Make Your Own Spinner Bait and Jig Skirts

Materials for Making Lure Skirts

In the past spinner and jig skirts have been produced from rubber or vinyl material. Today the majority of skirts are produced with multi strand silicone material. Silicone has the advantages of being easy to work with, available in a wide selection of bright colors, including glitter colors and printed colors. Silicone skirt material is durable and heat has a minimal effect on silicone. Silicone skirt material is most readily available in layer form. These layers are about 5 " long and are split into 20 strands except for the ends of the layer. The ends keep the layer together until the skirt has been assembled and then are cut off. A normal skirt contains 40 to 50 strands and a really full skirt may have 60 strands.

Silicone skirt layers are available in a large selection of colors. At Barlow’s we stock over 100 different colors of silicone layers. Layers are available in glitter colors, crystal colors, glitter tip colors, Blood Accent layer colors, Natures Edge natural colors, printed fishscale colors, and glitter fishscale colors. Skirts may be composed of a single color or any combination colors.

Assembling skirts is a simple process of placing a small rubber skirt collar over a group of silicone strands. It’s really that simple. This is very easy with the silicon skirt layers as the strands are connected at each end. The rubber skirt collar is stretched out, strands of silicone and accent strands are placed through the collar, the collar is released and the connected ends of the strands are cut off. About the only consideration here is how to stretch out the collars. Inexpensive skirt making tools (A) are available which are basically pliers with special tips to hold the collars. The skirt-making tool includes a table clamp to hold the pliers while you place the strands through the expanded collar. A very simple skirt making tool can be made from a 6 inch piece of arrow shaft, a field point, an insert and a wire with hooks bent into one end(B). The field point and insert are used to load the skirt collars onto the arrow shaft(C). The wire hook is used to pull skirt material into the shaft then the skirt collar is rolled off the shaft onto the layers to complete the skirt(D). You can load 6 to 8 collars at a time onto the shaft. This is a simple, efficient way to make lure skirts.

Accent materials are added to many spinner bait and jig skirts. These materials are usually bright and reflective and really add to the appearance of the skirt. Popular materials include Flashabou Accent, Flashabou, Flashabou Grizzly and Holographic flash. The amount of accent added varies with the individual preference. We have seen skirts that were made totally of accent materials. They are really reflective but don’t seem to be as durable as silicone.

The popularity of rattles on all types of lures continues to increase. Special rattle collars have been designed that incorporate rattle holders into the construction of the skirt. There are two basic designs. The “ear” type holder has two rattle holders molded directly onto the skirt collar. These hold the rattles close to the body of the skirt. The “rattle strap” collars have the rattle receptacles molded onto two straps that extend out from the skirt collar. These work very well. Rattle collars are available in several colors and rattles in different sizes.

Building spinner bait and jig skirts is a simple and inexpensive project. The real benefit comes from being able to choose the colors and combinations of colors for your lures. Color is important. We supply skirt material for many of the Professional Tournament fishermen and find that they are very conscious of the color and carry a large selection of skirt colors for their lures.

We hope you find this information useful and that it will add to the pleasure of fishing.

Good Fishing
Barlow’s