So I put in some work this morning with my lure retriever. I'm getting pretty good at it! I primarily went to rescue a 6th sense swim jig I dumbly managed to launch into a tree my last outing. Mission accomplished, got it back! But on the way back I saw more lures that I had missed seeing when going to the spot I lost my lure at. I managed to rescue a spinnerbait, a squarebill crankbait, and a texas rig, while removing about 15 yards of line from a single branch. I basically end up snapping off the entire tree limb and taking it home with lures and lines still attached. Minus some minor bending on the spinnerbait, those came out fine.
A bit farther down the bank I saw a thick braid line zig zagging through another tree. I followed it around to the other side when I saw what at first I thought was some sort of shrimp shaped crankbait or swimbait. So I stuck my retriever up there and began to twirl it around the limbs to lock in it. That's when I noticed it was a swimbait! One of the multi-jointed ones, not sure of the brand though. Nice panfish imitation. I managed to free it and proudly brought it to me. The braid was wrapped around my retriever so badly it took a minute to slid up the spiral and get it off. Pocketed it and went on.
Later when I got home I was removing the extra lines and all that when I noticed the swimbait suffered damage in the rescue. Somehow the braid had wrapped the bill several times and actually sawed about 3/4 of the way through it. Rest of it was in fine shape though. So I filled the gap with some gorilla glue since the braid had basically melted some of the plastic away and allowed it to set the bill straight as I could get it and fill in the gap. Now waiting for it to fully set overnight so that I can sand it down smooth again. I'm hoping it will be useable once I'm done, but I am not sure. Has anyone ever done this before with a bill on a lure? Will it work or will it run funny?
Either way... I got some lures and detangled a lot of lines from trees that may have ended up injuring wildlife. Even got a free gama 3/0 EWG hook and 1/4 weigh that's basically brand new out of the deal from the t-rig. So there's that at least.... I assisted the park by helping to clean up from other angler's mistakes. Almost as fun as actually fishing!
