Rockfish by Design.

As some of you know, since summertime last year I have been a Light Game ProStaff member for Tronix Fishing, a new facet to my angling that has been quite enjoyable.

As part of my role within the team I am encouraged to make suggestions for new products within the sphere of Light Game and Rockfishing. George (the Director) is passionate about Lure fishing in general and is keen to supply the UK and Europe with new, quality products at competitive prices and I have found that is an ethos where we both see 'eye to eye' very much.

I have long had some ideas about what I would like to see added to Tronix Fishings HTO brand and decided to share some ideas with the team. I started off with not much more than scrawls on paper and at that point I did not know quite how involved I would become!

The above just represent some of the ideas which I had for lure designs and when presented to the team, engagement was good. We started to whittle down and decide what we liked and wanted to see as part of the HTO range. At this point George started looking into contracting a Cad expert to turn some designs into 3D images.

However, as it would happen George found a piece of free software online where, with a bit of perseverance and practice, we could turn some of the designs into files that in turn, could be sent to our factories and samples produced.

Late nights, trials and tantrums ensued while I tried to get my head around the software and its basic functions, until I started getting some of my ideas ready for production.

Refinements and changes were then made until I was happy enough with the end results to get them sent off for samples.

The HTO Mace

The HTO Flail

I was incredibly excited by the whole process and I already felt as though it was a good experience and achievement, but to see the samples and test them was something new for me entirely. 

The Mace was really quite experimental and the idea behind it was inspired by the Sandeel I see shoaling in the margins on some of my marks (as was the Excalibur actually). With the Mace I thought to create a body that would displace water in a way that would hopefully attract predators to investigate further and as such features a more angular body than perhaps people are accustomed to. Furthermore I wanted a thin tail, so when a fish "inhales" the lure, the tail would fold and the jig would be set easily in the fishes mouth. I was absolutely delighted when this experiment paid off and I caught a Bass in exactly the scenario I had wanted it for!

This lure proved further successful when George and Adam Kirby tested it in freshwater, both scoring Pike and Perch. I cannot tell you what satisfaction that gave!

I have designed and had introduced to the HTO range two more lures in addition to the Flail and Mace; The Leethal and the Excalibur. I will maybe go into more depth about the design thought at a later stage, but for now I shall just leave you with a couple more pictures.

Lesser Weever on the Excalibur

Ornate Wrasse on the Excalibur

Leethal by Design

At HTO we have a whole range of new and exciting products coming out this year, most available from May. Check out the new lure catalogue here which includes the already, very exciting Arctic Eel, designed by our very own Pete Cook.
Its also well worth subscribing to the HTO Facebook page in order to keep up to date with news, catches and to post your own catches on our lures.

While fishing opportunities have been scarce so far for me this year I remain optimistic and excited for 2015 and I hope we have a good one all-round!

Tight lines.