I use acrylic paints to paint my Bass Poppers. Then I coat them with three coats of waterbased poly-urethane. I've painted some lures before with the same paint and it worked well for me. As I've mentioned before, once the poly dries for a couple days, its impervious to water. If you want to put some wild looking pearlescence into your lures, look at your nearest hobby shop for a paint called FASKOLOR. Their FASCHANGE line of paints are the "flip-flop" type that kind of changes color when viewed from different angles. Real cool effect. Go to any craft store and find some differently patterned mesh for the scale effect. Here's a link to the flip flop paint I referred to earlier. Good Luck.