With an 8in prototype Victory Tail, a giant Calico Bass was caught!! How great is that!!

They caught a Calico Bass with the Victory Tail! Awesome!

New colors have been added to the Opti Shad color collection! Our ideas have finally come to a solid conclusion. Some of the new colors are based on the popular Sea Bass colors: “Red Gold” & “Blue Pink” and I also included the Kibinago color since I like is so much! The sparkles in the Kibinago color came out great! The “Green Glow” color which is very popular in France, the “Sexy Smelt” color which is also an extremely popular color in California and other saltwater colors were created ideally! I’m definitely looking forward to the releasing date!

A great morning for a happy Optimum Baits’ Customer.
With just 1 hour before work, Taylor Arbaney of Colorado, headed to one of his favorite holes. He was using the Opitmum Baits new 6″ & 7″ Baby Line Thru swimbait and landed these nice 36″ & 39″ pike. Ghost Shad and Pearl Shad were the colors of choice. Nice Job!
Optimum Baits

To all Lucky Craft fans out there~ this is the Daily Flash Minnow Weekly Report!
To continue my report from my previous upload, it is now about my experience on making the lures!

4. After finishing on creating my original colors, I poured in the Plastic Sole into “Double Diamond” moldings while creating gradation between colors trying to make it look exactly how I want it.

But~~ that it is tough! At what timing do I pour it in and stop! The amount poured makes a big difference in the design. I needed to carefully pour in the liquid and before one dries, the next color needed to be poured in to make a good mesh between the colors. And this had to continue in an orderly manner to make nice gradations.

5. The pouring process was completed and I thought we were going to let it dry for about an hour, but then Matt said to me, “So we will wait for about 10 minutes! Then we’ll take it out of the molding! So while we’re waiting, let’s make the other ones!” I was extremely surprised by the speed from drying to completion.
After repeatedly making it, this is what was completed! (Shown Below)

Isn’t it nice! Isn’t it pretty! Doesn’t it look delicious! It is a masterpiece!

Since I had a lot of time left, I challenged on making baits other than the “Double Diamond” such as: Shad, Wander, Frog, Ikura (Salmon Roe)!! By the way, the other colors that I made were not from a sample lure and it is my very own original color: Limited for Saltwater the “Bloody Midnight Blue” color! And if I were to catch a lot with it, maybe it can be created for sale…! So excited to use it!
And now I won’t have any shortage on lures this season!

I want to thank Matt and everyone else who has helped me through my lure making and picture taking also.

See you again soon!
Sandy
The Daily Flash Minnow

It is again time for the Daily Flash Minnow Weekly Report!
This is a continuation of my previous report of my visit to the Optimum Baits factory! And I would like to finally talk about my experience making the lures! There were 5 major steps to the process:
1. Choosing my original colors
2. Choosing a molding (depending on the type of lure I want)
3. Color mixing and preparation
4. Official making of the lure
5. Lure completed

1. About choosing my colors, Mat has previously advised me to bring some Lucky Craft lures as a color sample so it would be a lot easier for me to have a color image of what I want to create.
I wanted to be able to create something that I could use for this Daily Flash Minnow Fishing Report which would be a lure used for both Bass and saltwater fishing. I had chosen a color I really like: the “MS MJ Herring”. I got a sample of that color ready and started on my task. The “MS MJ Herring” is actually not sold for saltwater fishing purpose, but it is a very nice color.
　
2. After choosing the color, I had to decide on a lure design and size out of the many Optimum Baits carries. And finally out of the various types they had, I decided on the popular “Double Diamond” lure shape. (They also carry shapes like BLT, Frog, Worm, etc.)

3. The original color I chose previously was divided into 3 Plastic Sole colors which were getting melted in advance. I then slowly added some glitters and others to create a scale-like texture. Maximum of 3 colors can be chosen at this time. Based on the “MS MJ Herring” sample color chosen previously, the layers were carefully inserted into each container. And the layers started from the stomach part of the body with a light pink, then clear with a semi-blue glitter, and lastly a green colored back very similar to the original lure color. This process is the most important part where it determines the completed lure, so the amount of the mixture was carefully adjusted. This part was definitely too difficult for me to do. In the pictures shows Mat adjusting the color mixture over and over to get the right color for the light pink color used for the stomach area. He even went under direct sunlight and continued to check its color.

The rest will be continued on the next report…

See you soon!
The next report is “Lure Developing Experience Finale”

Sandy
The Daily Flash Minnow

Lucky Craft fans all across the world~! It is again time for the Daily Flash Minnow!

This time I went on an OPTIMUM BAITS Factory tour with Mat and had the opportunity to experience making some lures. The factory is located in Temecula, CA which is about 65 miles (~104km) from the Lucky Craft USA office. Southern CA’s famous Diamond Valley Lake was near the factory also. When I arrived there, Mat gave me a very warm welcome and said, “Welcome OPTIMUM BAITS Sandy-san!!”(By the way, Mat is also very fluent in Japanese). Unlike Lucky Craft, OPTIMUM BAITS is its own original and personal manufacturing company that makes lures for Bass and saltwater fishing. “How are these products being made?” will be the main subject this time. For a rookie fisherman like me, I was extremely curious to know! The OPTIMUM BAITS lure features a special liquid called the plastic sole which they bring to custom processing where you can freely construct its shapes to a fish, frog, and a bug. It is a soft rubber-like material so it might be in the same category as a soft lure. Also, the colors are unlimited. Mat told me that special pro models and even customer original models can be created too! There is even a Lucky Craft and OPTIMUM BAITS collaborating lure product now on sale so please try it out! (I will only show an image of the package. The inside is a secret)

OPTIMUM BAITS information are the following:

Home: http://optimumbaits.com/OB2/
Shop: http://store.optimumbaits.com/home/index/1573.0

See you next time! (I will be introducing the OPTIMUM BAITS lures on my next report)

Sandy
The Daily Flash Minnow

This past weekend my dad and I went on our last saltwater trip of the year. We sponsored the Big Game 90 on their fall trip to the Santa Barbara Islands.
www.biggame90.net
Each angler receives a tackle box of AA Worms & Optimum Baits. Because it’s late in the season it’s hard to determine what fish we will target until we get to the fishing grounds. This time with plenty of live squid around we were targeting yellowtail and rockfish.
I was one of the lucky ones and caught a yellowtail on live squid while my dad caught a beautiful Halibut on the AA‘s 7″ EEL in pearl white. I also caught lots of small rockfish on the AA grubs. It was a great way to end the season and hopefully next year will be better.

Matt Paino
Optimum Baits

Lucky Craft has asked us to match some of their beautiful hard bait colors in the AA & Optimum
Swimbaits. We started production 2 weeks ago and the baits are turning out wonderful. Anytime you manufacture new colors there is a lot of excitement and anticipation at the factory. I am quite
pleased on how these Lucky Craft colors are looking and a few of them are making it into my tacklebox. Our baits are all hand poured one at a time in Southern California so we are taking our time to ensure these baits will be real fish producers. There are a total of 10 Custom Lucky Craft Colors. A sneak peak of the colors are attached below. We are looking forward to hearing your fish results!

#570 GOLD SPARK
#571 EDO YAMABUKI
#572 PHARAOH MEKKI BLUE
#573 LEMON LIME CHART
#574 FANTASY MOSS
#575 MATTE CHART
#576 AURORA GOLD
#577 AURURA PRO-BLUE
#578 GHOST WAKASAGI
#579 GHOST AYU

Good Luck & Have Fun!
Matt

Well… you know all those days where you try your hardest and throw every lure in your tackle box twice and you don`t catch anything…
You wonder why you continue to wake up so early and go fishing…. It`s because of days like I had today. I went fishing with Optimum Pro Staffer and guide, Art Hill, my good friend Anthony and myself. The three of us caught 72 striped bass in 4 hours of fishing.
This was an incredible day to say the least.
I was extremely lucky to be asked to go fishing on this trip because we went to a lake that is not open to for fishing throughout the year.
It is called Lake Matthews in Southern California and it is owned by the Metropolitan Water District and is used strictly for drinking water. The problem is the stripers are so abundant that every year for 2 days they ask about 20 boats to go in and catch the stripers and remove them from the lake.
We did our part and caught fish non stop. After a couple stops we pulled up to a long point and started casting the AA`s & Optimum 4 inch plastic swimbait tails and it was on. The fish were loving the swimbaits and we were loving the fun!
So the next time I go out and don`t have so much luck… I will remember today!

Good Luck & Have Fun Fishing!
Matt Paino

www.optimumbaits.com