ROANOKE, W.Va. — The colorful lures gleamed amid the low light of the exhibit hall of the Roanoke Building as Nick Fulks sheepishly grinned and shyly acknowledged accolades for his talent. Fulks Custom Cranks is a series of unique crankbaits hand painted by the 18 year old angler from Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania.
Fulks, an avid fisherman, decided to get into the lure decoration business out of sheer boredom.
“I’ve fished all my life and in the winter you can’t do anything but sit around wishing you could go fishing,” he explained. “When I was a freshman in high school I got tired of sitting around and thought I was going to make some baits to use next summer. I thought these were kind of cool and that’s what it evolved from.”
The baits are high quality lures, purchased as blanks and Fulks adds the color and design. Armed with an airbrush and his paint, he creates one pattern after another with craftsmanship to rival any big time lure maker. He credited the designs and colors to his fishing experience.
“Time on the water,” Fulks said. “Say you catch a bass and it spits up a crawfish of a certain color. I take a picture of that and try to replicate it.”
Some might not consider photography of bass vomit to be the most envious of hobbies or careers, but it’s pure R and D for Fulks. He’s turned his custom crankbait business into a lucrative cottage industry which has set him up nicely for a life in the fishing industry.
But the story is even more improbable when you consider Nick has a condition which some might consider to be an obvious handicap to his chances of ever being a successful lure designer. Nick is color blind.
“I’m red/green color blind. I can still see colors, but they mix together,” he said. “It’s hard to explain, but reds and greens combine, blues and purples, anything that’s similar in shade all blends together.”
Fulks didn’t discover this issue until he started painting his baits. As practice, Nick originally started out by trying to mimic the colors and designs on name brand crankbaits, but was nowhere near copying anything. He painted a few which resulted in some odd color combinations and led to questions by his parents. Turned out, the way he saw the lure and the way it actually appeared were two entirely different things, but somehow it worked.
“My dad labels all my paint bottles and I show him everything I paint before I send it out,” he explained. “He tells me I was suppose to put chartreuse there, but that’s orange. I do that a lot.”
That’s when it was first discovered he had trouble distinguishing color. Still, when you look at the finished product it’s hard to argue with the results and Nick isn’t intimidated about putting his lures and color schemes up against the most learned in the business.
“I use all of my baits exclusively when I”m fishing. They definitely catch fish,” he said during the recent National Hunting and Fishing Days event at Stonewall Jackson State Park.
You can learn more about Fulks Custom Cranks on his website.