3D-Printed Fabric Bass Lure

This is an 80mm long, 2.5mm thick, fish-shaped 3D-printed fishing lure using a 3D-printed fabric pattern to make the body flexible. The fabric pattern has unsupported spans, but they are short enough to print well on most extrusion-based printers. It is an easy and quick, fully assembled print.

The fabric is surprisingly strong. For a lure printed in copper silk PLA with 0.2mm layers with 5-layer walls and 25% infill, my fish scale went to about 14 pounds before the fabric mesh suddenly and catastrophically failed. The failure was in a vertical line just before the tail, where only five 1mm posts held the fish together. Thus, the fabric structure allows relatively free movement, yet the rear hook can be attached to the tail without needing an internal wire – assuming you are using line that is 12-pound test or less, your line should break first.

OK, so the real question is: do fish like this lure? Well, not really. The problem is that, without embedding weights in it, it tends to swim on its side and sinks very slowly. It shouldn't take much weight, perhaps no more than a half dozen tiny ball bearings embedded in the lower half of the non-fabric part of the fish, but I've not yet tested that theory. As is, twitching the rod does impart a nice shudder to the lure so it moves a lot like a seriously injured fish, and that's apparently what the fish shown in the photo fell for.