June 15, 2018

Sunfish Swimbait Reboot

STL files for this design are available on Printables and can be found HERE.

This is a reboot of my Realistic Sunfish Jointed Swimbait Lure.  The original version really didn’t work out so well even after many design changes and different trials.  After learning about printing on fabric and making several other swimbaits in that manor I decided to revisit this design one last time.  I basically took the solid body version I did and chopped it up into five sections to turn it into a fully joined lure that is printed on a screen materiel. I’m not going to show the build process because it’s the same process as I used on my Swimbait Minnow instead I will just show the painting process I used for this bait.

The finished printed and assembled lure was first sprayed with a flat white primer for the base coat.  (I didn’t do any fishing work (besides edge sanding) on this lure and I did not use a filler primers so the bait looks a little rough.)

For color I start with a pearl yellow along the belly of the lure.

I then sprayed a Pearl green on the top of the lure, but it was a little too transparent for me…

…so I followed that up with a lime green coat.

Next I added a little orange to the belly.

After that a moss green was spray again on the top.  This allows for a nice blending of the colors.

I then sprayed some pearl black on top of the moss green to further darken it up.  All the fins were also hit to darken them up also.

A splash of white was then sprayed on the cheek area…

… and a little blue on top of that.

Finally I hand paint on some final details like the eyes and gills.

And lastly I coat the lure in epoxy and spin it on the drying rack overnight.  (A little bit of black glitter was also added to the epoxy in some places to add more detail.)

Here the finished lure is ready to hit the water.

This is a 4 second clip of testing the action of the prototype. (The lure was just dragged along side my boat in this video.)

All Information, Pictures, and Material is copyright © 2018 by Stephen Thone and may not be used for any personal or commercial purposes without the consent of the author. All rights reserved. The Author makes no guarantees or warranties as to the accuracy or completeness of, or results to be obtained from accessing and using the Information herein.