Fishing Lure Making & Design - Eye Spots

TackleMaking.com - Lure Making & Design - Eye Spots on Fishing Lures
This might help some, if eyes are your thing.

Cool article, thanks for posting. Have to do experimenting and see if I notice any difference

Copied the article just in case they decide to move it on their site.....

Fishing Lure Making & Design - Eye Spots
http://www.tacklemaking.com/images/fish-eye.jpg
To make fishing lures that actually catch fish, you need to have a strong understanding of response triggers. A response trigger is a fishing lure characteristic that makes a predator feel compelled to strike at it. Although there are many opinions among fishing lure makers about which response triggers actually work, there is general agreement about the effectiveness of one trigger in particular - the "eye spot" (a.k.a "eyespots"). The eye spot is considered one of the single most effective triggers on a lure.
Research has shown that virtually all predator/prey relationships involve some sort of exchange of eye responses (such as making or avoiding eye contact) that sets the social order among species. Over time, the predator and prey species learn to interpret the intentions of each other by monitoring these physiological eye responses and reacting to them accordingly. For instance, a predator fish's pupils will typically get extremely small at the moment of attack while the target prey species' pupils will get very large at the same instant. Knowing that the predator fish expects its prey's pupils to rapidly dilate during the attack helps us, as luremakers, to design fishing lures that mimic this behavior and thus provide better strike triggers for the fish we are targeting. Likewise, knowing that a very small pupil is an aggressive sign that a fish is about to strike tells us we should avoid making eye spots with very small pupils because that could actually scare our target fish away!
In addition to the pupil sizes, the position of the eye in relation to the axis of the body also helps the predator anticipate the direction that the prey fish will go when it flees. Predator fish will watch the eyes of their prey and then gauge their angle of attack based on the direction the eye is facing and the level of dilation of the pupil. When the pupil gets big, it signals that the prey fish is about to flee, and the predator fish will attack at an angle that intercepts the prey fish. When you're designing lures, the pupil should always be facing in the direction of the line tie so the predator fish can anticipate the forward movement of your lure as you retrieve it and make contact with the hook during the strike.
Fishing Lure Making Tips for Eye Spots
- The pupil should be large on your lures in comparison to the overall eye (see "Prey" image above)
- If you're making an eye with only one color (a single dot), the eye spot should be darker than the lure's surrounding body color
- The pupil should always face in the direction that the lure travels during retreive (on typical lures, it should face the line tie)
- The eye boundaries should be crisp and well contrasted against the lure's body color

Painting Clean Eye Spots on Lures
There are many different techniques for adding eyes to fishing lures, including stickers, stencils, brushes, and countless other techniques. Without dismissing the value of these other approaches, my personal favorite is the common "nail dropping" technique. With this technique, you literally "drop" a small dot of paint from the flat end of a nail onto the lure's surface and allow it to spread out into a perfect circle and dry. During this process, you must take care to prevent the nail from actually touching the lure...the only thing that should touch the lure is the paint! Use different size nail heads to create eye spots of different diameters and allow the paint to dry between drops.

Thanks for the tips Attica"...i was told of this method"but had no idea" that the paint was to only touch the jig itself"..."NOT" the "NAIL"... I'm beginning to understand the facts given me may "not" always be to the specifications for its best intentions"!I "should" re define who I choose to take my tips,and suggestions from for now on"as I always tell it as i see it",not everyone follows the same rules and may have selfish intentions...:confused:Thanks again.Will try it again later tonight.7ml. eye dropper bottles work well to hold ,and mix paint for me very well so's to keep the rest of my major paint source the same:)

I want to know how many millions in grant money was spent to figure this out :)

JJ

I bet it is more action than the eyeball pupil being big or small

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Originally Posted by laserdoc

I bet it is more action than the eyeball pupil being big or small

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Yea, I think theyre giving fish just a tad too much credit for their smarts. I think the 'looks' of the jigs are more detailed for the shoppers and the colors and action of the jigs are what the crappies strike....JMO though.:rolleyes:

Very informative,I make my eyes somewhere in between,been using the nail head system for about 15 years and I'm happy with the results. I do touch the head sometimes though which makes the jig stick to the nail sometimes.Not a major catastrophe,but can be annoying. I nail the nails into 1/4 inch dowel rods cut into 6 inch pieces,get a little paint in the jar lid and away I go.

I use tooth picks one cut just where it starts getting fat and other just take the tip off works great for me. But I know guys who dont paint eyes at all and they catch just as many fish so who knows

JJ

I just like the bigger eyeballs... why? gives the jig that "oh shoot!" look!!! hahahaa

I use the combination of a nail and hemostat. The nail is aligned at a 45-60 degree angle to the hemostat. I dip the nail head into the cap of a bottle of artist's acrylic paint and then apply it to the jig head by touch.

It's a two-handed process.

Later on, I coat the entire jig head with epoxy glue or polyurethane varnish.

Nails used: Brads and finishing nails.