A Boyd's Eye View: The joys of tackle tinkering.

For the majority of my life I have lived in a part of the country where winter descends upon the land in November and holds fast until the waning days of April. As an angler, that offers some real challenges. Sure, ice fishing is an obvious option, and while I have had many an enjoyable day fishing on the ice, as I grow older the thought of venturing out on a frozen body of water is less and less appealing. I could travel to warmer locales for a "fishing fix", but while that does help, it's only a reprieve from the chill. So for half the year I need to find other ways to feed my fishing addictions, and I have found that "tackle tinkering" fills the void rather nicely.

Tackle tinkering has many facets. It includes such activities as tacklebox organizing, reel cleaning, lure sorting. There's also hook sharpening and replacing, unspooling and respooling line and of course, hours upon hours of tackle shopping, both online and in various tackle outlets. But some of the most satisfying hours I spend in my fishing room during the winter months are spent making lures, modifying baits and creating tackle that I am sure will help me catch more and bigger fish. Its a creative process that I, as well as many other fishing-folk, find fills the time wonderfully between fall and spring.

I have written before about various aspects of this somewhat obsessive compulsion I have with fishing tackle and tinkering, covering various lure modifications I have found particularly effective (Building my favorite popper for bass), or my favorite tackle organizing methods (Label me "OCD"-Organized, Compartmentalized and Departmentalized). I have even written about how lure making can be a wonderful way to get a youngster introduced and excited about fishing (Finding a way to get kids into fishing). But its a topic that I am passionate about, so therefore I can seem to always find a new reason to write about it.

This time around I am excited to share a couple new tinkering tidbits I have stumbled upon the past couple winters along with an entire new genre of fishing tackle tinkering I have come to love recently.

Last winter I was deep into a tackle tinkering session when I came across a couple spinnerbaits, buzzbaits and a couple bass jigs that were all in dire need of skirt repair. On each one, the small rubber sleeve that held the skirt on the lure was deteriorated and needed replacing. Now I always keep pre-packaged replacement skirts handy so replacing the skirts would be a simple matter of just removing the old one and putting on the new one, but in each of these cases, the skirt material itself was just fine and tossing it out would just be a waste. I needed a way to replace the small rubber keeper sleeve on

the skirt material. Now these little keepers are available in tackle supply outlets online, along with tools for getting them on the skirt, but I wanted to come up with a way to do this myself. Like any good tackle tinkerer, I had a supply of rubber surgical tubing on hand (get some - it can be used for a number of things!). All I had to do was cut a small piece of the tubing for the keeper. To get it on the skirt took a little more thinking. What I came up with is this; I found a fat-bodied marker or pen, removed the top and the insides, and I had a skirt tool. I just rolled the small rubber keeper over the tapered end and up close to the opposite end. Then I dropped the skirt strands into the larger opening of the pen body, slid the rubber keeper off the pen and onto the skirt and viola - new bait skirt. I even made a small video at my workbench showing the procedure using an old marker body as a skirt tool:

My latest tackle tinkering session spawned a tip I am honestly surprised I did not come up with sooner. I was looking for a better hook-keeper option for trailer hooks on spinnerbaits and buzzbaits. In the past I used that same rubber surgical tubing as mentioned above but I wanted something smaller and more "streamline". The idea of a small rubber disc came to mind and I remembered I had a couple of those silicone bracelets in a drawer that would make ideal keeper material. To cut the small discs I simply used a standard hole punch that can be picked up at any office supply or craft supply store. (By the way, the hole punch is also great for cutting discs of reflective tape for adding a little flash to spinner blades or to use as eyes on crankbaits). Just slip your favorite trailer hook onto your spinnerbait, buzzbait or even a swim jig, and then slip the little silicone disc over the lure hook to keep it from coming off.

As if tinkering with my fishing tackle weren't enough, I have found a new activity that involves not only my fishing tackle obsession but my love of photography. Taking close-up photos of my tackle sort of began as a necessity when I started selling a few items on ebay. I learned pretty quick that a few good images of the lures and reels I was selling went a long way to getting more interest and therefore more bids on my items. It then evolved to include my vintage lure collection and wanting to document the old lures and equipment I had been collecting over the years. Now I have a "mini-studio" set up in my office with a light tent and a variety of sets for taking my tackle photos. Its fun, and I have even used this hobby to do product photography for a few folks I know in the fishing industry. 

It certainly doesn't stop there of course. I know guys that have gone full bore into the custom lure painting craze, and many anglers are into lure making from tying tiny flies to carving monster muskie baits. The tackle tinkering possibilities are endless and down-right fun.

So if you're like me and love fishing, but live where winter is cold and long and you have no real desire to spend much time dropping a line through a hole in the ice, getting into some serious tackle tinkering might just be what the doctor ordered to help get you through the "off season". That's my Boyd's eye view anyway. Carry on.

A Boyd's Eye View: Creating a fishing lure relationship.

I recently made a post on LinkedIn asking "What was the first fishing lure you ever used that really got you hooked on fishing?" and the responses really were eye-opening. Most made simple comments like "The spinnerbait", or "a jitterbug" and I even got a "Good old fashion live night crawlers works fine for me!", and who could argue that one. But a couple of the comments took a different twist, taking the time to share fond memories of their Dad or Grandfather and how their sharing of a particular lure brought back an emotional connection to a particular fishing lure and/or fishing related memory.

I did notice that one particular lure was mentioned more than any other; the Rapala Original Floating Minnow, and the small-but-mighty size 7 seemed to be the one that most everyone started out with. That really shouldn't be all that surprising as the Rapala Minnow has no doubt been responsible for innumerable first catches over the decades. 

For me, it was an old Abu in-line spinner; one with a yellow body covered in black dots, a silver French blade and a tuft of yellow marabou dressing the treble hook. The memory is as vivid today as if it had happened yesterday. I was in the front of a canoe maneuvered by my Uncle Don on the Elk River in the southwest corner of Missouri. At the base of a large bluff rising above the river were two large boulders that created a current break and what I realize now was an ideal ambush position for a predator fish. I was instructed to cast my spinner right between the boulders, which I did, and was instantly hooked up with a three pound channel catfish that, as an eight year old boy, seemed enormous. That memory still gets my heart beating a little quicker. I wish I still had that lure just to look at once in a while.

Unfortunately these days I think that tradition of passing along the pure joy that comes with your first "lure relationship" gets lost in the moment. Too often when we take kids fishing it's all about just keeping them occupied or trying to teach them everything you know about fishing, and not so much about creating an experience for them to cherish. 

I encourage all of you that share my love of fishing to make a point this year, and every year, to help at least one young person create just such a relationship with a lure and with the sport of fishing. I know its not all that easy, we all have busy lives these days. But if we are to keep some of those prized traditions we cherish alive in future generations, it's important that we don't let such opportunities go by the wayside.

If you are not really sure what lure to use to introduce a young person to the sport, it's really not as complicated as it may first appear. Most of the old standards are still good choices in many situations, like the Rapala which can be cast on light tackle and, with a slow retrieve,

entice most any species to bite. Another great choice is the Beetle Spin, a wonderful lure for panfish and bass and even the occasional walleye in sparse, shallow weeds. I have always had a soft-spot for topwater bass fishing, and my son learned early the sheer excitement of catching bass on a popper-style topwater bait. The inline spinners, like a Mepps, Vibrax or Roostertail, will always be fish catchers, especially in small streams (it certainly worked for me). And let's not forget the most basic of all, the bobber and live worm rig. Safe to say most of us started that way after all. And I suggest if you go with lures, you stick with the smaller models. It has long been my experience that a small lure gets more bites, and can still lure in a big one from time to time. 

When it comes right down to it, it doesn't matter what you use to get a kid interested in fishing, as long as they catch fish and have fun. Make that happen, and you will give that child a memory that will be with them the rest of their life. In fact, it's my sincere belief that a good lure will catch as many fishermen as it does fish. That's my Boyd's Eye View anyway. Carry on.