Back in the day, when anglers weren’t satisfied with the lures they brought home from the tackle shop, they just whittled on them, dipped them in dye, snipped them shorter, or melted different plastic lures together for a hybrid design. I remember Walt at Fisherman’s Choice in Arizona secretively motioned us to the back of the shop and offered us a chance to buy Michael’s topwater lure for $25. We bought it, of course, but it was a Pop-R with a portion of the front whittled off. The lure works like a charm, and I still use those things.
Some hardcore fishermen would melt lead and make their jigs with specialty hooks. One guy I know carved molds and hand-poured giant worms (15 inches and more) that catch monster bass, especially at night on our desert reservoirs. Fishermen are always looking for ways to improve or create their lures. The proof can be found with Gabriel Prero. He is an industrial designer and has a friend who is an avid bass fisherman. Prero designs and sells cufflinks on Shapeways.com, so he was already familiar with 3-D printing. He and his friend started BioSpawn Lure Company, knowing that almost any lure design they could come up with would be easy to turn into reality.
Founded in 2007, Shapeways is a company based in the Netherlands. It now has offices in New York. The company offers 3-D printing services and shipping. A company does not have to store inventory – they have Shapeways print and ship the items on demand.
Their website has several different lures, including hard baits and spoons. The site is similar to Etsy, where artists sell their creations through the website. Shapeways prints in many different materials, including metals, and can produce incredibly intricate shapes that are not easily achieved with other manufacturing methods.
Gabriel and his friend designed some edgy, new soft-bait designs. The bait designs were created on special software and sent to Shapeways, who printed the molds and returned them to BioSpawn. The results are incredibly cool lures that appeal to bass as much as to fishermen. It took quite a bit of fine-tuning, and one of the bait designs took a dozen attempts. Even so, they could send samples to their package designers so everything would be ready when the final product was nailed down.
Shapeways does not make the soft baits. The company creates mold-making forms. The baits would be nearly impossible to make any other way. Take a look at the BioSpawn craw, for example. The paddle-tail antennae, the hook slot, and the patented claw design are incredibly detailed. Take a moment and picture yourself trying to carve a mold that detailed. Impossible. Their stickbait is phenomenal. It has a jointed exoskeleton that reminds me of a Japanese downspout chain. The action is unlike anything you’ve seen before.
All this is made possible by 3-D printing and the creative minds of an artist and a bass fisherman. Technology is fantastic.