ON LINE WITH A FLATLINER: Angler carves out his niche in fishing world

Sitting on a 5-gallon bucket on his front porch with a jigsaw in hand, David Partridge does some of his best work.

Partridge, 44, who has been making fishing lures for the past seven years, stays up until midnight on occasion carving out the little wooden treasures at his DeFuniak Springs home.

“I wanted something different that nobody was throwing,” Partridge said.
Partridge got into fishing bass tournaments around 2003 and even won a few.

But when it comes to bass fishing, it's about one thing. “It's about the biggest bass you can catch,” he said.

And in an effort to get that extra edge, Partridge set out to design his own lure - now called the Flatliner.

In addition to throwing something different, “I wanted something that the fish could relate to,” he said.

The Flatliner lure is strictly a top water lure that floats and looks like a dead bait fish along the bottom.

“It's all based on the law of nature,” he said, which is the weak will die and the strong will survive.

“In a fish's world, if he sees something floating on its side, a fish is going to make a meal of him in a matter of seconds.”

The topside of the Flatliner is painted for the angler. Partridge paints them orange and fluorescent pink making them easy to see. But it also deters the birds that might want to swoop down and grab that lure that resembles baitfish.

The Flatliner, with its fluorescent coloring, “looks like a piece of trash to the seagulls,” he said.

Partridge says he makes all different shapes and color of lures.

“I've got some lures that are as small as a quarter and some 8-inches long,” he said.

The Flatliner lures can be used to catch bass, crappie, redfish, trout and bream.

“They are good for any game fish, fresh or saltwater,” he said.

Partridge's lures are all made of wood. He uses mostly tupelo gumwood and red cedar to make his lures.

The tupelo is a “very fine wood and easy to work with,” he said.

Partridge buys the wood by the block. He says a 24 inch by 12 inch by 8 inch block cost about $30 and yields about 100 lures. “But it takes several months to do that,” he said.

All his lures are hand carved and assembled and hand painted.

“It was a lot of trial and error” before he got what he was looking for, Partridge said.

“It took about two years to fully understand how to make one,” he said, noting if you make them too heavy they sink. And then there is getting the hooks attached correctly.

Looking back, “the ones I made in 2005 … they're ugly. But back then, they were cool … and they've caught bass.

“I guess I made a couple 100 before I got one like I wanted,” he said.

In the beginning he painted the lures with nail polish, then he went to acrylic paint and then used a high-grade of enamel paint. In 2010 he started airbrushing his lures.
“I can do a more lifelike image with the airbrush,” he said.

From start to finish, Partridge says it takes about 24 hours to complete a lure before “you can tie it on a line and throw it in the water.”

Partridge, who has loved drawing and painting since he was a kid, said, “I could live out there in my shop. I could stay out there every afternoon … til whenever.”

Partridge's Flatliner is patented and just this past year, SS Spitfire Mercantile at Baytowne Marina in Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort unveiled a humongous replica of his first lure. Amanda Mochan of Guinness World Records was at the bayside mercantile in August to authenticate the 10-foot, 10-inch, 355.2-pound Flatliner lure as the world's largest fishing lure.

Partridge, who works construction, hopes to make his lures full time one day.

“I'm looking for investors to help,” he said. “It's a costly business, but there is money to be made.”

Partridge can be reached through Facebook.