I have a growing pile of jigs whose paint peeled from either fish teeth, or initially lousy paint jobs. Some of the lousy painted jigs were tungsten samples I was given to provide an idea of what the jig shape would look like. Others were just cheaply finished store bought jigs that weren’t sealed properly. The tungsten jigs I ended up ordering have held up to a lot of abuse and haven’t peeled, but some ended up with teeth marks.

Seemed like a waste to not fish these lures since they were structurally sound so I used marker pens to color in the missing paint, but since those marks came off easily, I decided to “clear coat” the jigs. Some of the jigs lacked any glow effect, so I added some spots of Glow-On paint purchased from Amazon. I learned on the first attempt that the glow paint is really thick and can’t be brushed. It’s better dabbed on with a small wooden stick especially since that paint is pretty expensive at $14 for 2.3 ml.

I didn’t have proper “lure sealing” clear coat so I just used some Gorilla 5 Minute Epoxy and painted over the colored jigs. My first attempt at brushing the epoxy on came out ok.

But I did another batch the next day and the epoxy hardened too quickly after the initial jig, making it difficult to apply the thick solution evenly on the remaining jigs. The above jigs had another coat of epoxy to smooth things out but that batch was thickening on the last 2 jigs and never cured hard so I had to sand off the epoxy and recoat. Ugh. A $10 handheld uv lamp (Saviland) from Amazon was used to light up the glow paint.

Gorilla Epoxy is “water resistant” not waterproof but after I soaked a finished jig in freshwater for a few hours, the epoxy seal seemed fine.

The jigs are now color fast and the added glow should make the jigs stand out more in the dark depths. I would think that epoxy would be a suitable clear coat for wooden and plastic hard body lures too. Will let you know if the jigs catch fish and hold up to the saltwater abuse.