Partridge Fly Hook Update (1/16/08)

All about flies Fly Tying
1

All kinds of rumor and speculation flying about with regards to Partridge all over the internet. I posted some info on FAOL already but wanted to do so again under the Partridge heading in hopes it will be seen by more who are looking for information.

I have seen discussions on a few boards so here’s what I have right now as far as info goes . . .

Hello everyone
Sure it tough to keep up with what’s going on on all the various boards on the web these days.

Just wanted to quickly post on this subject. There is no truth whatsoever to any rumor about Partridge being sold to anyone. It is still a brand that falls under the Mustad umbrella. I can assure you of that. As for the comment about Mustad putting little effort into the product line I can assure you that is not true either. Since there have been no massive SKU intensive hook roll outs for Partridge I can see where it may appear as though little is going on but such is not the case. In the last 3 years, Mustad has invested a very significant amount of money into the Partridge brand. Production in Redditch was tough. Quality issues were many and that had to be addressed. We have upgraded all tooling that is used to produce the Partridge hooks and this has helped tremendously to improve the quality. Production had moved to Singapore but recently we shut the Singapore operation down with the opening of the worlds largest fish hook factory on the planet, our new facility in Wuxi, China. When we opened it 2 or 3 years ago it was the largest and we are now doing a huge expansion to make room for more machines and manual production. This is the most state of the art hook factory in the world. Quality will not suffer, it will only get better and availability of Partridge products will also get much better. Partridge management in Europe made the call to stop production on many long standing staple hooks like the CS10/3, CS42, CS15 and others in order to focus efforts on the core items and get caught up on the backlog created with the production move. As production gets caught up, the plan is to add some of these popular items back in and as far as I’m concerned, this cannot happen fast enough as some of my favorites are cut for now. Many new hooks have been added like the 2 Klinkhamer hooks, Shrimp hooks and other Flashpoints to name a few.

The warehouse in Auburn, NY did stock up on some of the items that are being dropped for now so many of these items should be available during the dry spell. Your dealer can check status of items for you.

The Capt. Hamilton series of fly hooks were discontinued a few years back. The new Flashpoint hooks were introduced and THE WET (TWH) and THE DRY (TDH) were meant to replace the Capt. Hamilton Dry and Wet hooks. All of the “Y” series hooks have been dropped as well over the past 4 years and those that sold OK were rolled over into the new Flashpoint range.

Reviewing the list of items classified as ON HOLD (meaning no production on these items while backlogged production on key items are caught up) , the are as follows:

BIN (Barbless Ideal Nymph)
CS6 (Adlington & Hutchinson Blind Eye Salmon
CS10/2 (Bartleet Supreme)
CS10/3 (Bartleet Traditional Blind Eye)
CS12 (A.E.M. 6X Long Shank Salmon Fly Treble)
CS15 (Carrie Stevens 10X Long Heavyweight Streamer)
CS17 (Ken Baker Extra Long Limerick Streamer)
CS42 (MW Bomber Salmon/Steelhead Dry Fly)
CS43 (Ad Swier Pike Fly)
CS52 - sizes 8 and 10 only (Sea Prince Saltwater Fly)
D3STF (Straight Eye Streamer)
E1A (Hooper L/S 4X Fine Dry Fly)
GHH (Gold Headed)
GRS12ST (Grey Shadow Emerger/Nymph)
HE2 (Extra Long Bartleet Blind Eye)
IN (Ideal Nymph)
K1A (Vince Marinaro Midge)
K3A (Swedish Dry Fly)
K5A (Extra Heavy Scud/Egg)
M - sizes 5/0, 4/0, 3/0, 2/0 only (Single Salmon)
MM3STBN (Nordic Single Tube Fly)
N - sizes 1/0 and 1 only (Single Low Water)
O1 - sizes 2 and 16 only (Single Wilson)
P261BLN (Aberdeen Perfect)
Q - sizes 2/0 and 1/0 only (Double Low Water)
R1A (Double Limerick)
V1B - sizes 12.5mm and 10mm only (Double Waddington Shanks)
X1BL (Outpoint Treble)
X3BL (Needle Eye Tube Fly Treble)

There is a chance that some of these items will be brought back after production is back to full speed but that remains to be seen.

Hope this sheds some light on things.

2

Some of us older generation folks have learned to like and love your old “standard” hooks as we call them. We are concerned about their availability in the future. The upgrades, as they are called, and proliferation of new models are understood but what about us who are already satisfied.

In my personal opinion only two changes seem justified: 1. make some of your new shapes at the old quality and cost level. They were fine. 2. Make more hooks with straight eyes. The TU and TD eyes should have gone out with snelled cat gut.

Thanks for listening.

3

Hello Ray

Thanks for the post expressing your feelings. The Classics are still available (with a few exceptions) and while I agree 100% that our Classic fly hooks are a fine product that catch plenty of fish the fact remains that the market has made a major shift over the past few years to hooks with premium points. Just walk through a fly shop and you’ll see that the overwhelming majority of fly hook pegs in the shop are filled with “premium” needlepoint fly hooks. Talk to A.K. Best and he’ll tell you the 94840 is the best fly hook ever made and nothing will catch more fish than that : ) but again, many feel they need needlepoint fly hooks. Our bread & butter classics like the 94840, 3906B, 9672, 79580 and so on are still available. There are some changes coming later this year BUT I think you will be very happy with what you see so hang in there

I too like using straight eye hooks but sales of those hooks are just not very good. So many are just so used to fishing and tying on turned down eye hooks they will not buy straight eye hooks. I sure wish this was not the case.

THANKS for using the product.

4

Dr. Fish
I just wanted to say it is appreciated seeing a company representative participating in the message boards and blogs. So many companies just don’t get it and have policies prohibiting employees from making statements it’s nice to see some of the fishing community actually knows where their customers / consumers communicate and are willing to actively participate.

Thanks,
Jeff

5

Ditto to what Jeff said…thanks.