceed. We have always purchased "ultra high finish" steel. It comes with a vinyl coating on both sides and the finish is almost mirror like. The vinyl protects the finish during all the phases of stamping, and once removed, requires very little effort to polish it to the desired finish. Also, we were going to be charged $300 per die, to set it for a run. That adds another .15 per lure to the cost. We negotiated that fee away, and exchanged it for a new minimum order per die run. So now were back to negotiating. If we can't get what it is we want from them, (Waiting to here if they can) we will go back to purchasing metal from Ulbrich, and have to order larger quantities to justify the trucking, as well as make arrangements with the shop to receive it, so we don't have to handle it twice. This is where we left off, till we get more info, and can come to terms on what metal and where to purchase it from, we are back to waiting, however the 4's will get run right away with metal we dropped off. Since there are already about 12 dozen (a gross) spoken for, I would like to get them back as soon as possible. We will see how it goes from here. Till next time, Jason

No website as of yet. Were in the process of getting one started. I have posted some pics here. if you like, I can pm you details. Probably have to be tomorrow. Thank you, Jason Sent from my C771 using Lake Ontario United mobile app