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So was lucky enough to score a hinkle shad on the last run in march, bait arrived this past week. action is crazy, can do everything from slow crawl, wide glide, tigh glide, wake etc. I was looking at pics of our Shad and herring here in new england and they are a lot more vibrant than the bait itself, which has a lot of grays and silver. Went to the craft store and bought some Testors Enamel paints, 3 pack of brushes, some thinner and some micro dot brushes, all together about $23 I picked up gold, white, silver, light blue, gold green metallic and metallic purple and a small thinner bottle. I used the smallest brush in the 3 pack, size 2, i never used any of the other brushes or the micro dot brushes, but plan to for other stuff. The bait has a great shape and is spot on. Got set up, make sure to shake the paints up really well. Laid all the paints out and got ready. you can see in the pic that bait comes with a nice blue hue on the top scale section. The first thing I did was paint all the scales between the lateral line and factory blue ones with the purple metallic purple, slight over lapping a couple blue scales here and there. based on how thick the paint was on the brush changes the hue of the purple, and all the colors for that matter. Then from there I used gold and silver and randomly picked scales, working my way from the head to the tail, I wanted the bait to have some flash and look like a herring/shad that had just swam up river, got beat up coming thru the fish ladder. I kept the paint simple, every couple scales, usually just one scale, but sometimes two or three in a group, to make it look the scales had flaked off. I made sure to paint some scales above the lateral line as well. And I painted some belly scales white, just to make them pop from the factory painted ones. I then wanted to add something to the face/head area without taking away from all the shading thats on the bait, i painted the head and gill lines with gold first, then took a paper towel with some thinner on it and wiped away the excess from the flat surfaces, once that was dry i went back over the metallic green gold and wiped the excess away the same way. I just kept turning the bait at different angles and trying to make look realistic without turning it into a paint by number Hinkle. The bait looks sick in your hand and has a nice flash in the water and matches our big baits here in New England. Then once its dry, flip it over and repeat the process. You could easily make this bait into a hitch or carp, with some baisc paint skills. any questions or comments welcome. Thanks guys, Chef