Go find "The Complete Book of Tackle Making" by C. Boyd Pfeiffer. He shows how to make EVERY kind of lures and tackle, and how to innovate your own designs.
I bought mine at Cabelas. It is also available from the Stamina Tackle web site. Stamina has a great selection of components and they have contests for best fish caught with a home- made lure and the best lure designs.

Here is a way to modify an inexensive Striped Bass Lure

RE:ZARA SPOOK for Striped Bass/Blue Fish
Old timer gave me this awesome tip, drill a BB size hole about 1/4" or a bit more behind the eyes directly along the spine.

Put a tsp of mineral oil or cod liver oil and seal with silicone.(just enough for it to float with the head bobbing upward)

If you don't want to bother with the oil, you can simply allow some water to fill the plug, periodically draining some out when it gets too full.

In the surf this extra weight will scream the lure an extra 30 yrds (more if you use braided line)and the stripers smash em. They're also cost effective $5, so if you lose em it doesn't sting as much!

Zara comes in fresh water and salt water models, I use the fresh water Rainbow Trout and the Salt water silver shad (with blue markings)

After the cast as your are reeling in, flick the tip working the spook as you would a pencil popper, these also work awesome in the white foam!

Good luck.....

Where could I find a good book or manual on rod wrapping and building. Also a reliable author??

ETangler, the same book that I mentioned above (The Complete Book of Tackle Making) has an entire chapter on rod wrapping.

Try this site too,

Larry Dahlberg is the king of homemade gear.

http://www.purpledesert.net/asklarry/index.php

Its worth looking around, lots of questions like this in the general form.

I have made a couple. I would suggest that for a starter you make a Popper or Chugger topwater bait. I don't know if it is the easiest, but it was the easiest for me. I don't have a lathe so I started with a 1" dowel rod and just used my dremmel tool and sandpaper to get the shape I wanted. I found lots of "plans" for them that had screw in eyes and such, but that didn't seem stout enough for my liking. I split the lure in half and used stainless steel wire to form the tying eye and the eyes for the treb hooks. I hollowed out the inside quite a bit and put a bit of a weight in the keel to make it sit right in the water, glued it back together and painted it. If I was smart enough to attach a picture to this, I'd show it to you.

If you put soda can rings and twisted pieces of aluminum in a paper clip with each end bent into a loop you can put a treble hook on one end and use it like a cross between a metal and a spinner