I found this again yesterday. It may be my answer to Byron’s question of which vice you would want if you had the choice. When we moved to Reno Nevada from Michigan fifty years ago one of the biggest changes for me and my brothers was no longer being able to dig a few worms and walk a couple of blocks to go fishing whenever we wanted to. Most weekends in the three summers we were there Dad would pack us all into the car with a picnic to swim and fish at pyramid lake. The seasonal pass to the reservation was generously inexpensive and gas was still cheap then. Unfortunately tackle for five of us fishing added up as the bottom seemed to be nothing but snags. One of the most successful methods of catching the Sacramento perch that was our main catch was to cast as far as we could with our spincast outfits and slowly retrieve a woolly worm, usually yellow and black. Dad made this up so that he could make the woolly worms himself. I knew I had it somewhere but hadn’t seen it it years. I tied one more woolly worm on it and put it away again. It really is a pain to use.
Very neat RBC, thanks for sharing that. Your Dad was kind of an inventor?
Byron
PS, the folks I know who fish Pyramid Lake do so for huge trout. They wade as far as they can, and carry those old metal milk bottle crates with them to “build” a sort of casting perch to try to reach the trout.
Byron, Dad was a machinist who’s job in Reno was as a repairman of industrial pneumatic tools for a warehouse so he had access to a mill and drill press. The vice seems to have been made from the base of a broken stapler (says bostich so I assume that is what it was )and one large allan head bolt split with a mill, collared, crossdrilled and tapped for a five thirty seconds allen head bolt to tighten it down. Dad did get a few of the big Lahotan cutthroats but us boys weren’t usually along when they hitting best. There were four of us from six to eleven years old and conditions on the lake can get cold and dangerous for small people quickly at that time of year.
Years ago when I was starting out tying, my grandfather pieced together a vice for me. It was made pretty much from two C-clamps for woodwork.
If I have some time to figrue out how he laced together those clamps I’d retire a set myself somewhere underground-
just off Fish Hatchery Road.
Your vice is a work of machining genius.