It happens sometimes. I’ve stored my working stock of fly hooks in these 21 compartment boxes for thirty years or more. I’ve been careful. All those years I have imagined how messy it would be to sort the pile if I dropped a box. Never thought I’d really do it, though. Still, I was careful. Thoughtful.
Then it happened. A moment’s distraction. A slip of the hand. A crash.
There, on the floor in a corner near my tying bench, lay somewhere between two and three thousand fly hooks. In a crazy pile. The size-fours were easy to pick out, and so were the sixes. I just dumped the rest into a pile, back on a shelf. Good thing I’m not tying trout flies right now. There are TMC 3761s, 100s, and 101s. There are Gamakatsu dry fly hooks. There are Daiichi scud hooks. There are size 8s, 10s, 12s, 14s, 16s, and 18s. Twenty-one compartments with 21 different hook sizes, and only the fours and sixes have been sorted out.
Think I’ll wait for winter, some weekend when I’m laid-up with a cold.
JN
Ouch. That will not be fun.
I would cry. In fact I’m crying for you.