fish decoys

[faith]

Can you use liquid lead for weighting fish decoys?

[Claude]

I suppose you could, but it you're going to fish with them, I don't recommend it. Other options are non-lead solder, steel BBs, tungsten fishing weights - come in many shapes. With most of these you can drill a small hole in the decoy, put the weight in, then glue or epoxy a plug in the hole.

Claude

[scooter]

Yes, in fact a decoy-carving book I have describes exacly how to do it. It doesn't recommend against fishing with it (liquid lead weight), however it DOES warn of the harmful vapors molten lead emits (duh).

S~

[Ron T]

Hello and welcome, Faith. It's nice to have you here with us. What is a fish decoy? Can you post a photo?

[AlArchie]

Ron, fish decoys are small, usually around 4 to 10 inch, 3D representations of bait fish used to decoy larger predator fish, like northern pike, muskies, etc for spearing through the ice. some of these decoys are lifelike and others are simply bright colored attractors. the important thing is to get them weighted and balanced correctly so that when jigged up and down on a line, they appear to swim in a circle below the ice fishing hole. The spear fisherman waits with one hand on his spear and watches down the ice hole untill he can get a shot at the predator fish.

Traditional bodies were carved from cedar, weighted with melted lead. The fins were, and still are made from sheet metal. Those in the picture have a screw eye for attatching the line. Some decoys are made with a sheet metal dorsal fin and have several holes for line attachment to accomodate different swimming actions.

Here's a couple pictures of some decoys from a pattern book.

Al