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.