DIYbanter - The coming days......

"Don Foreman" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:33:08 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

I think that device from Orvis has the market now.

This one?
http://www.orvis.com/store/productch...id=230Y&bhcp=1

Yeah, that's it. It's not hard to duplicate with some brass and solder, or
you probably could carve one out of plastic. The people who use them really
seem to like them. It does about the same thing as the piece of split brass
tubing (model airplane stuff) that I keep for hooks that are way down a
fish's throat.

At $19.95 they sure don't have the market in these parts. But by
golly, Cabelas does indeed offer them along with some other choices.
http://tinyurl.com/kufyk3

I think I've tried most of those at one time or another. The Rapela gadget
is *really* nice on bigger fish in sal****er. However, I wouldn't try it on
a hook smaller than 3/0 or so.

I made a tool that works well. Found some big stainless hemostats at
a surplus store for a coupla bux. The working part forward of the
hinge was 4 or 5 inches, fairly heavy but it'd still twist and upset
if much torque was put on it. I whacked that down to about 1.5" with
a Dremel and then made a couple of transverse grooves to grab hooks
down to #14 or so. It works really, really well. No photo, it's at
the lake and I'm not at the moment.

Well, what you wound up with is something like the short-jawed arterial
forceps (hemostats) that are sold commercially for removing hooks from fish.
I have one on a spring-retrieve reel, attached to my fishing vest, all the
time. Yours may be somewhat stiffer because of the way you made it, but I
only use hemostats on very small hooks, in trout and panfish. For anything
larger, I use long-nose pliers.

--
Ed Huntress