Cat Tip of the Day: Adjustable Sinker weight

[SteveD]

Cat Tip of the Day: Adjustable Sinker Weight

It is the middle of the winter and I just finished my sinker inventory to determine what I need to order for the coming spring cat season. My sinker box weighs a ton but I always find myself ordering more sinkers. I’ve decided I need to use more of my current inventory before I go adding more weight to the box.

I have plenty of 1 ½ oz, 2 oz, and 3 oz sinkers but I’m almost out of large sinkers (4, 5 and higher) that I sometimes use during the spring high water period. I don’t use large sinkers very often so I don’t keep many on hand. The St Croix doesn’t have the current most everybody finds on the Mississippi or the Minnesota River. When I fish a slip sinker rig I almost always use a Sinker Slide and this year I plan on running mostly 3-Way rigs. I don’t use as many No-Roll sinkers as I used to and I prefer to use Flat Bank sinkers or Flat Spoon Sinkers. In both cases I normally just hook my sinkers to a snap rather than run a line through the sinker itself. This allows me to change sinker weights without having to retie my rig.

After I was done with my sinker inventory I got to looking at how I rig my sinkers for fishing and I decided that there had to be a way to just double up or triple up my smaller sinkers rather than order bigger sinkers that I would find myself seldom using. I had the brilliant idea that a thin key ring or even a shower curtain pin might just be the ticket to hang my sinkers on and it would clip right on my Sinker Slide or my 3-Way dropper clip. I made a quick run up to Menard’s and found their Shower Curtain Clips on sale – 12 clips for 76 cents. Then I stopped at Ace Hardware on the way home and found a perfect size Key Ring for 11 cents each.

I hung some sinkers on the Shower Curtain Clip and on the Key Ring and they will work perfect for holding multiple sinkers. I’ve got enough 1 ½ oz, 2 oz and 3 oz sinkers to last quite a while and I will just double or triple them up when I need more weight rather than maintain an inventory of 5, 6 or higher ounce sinkers. I thought I would pass on this tip to those of you in a similar situation. Save your money on those big, heavy, expensive sinkers and just use up some of your inventory of the cheaper, smaller sinkers.

Good fishing!!