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How to Clean Your Fishing Gear

By 5 Comments

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Blood, guts, roe, sardines, squid, sand shrimp, prawns, tuna, crawfish and a wide assortment of bait pastes, stink sauces and fish oils…fishing can be one messy business!

And just think: that stuff gets all over everything…Your rods, your lures, your boat, your reels, your clothes — and you!

If left unattended, all that slimy mess will turn rancid and cover everything you have with fish-repelling stink. Unsightly and unappealing to finned critters! So, it is imperative to thoroughly wash all your gear before you put it away.

Unfortunately there’s no one magic bullet that you can use to clean everything but I have found a handful of products that get the job done very nicely. Here are some suggestions to “de-stinkify” your fishing stuff:

Rods & Reels

My gear really gets hammered during salmon and steelhead seasons…when I’m using a lot of eggs.

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Morons & Water don’t mix: Is it time for a boating license?

By 8 Comments

The now famous Bayliner crash in the Cowlitz: Notice the crunched front end...and you should see the props!


How is it that we make kids wait until they’re nearly adults to get a drivers license but we let any moron who can afford a boat drive one? Just doesn’t make sense…especially when you add water to the equation.

A few days back, I had to tow some guy and his two kids (probably around 4 years old) back to the ramp after he launched a 12-foot leaky aluminum boat into the river, which was raging 3 times higher than normal, then set off downriver with nothing more than a 35-pound thrust electric trolling motor. Shockingly, he was having a rough time getting back to the ramp when we came by! That kind of stuff makes me crazy (and don’t get me started about the 5 dead steelhead yearlings on the bottom of the boat!).

Then you had the genius who launched his Bayliner Trophy with twin Mercs into Washington State’s Cowlitz River (jet boats only, please!). Apparently, they went around the corner at famous Blue Creek, almost instantly ripped the props off and crashed into the wall down there since they had no power at that point. Fortunately, nobody was hurt (see the whole story at Gamefishin.com), but it’s stuff like this that really makes me think that there should be some sort of boating license required…and to get it, you have to pass an exam. I know, I know…that wouldn’t keep the idiots off the water, but it couldn’t hurt!