Saturday, April 28, 2012

Hook Bonnets Save My Sanity

I HATE reaching into a tackle box to pull out 1 lure and 10 come out because the hooks are all tangled together. I also HATE trying to tie on a lure and having the hook get attached to my shirt, my pants, the boat seat, my tackle bag, my day bag, my husband, my sister, my sister's husband, my finger, my sock, my towel, the boat carpet, the weeds, the tree and anything else near by. I end up spending more time unhooking my lure from other lures, clothing, my sister, etc. than I do unhooking it from a fish which makes me frustrated and then I don't want to throw lures anymore. So 99% of my lures have hook bonnets on them. If a lure doesn't have a hook bonnet, that means I either lost the hook bonnet or the hook is a weird shape that won't fit in a hook bonnet. Here are 3 sizes:


The blue is the smallest, the green is a medium and the red is a large. There is also a bigger sized that I don't have any of because I don't have any lures that big.........yet. When put new lures away, I bring my baggie of hook bonnets and as soon as the new lure comes out of it's package, it gets a bonnet. They are also very handy in kids' tackle boxes.
Here are some of my lures with hook bonnets on them:



 I even put hook bonnets on my Dynamic Lures and Rapala Lures that I leave in the boxes. (That picture didn't turn out very well.) I may not have to worry about them getting tangled up with other lures in their individual boxes, but I still have to worry about my fingers, my clothing, my sister.....you understand.

What if a lure has a treble hook AND one of those hooks on top that also gets caught on everything? Most of those types of lures come with the answer to that question. Look at this picture:


See that clear plastic tube looking thing? I leave those plastic tube things on until I'm ready to use the lure and then I put it back on when I'm putting the lure away. If I loose a lure with one of those, I keep the plastic tube in case I loose one from another lure or a lure doesn't come with one of those handy tubes on it.
Here is what one of my spinner boxes looks like:


Just the thought of reaching into that top center section and trying to pull out ONE spinner and having ALL of them come out makes me cringe! Because they all have hook bonnets on, I won't have that problem.
The only problem I have with hook bonnets is sometimes remembering to put them back on. Some days when I empty my pockets after a day at the lake I pull out 2 or 3 bonnets from my pocket. If I can remember all the lures I used that day, it's pretty easy to find the naked hooks, otherwise I pretend it was time to go through and organize all my lures anyway.

1 comment:

  1. I like it and will share the idea. I remember as a kid untying all of the lures in my father's tack box. Pain!

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