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Below is a collection of things I wish I knew when I first started out making bait. I’ll treat this as a living document and update it with new tidbits or random thoughts as I have them, but hopefully this will be enough to get you started. This is a fun hobby/undertaking/small business, or whatever your goals are or you choose to call it, and the community around it is super supportive. So have fun with it, get creative, and don’t be afraid to ask questions here, on social media, in Facebook groups, or anywhere you see bait makers interacting!
Starter kits
If you’d rather not piece everything together yourself, a kit is the easiest way to begin.
Angling AI open-pour starter kits
Each kit has an aluminum open-pour mold, three small bottles of plastic that’s already colored, a measuring cup, a probe thermometer, and a how-to video. No injector needed. Pick the bait you fish most.
Bait Plastics starter kits
These are plastic and color, with no mold: two gallons of plastisol, four colorants, four glitters, a garlic scent, and 25 bait bags. The bass kit’s colors are white, black, green pumpkin, and watermelon. The crappie kit’s are fluorescent pink, monkey milk, chartreuse, and black.
Circle B Tackle bundles and starter kits
Circle B sells bundles of measuring cups, mixing spatulas, and a work mat, some with colorants and glitter added, in a range of sizes. Their pearl powder starter kit (five jars) is an easy way to try pearl. I have that one.
Fat Guys Fishing starter kits
If you’d rather start with an injector than pour from a cup, these kits come with one. Each has an aluminum injection mold, a 4 oz injector, a quart of plastisol, two colorants, two glitters, and 10 bait bags. Their plastisol is Calhoun-based, which is the kind I prefer. There are kits for several baits, including a 5” stick bait and a 3.5” craw.
Whichever kit you pick, check the list below for what it’s missing. None of the Angling AI, Bait Plastics, or Fat Guys Fishing kits include safety gear or anything to warm your mold, and the Bait Plastics kits don’t come with a mold.
Or build your own: the bare bones
- Plastic (plastisol). Start with soft or medium. It works for most worms and swimbaits and is forgiving to pour. I use both Barlow’s and Fat Guys Fishing, since both are Calhoun-based.
- One open-pour mold. Pick a bait you already fish. Angling AI sells the molds from its kits on their own: the ribbon worm, the craw, and the jerk bait. Barlow’s also has a page of open-pour molds. Baits with thin, detailed tails, like paddle tails, are harder to fill from a cup, so they need hotter plastic.
- Colorants. LureWorks and Circle B Tackle are great places to start. I easily have 100+ colorants, and the vast majority come from those two. The LureWorks Makers Dozen sampler is 12 of their most popular colorants, an ounce each, including watermelon, green pumpkin, black, chartreuse, and junebug. Circle B sells colorants in 2 oz bottles. You add colorant by the drop, so a small bottle lasts a long time. Here’s how I prep a new bottle before I use it the first time.
- Glitter. You’ll want to stock up on some glitter to add flash, contrast, and detail to your colors. Glitter (some call it “flake” in the bait-making world) can make or break a recipe. Like colorants, I tend to get a lot of mine from LureWorks and Circle B Tackle.
- Pearl and effects powders. If you want to get fancy, add in some pearl and/or effects powders from LureWorks, Circle B Tackle, or 8Bit Baits.
Protect yourself
And don’t forget to protect yourself! Heated plastic gives off fumes, and hot plastic sticks to skin and burns. Respirator on, a fan pulling air out of the room, and gloves for anything hot. Keep kids, pets, and food away from the bench.
- An organic-vapor respirator, not a dust mask. I use the 3M Quick Latch (65023), which comes with a pair of organic-vapor cartridges.
- Heat-resistant gloves for hot cups, and nitrile gloves for everything else. Gloves made with cotton/polyester and silicone, like these, are preferred for heat resistance.
- A well-ventilated space. If you’re in the garage, open a window for your fans (see below), or open the garage door a good amount and use the garage door netting I use on cooler days (Amazon has a bunch to choose from) to keep the bugs out.
- A powerful fan or two, mounted high, above your work space (where the plastic fumes will naturally travel), pulling the fumes out of the work space and outside. A vent hood is strongly recommended if you get more serious about making bait. I have a custom hood I built using an inexpensive but powerful 8-inch ducted fan that is fitted with grease filters, a damper, and vents through my roof. I will do a build video/post on my hood system sometime soon. In the meantime, feel free to ask me any questions about this. Trust me, you don’t want to skip proper ventilation!
Core equipment
And here are the other necessities you’ll need if you don’t have them. Keep in mind: once these go in your bait shop, that should become their new home. You really don’t want to use any of this stuff in your kitchen or elsewhere again.
- A microwave and glass measuring cups. Although I use Pyrex and Anchor cups too, this cup set is the one I prefer. The price is right, it gives you a variety of sizes you’ll need for small test batches or bigger bait-making runs, the shapes are better for handling, and the lids come in handy for storing cooling plastic after pouring to keep it free of contaminants for remelts later. When they need a good cleaning, here’s how I get them squeaky clean.
- A heating mat or an extra wide toaster oven to warm your molds (and eventually injectors)
- A candy thermometer (probe). I use both kinds: a long candy thermometer with a pot clip and a small instant-read one. I actually use the clip from the long one to hang the small one on my glass cups, and I use the long ones to confirm the temps in my Shooting Star pots.
- Something to stir with. Many bait makers use stainless steel butter knives, and Circle B has some cool stirring spatulas, but after using both I have settled on using borosilicate glass stirring rods, and I love them. Why the glass rods? The main reasons are: they tend to introduce less air into the plastic while stirring, are easier to clean, give me a much better idea of color while I’m mixing than stainless steel will, and are honestly just more fun to use for some reason. I still use my Circle B spatulas for stuff in the shop, but I’m never going back to stainless steel after using the glass rods.
- Mold release or worm oil, paper towels, and a heat-safe work surface
- And grab our free Bait Color Formulation Kit to make it easier to keep track of your creations!
Recommended equipment
If you decide you enjoy making bait and are ready to wade a little further into the deep end, these are the next items you’ll want to get.
- An injector (or five, heh) when you’re ready to level up. You can start with a single injector or, if you’re ready to really get creative, get a dual system. N2 injectors are my go-to when I am not using the Shooting Star, but QMI, Angling AI, and many other folks offer great injectors. Ask around online and everyone will give you a different opinion (mostly because it’s just what they’ve come to use rather than based on head-to-head comparisons). I have five 8 oz Series 2 N2 injectors (one single and two duals that I separate when needed), and I find that size easy to work with without sacrificing work efficiency. You honestly might as well get a dual setup if you plan to make bait regularly, since you’re really getting two single injectors for a better price than buying them separately, and you’ll need more than one for shooting anything more than a few molds in a session. When you’re shooting several molds at once, this quick vise holds them tight.
- A vacuum chamber. Pulls the air bubbles out of the plastic before you pour. This is not optional if you want high-quality baits that behave as intended in the water. You don’t want your sinking baits to become floating baits due to microbubbles! I prefer chambers with the gauge and plumbing on the side rather than the top because it makes it far easier to get your plastic in and out, and you’re not creating a tornado of air that shoots straight down into your plastic when you relieve the pressure.
- A heat gun. Cleans up edges, helps with mold flashing after shooting, can add shine, and can add or fix shape when necessary.
- A place to hang/cure your baits. I personally have a slat wall where I hang my baits to cure using straight hooks, shelf brackets/hooks, and magnetic clips.
What I wish I knew when I started
- You don’t always have to warm your molds, so experiment and see what works best for your set of circumstances (plastic blend, mold type, etc.). Some experienced bait makers always warm to between 120 and 175°F, while others just pour at room temperature (above 70°F or so). It’s case by case. For individual sprue top pours, I tested over and over at different temperatures, and warming made no noticeable difference.
- You can trust a good cheap candy probe more than you can trust an expensive infrared gun. My $50 infrared swings wildly and can be off by 20 to 30 degrees. A $12 to $16 candy probe is far more accurate.
- Top pour (not to be confused with open pour) benefits from slightly hotter plastic than injection or open pour, in my tests. I run at 330 to 340°F for individual sprue molds because there’s no injector pushing the plastic into the mold, so you’re relying 100% on gravity to do the work.
- Stir your plastisol every step of the way, and again if it sits longer than an hour or two. Plastisol separates while it sits, and that’s bad news when heat hits it in the microwave.
- Keep track of your ingredients as you add them. If you don’t, you’ll regret it later when you create a killer color only to forget how you did it when you go to recreate it!
- Be mindful when stirring your hot plastic so you don’t reintroduce a bunch of air bubbles. I find that using borosilicate glass stirring rods helps with this.
- Silicone. Silicone everywhere! Don’t set a hot glass cup on a cold or wet surface. The glass can crack. You will inevitably spill or drip plastic, colorants, glitter, and powder. It all cleans up MUCH easier if it happens on silicone. And you’ll need a place for your hot stirring tools to rest: I recommend more silicone!
- Let your demolded baits cure, preferably hanging straight so they don’t deform, at least 24 hours before you store them, bag them, or use them. Bag/store each color together and separate from the other colors. Some colors bleed into others (especially if using dyes).
- Save your scraps if you liked the color! Leftovers or baits that didn’t turn out quite right can be remelted and used again with the help of a little heat stabilizer. I keep them sorted by color in gallon ziplocks.
You’ll need some color recipes!
Many of our Crusher house color recipes are available for free in the Hook Book for you to take, use as your own, or remix. Each ingredient is listed with its supplier so you can go grab what you need for anything you decide to make.
If you buy that LureWorks Makers Dozen sampler, you already have every colorant for five of them: watermelon red, green pumpkin, green pumpkin / purple flake, black & blue, and chartreuse. Add the glitter each recipe calls for.
When you start mixing your own colors, the Bait Color Formulation Kit keeps track of every drop and scoop. The printable version is free, and there’s also a laminated version.
Where to go next
- Hook Book: exact recipes for every Crusher color.
- Bait Color Formulation Kit: free printable cards for tracking your own colors.
- Add Spouts to Your Gallon Jugs: less mess storing and pouring your plastic.
- The Crossbow: my low-mess injector filling station.
- Injector Heat Sleeves: keep the heat in your injectors and off your hands.