If you use Partridge Salmon hooks, better buy up any and all you can find NOW.
According to Jeff Pierce, the home office UK is discontinuing ALL the blind eye and most of the salmon hooks which made Partridge.
Sorry I don’t have the specific numbers of these hooks. At Jeffs request we have removed Partridge as a Sponsor. Sure didn’t want to. Partridge was also the Sponsor of our Atlantic Tying Contest the past two years, and while they won’t be this year, I do want to assure everyone the Atlantic Tying Contest will continue.
It will be Sponsored this year by Ronn Lucas and John McLain of FeathersMc. Stay tuned for details of this year’s contest.
We sure hope Partridge will have a change of heart and continue the Atlantic Salmon and blind eye hooks.
:( Ditto for the Bartleet supreme, some flies just look better on them than other Atlantic salmon hooks (of course that is my opinion for what that is worth :D).
Then there are the bomber hooks, I will miss these.
I havent used the bomber hooks, what are they like and what are other hooks are they like. I prefer the traditionals to the supremes. The supremes seem to be too short for my tying, but i love their curve. I have some size 6 and some size 1/0 but something about them doesnt do it for me like the traditionals do. I will surely miss them.
I wonder if store will liquidate them… if so ill stock up.
Fly Tyer, the bomber hooks are the cs42 ones, come in size 2,4,6 and are bronze. I use them for the salmon bombers, nice light hook.
Some flies I like on the traditional, some on the supreme. An Undertaker for example, I like on the Supreme (just like the one I have that Warren Duncan tied for me). The supreme is a little heavier hook and proportions better (IMO of course).
I was given a package of Daiichi 2461 (I think that is what they are, I tied them up for a friend and threw out the package) which are similiar, a little heavier again and a little shorter shank, they are nice also.
I usually use streamer hooks for bombers or mustad wide gap dry hooks?? some mustad wide gap hook. I will pick up a back of the bomber hooks and check them out. I dont like the look of the Mustad generic salmon hook, which is unfortunate because i have a few hundred of them… lol. I would love to see the undertaker you have tied on that hook, if you could take a picture of it. I tied up some undertakers with a long tag of chartreuse and a dubbed red butt of seal fur. It looks nice on the partridge traditional hook.
Fly Tyer, I will try this weekend but might be a little tight. Sunday night is the yearly fly tying course here in Fredericton and if I don’t get stuck teaching I will tie one and post a picture. Worst case, even if I do teach, the first fly is the Green Butt Bear Hair which I can post, they are similiar.
I received the following information today and thought I’d pass it along. Maybe no need to worry???
“The December issue of Trout and Salmon refers to some production issues with the Partridge line of hooks and that some to the salmon hooks are being temporarily discontinued to allow for the production of other hooks. Apparently this is temporary until production catches up with the demand for these other hooks.”
Also, this is from the Partridge website:
?We see a higher demand than ever for our hooks right now, but at the same time we have hit problems in our production. This is causing severe delays on several of our hook styles. Some of the most popular patterns such as the Salar hooks, the X2B’s and some of the trout hooks are the most affected by this calamity. We are working hard to sort these problems out and get back on top of the situation in order to deliver properly. The good news is that we are progressing fast but the downside is that it is getting late in the season and we may struggle to get them out in time for your fishing trip. We certainly are trying our best. ?
Im sorry to hear that they are falling behind with issues, partridge is one of my favorite hook manufactuers. Thier klinkhammer hooks are great, but often hard to find. I hope they keep their bartleet line.
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.
I’m getting questions on just what was dropped so here it is . . .
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.
Jeff Pierce
Sales Manager
O. Mustad & Son / Partridge of Redditch
Ditto for the Bartleet supreme, some flies just look better on them than other Atlantic salmon hooks (of course that is my opinion for what that is worth :D).