Making Wooden Fishing Lures - Are Eyes On Lures Important?

For those out there that make your own wooden fishing lures, the question is this:
"Does painting or glueing eyes on my wooden lures improve their fish catching ability?"
Everyone has their own opinion, but many seriously good lure makers argue that having prominent eyes on your wooden fishing lures will always improve catch rates. After all, fish strike at the head of baitfish, right? Fish home in on the eye, don't they?




There are definitely times when having eyes painted on your lures doesn't matter a bit.....
I consider myself a thinking angler, so I like to analyse my fishing situation and adapt. So, take the case of throwing high speed chrome lures at longtail tuna or other pelagic speedsters. Usually this style of fishing involves casting your offering in front of fast moving schools of fish that compete in packs. They don't look closely at a lure because there simply isn't time, they just smash it before the opportunity passes. Under these conditions a barrel sinker and hook cranked at full speed can be as effective as any lure and the size, shape, color or exact location of the eyes on a lure aren't important.
But, there are other times when a wooden lure with prominently painted eyes is critical to your catch rates!
Our local bass love to munch on glassfish, which are small local fish that is translucent olive in color but has prominent, silver eyes and gill covers. The eyes are often the most visible thing when these baitfish are schooling in numbers, and I custom make wooden lures that are small and olive green with big, silver eyes and gill covers. Well designed custom lures like this can work a treat when all bought lures fail to turn a scale.
Or another example: Trout and salmon feed can feed aggressively on glass eels at certain times of year. These are the transparent juvenile eels that are making their way back into fresh water after having hatched in the ocean and they can look like a big school of eyes swimming upstream! For these, I make wooden lures that are long, slender, drab colored and with prominent, oversized, eyes.
Or yet another example, this time from our estuaries. At certain times of the year black bream and sea trout feed exclusively on whitebait moving upstream from their marine nursery areas. These are slender, translucent silver fish with prominent silver eyes that are quite large for the size of the fish. Can you see a pattern emerging?
So is having large eyes on your wooden lures only important when the local baitfish have large eyes?
Good question! In my opinion it's about three things:

• the hunting habits of the fish species you are targeting,
• how much time they have to observe your wooden lure before deciding whether to take it
• whether eyes are one of the more prominent features of the local baitfish

What does all of this mean for those who make wooden lures? Well, to wrap all of this up, I can't think of a single instance when having eyes painted on your wooden lures will result in you catching less fish. But, I can think of instances where not having an eye could definitely hurt your chances of catching trophy fish. So, I'd advise putting eyes on all of your lures, and make them as big as you like!

Dr Greg Vinall has been hand crafting custom fishing lures for decades from both wood and plastic. Why? Because he's proven time and time again that custom fishing lures allow you to catch more fish, bigger fish and have a HUGE edge over competitors and fishing buddies who use off the shelf commercial lures.
Greg now shares the substantial lure making skills and knowledge that he has amassed over this time through his web site and articles.
If you found the content of this article informative and would like to receive similar wooden lure making information via email, you can subscribe to Greg's weekly wooden lure making tips by completing the online form at
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See my previous post:Making Wooden Fishing Lures - 5 Ways To Make Your Lures Catch More Fish

 

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