Major hook mixup

[dean_mt]

The other night I pulled up to my desk, flipped on the netflix and readied myself to tie some flies. My hook storage box was open, I was shuffling my piles of materials, books, etc around and yuppers - hook box flips over and bounce on the floor!

Nymph hooks sized 8-10-12-14-16 and dry hooks 10-12-14-16-18 all over the darn place! I picked them all up with a magnet. Then proceeded to sort through some couple hundred hooks by size...last night I tried to sort out the dry / nymph within sizes. the 12s and 14s weren't too hard...but I don't see any way I can go through all the #16s (there are a lot of them) and determine which is 1x fine and 1x strong. No way. I reckon they will all be nymph/wet hooks and I'll have to restock the dries.

Really bad move.

[fire instructor]

I was looking for a storage container for all of my hooks, and one of my tying instructors showed me his.... He went to the dollar store and bought some of those 7-day pill dispensers. had 6 or 7 of them - one for nymph standard, one for nymph X1, one for dry standard, one for dry X1, etc.... Very economical way to store them, and there is no reason for multiple hook compartments to be open at the same time. He had even glued cut pieces of flex-magnet and glued them into the bottom of each compartment.

This is all on my "list of things to do", but I really think that I need to focus on maybe getting my income tax return completed first, and some other projects of more significance......

[jcw355]

Thats sucks, my wife found some hooks on the floor I didn't even know I had dropped.

[kayo]

Bummer, I keep mine in the original box and store them in a tool box with a cheat sheet on brand, size, number and type of fly to tie.

[mcnerney]

Dean: Wow, that sucks big time! I can't imagine all the work it would take to sort out that mess. Good luck!

[littledavid123]

Reminds me of an old episode of Gunsmoke. Doc is paying Festus 50 cents/hour to build something and Festus is hovered over a keg of mixed nails for hours sorting out the right size because they are 5 cents/lb cheaper.

Good Luck Dean...

Dave

[JoJer]

My hooks are in small labeled zip bags, some with magnets in the bags, then put into buisness card-sized sheet protectors, then into hanging file folders.
I still drop hooks, but usually one at a time.
BTW, the way to locate dropped hooks is to have your wife walk around your tying desk barefoot. Works everytime, and she's always happy to help.

[bigjim5589]

BTW, the way to locate dropped hooks is to have your wife walk around your tying desk barefoot. Works everytime, and she's always happy to help.

No, not a good idea. The pain & suffering it would cause would not be worth it!



My wife would slap me right up side my head if I had her do that!

[dean_mt]

Thanks for the sympathy...and suggestions.

Luckily, my tying desk is in a basement room that I have pretty much taken over, so I don't really worry too much about poked feet. I would just say - "sorry babe, look around, what did you expect?" It actually could be a good deterrent to keeping everyone out of there!

I've been using large plastic boxes, the kind hardware fisherman use to carry spinners. I like them because I can move the little insert tabs around to make bigger compartments if needed. But the little pill box with individual lids sounds good, too. While it does really suck to have all my standard hooks below size 14 basically a mystery, I had been wanting to sort of "start over" with the basic hooks I use.

For so many years I've switched brands and often buy the hook that is available when I needed a size. The problem with this is that "standard" is not truly standard. I recently discovered that the outdoor box store has an extensive selection of Daiichi hooks, at a good price. I've wanted to go all barbless for everything under #16 and now I can.

I still have a big pile of mixed 16s that I reckon will be used for nymphs and wets so I don't have to worry about floating the heavier hooks, and the pile of 18 and 20s...that's just a mess but when hooks and flies get so small that I can't tell what the # designation is, I figure it doesn't matter anyway, right? We just have to try to match the size of the insect, not the number of the hook.