# Hmmm..... Don't know what to make of this?



## YYCHM (May 14, 2021)

Being 65+ I no longer need a fishing licence... so I dug out my tackle box to have a look see as to what I have.....






Not looking too promising LOL....






And that would be the last time I was in it.....

All of my coveted trout spoons dissolved.... What's with that?  My Pike spoons survived but the trout spoons went poof into a pile of dust including the hook????


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## DPittman (May 14, 2021)

Hmnn.  I've heard that a hook will dissolve in a fishs' mouth.  I'm not sure if I believe that or not.  Given enough time I guess they can dissolve in a tackle box too!
I just threw out a few years ago some canned salmon eggs from my fathers tackle box.  My dad had been dead for 33 years and I don't remember him fishing much in the 19 years that I knew him.  I figured the eggs probably were past their best before date.  I didn't have any disolved hooks tho!


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## RobinHood (May 14, 2021)

YYCHM said:


> All of my coveted trout spoons dissolved.... What's with that?



Galvanic corrosion between dissimilar metals would be my first guess.


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## CalgaryPT (May 15, 2021)

I don't fish anymore, but a few of those (specifically top left corner) look to be Len Thompson lures. Len Thompson is a great little Alberta company located in Lacombe. If you ever get a chance it's worth a trip just for the tour (when they offer them again). More to the point, I inquired about a few of their products years ago and they sent me a bunch a complimentary lures. I wonder if you ask them...they might accommodate a few replacements. I'm almost positive at least one is a Len Thompson YR.





Their website is: https://www.lenthompson.com/


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## YYCHM (May 15, 2021)

CalgaryPT said:


> I don't fish anymore, but a few of those (specifically top left corner) look to be Len Thompson lures. Len Thompson is a great little Alberta company located in Lacombe. If you ever get a chance it's worth a trip just for the tour (when they offer them again). More to the point, I inquired about a few of their products years ago and they sent me a bunch a complimentary lures. I wonder if you ask them...they might accommodate a few replacements. I'm almost positive at least one is a Len Thompson LR.
> 
> View attachment 14785
> Their website is: https://www.lenthompson.com/



Cool.... and yup that's what they were alright.  What is their manufacturing process?  I just stared in awe as to how something assumed to be metal dissolved into a pile of powder.  The larger pike spoons survived so somethings different about how they are made.


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## historicalarms (May 15, 2021)

I knew Len when I was a young lad. Grand gentleman to know and visit.  At one time Len was the only place in Ab. to buy reloading components ( he supplied U.S. outdoors wholesalers with his hand made lures and they partially paid him in powder & primers in return). My old man bought all his loading stuff from Len and I have receipts in my name from 1964( I was 10). Fond memories of siting on the floor of lens shop while he and my dad talked shooting & fishing stories, me sitting on the floor petting the old black lab that was always at his feet. 
     Len hand painted every lure he ever sold. Also hand punched every brass blank with an arbor press....and he died a very wealthy man by those days standards. 
      Although I was only 8 -12 yrs old when we went there. I still vividly remember his shop walls hung with a myriad of guns, all suffering from devastation of some degree or another (back in the infancy of reloading "a gun was a gun & powder was powder" to a lot of neophytes  ....one wall was labeled "Smokless powder in Black Powder guns", the other was labeled "barrel obstructions"....


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## CalgaryPT (May 15, 2021)

YYCHM said:


> What is their manufacturing process?


I can't recall as I haven't been there in decades. My family settled the Lacombe area in the 1890s, and we had property there until the 1980s. When I was young my dad used to take me to their facility when we were in Lacombe and I do remember the hand painting. I think during WWII they switched to steel briefly as brass was needed, but later switched back to brass. I could be wrong about that. Here's a video on their manufacturing process—looks like not much has changed over the years.


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## YYCHM (May 15, 2021)

CalgaryPT said:


> I can't recall as I haven't been there in decades. My family settled the Lacombe area in the 1890s, and we had property there until the 1980s. When I was young my dad used to take me to their facility when we were in Lacombe and I do remember the hand painting. I think during WWII they switched to steel briefly as brass was needed, but later switched back to brass. I could be wrong about that. Here's a video on their manufacturing process—looks like not much has changed over the years.



So you figure those spoons that dissolved were brass?  Are brass and steel considered dissimilar metals?  This is all fresh water stuff no electrolyte involved?  The amount of carnage inflicted has peaked my curiosity.   Large lead sinkers turned into chowder, rubber worms turned into rubber goo.


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## CalgaryPT (May 15, 2021)

The Len Thompson YR (Yellow-Red) in the top left corner and possibly the one in the top shelf (Row 3 Column 3) is a Len Thompson GF (Green Frog). These are brass. The rest I can't attest to. All dissimilar metals will corrode over time in a moist environment. Even the hooks and split rings are dissimilar, likely SS and chrome plated steel respectively. Spoons can be anything from brass and steel to AL and tin. Some newer ones may be acrylic with weighted inserts. 

Likely in a tackle box (even for freshwater) you've had organic material. Salmon Eggs are common, although maggots and worms as well. Maybe the occasional beer spill or ham sandwich. These off-gas acids that speed the corrosion process. Organic material from fish (if you don't clean your tackle) will add to this. If you have flies in there as well, much of the laquer applied to commercial flies these days is engineered to be purposely acidic so they don't last forever and you have to repurchase the flies sooner than you'd like. If you tie your own flies you can get high end lacquers that don't corrode. A tackle box is a moist container due to its proximity to water and the probability most fishermen don't clean them. Sometimes guys leave insect repellent in them; this is notorious for pitting metal over time. Close the lid for years and you have a nice science experiment going on. Really high end fly fishermen often use desiccant packs in their tackle boxes for this reason. If you have a garden or flower soil test kit you can sample the residue in the tackle box; I'll bet you find it is a low pH.


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## YYCHM (May 15, 2021)

This whole thing has me intrigued and was a bit of an eye opener.  Looks like trays that were mixed with stuff (as in sinkers and hooks) disintegrated.  Things that weren't mixed survived (as in one tray of treble hooks only had no issues and one tray of nothing but sinkers had no issues either).

The trout spoons weren't mixed with anything else but had hooks attached.


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## CalgaryPT (May 15, 2021)

I forget the chemistry behind this other recalling that alloys are less likely to corrode than pure metals in the same environment. Perhaps someone else can explain it scientifically. Brass is relatively corrosion resistant which is why it is used in plumbing. But it is also heavier than steel (and certainly heavier compared to AL or SN). You need weight to make the spoon dive downwards of course. Another reason is that brass can be highly polished, which attracts fish. (Note the emphasis on polishing the lures in the Len Thompson video.) Brass lures are usually left unpainted on one side so you can polish them to attract fish. A Dremel works well. Lastly, brass is non-toxic. In some jurisdictions it is illegal to use certain metals for lures, and certainly PB is a no-no.


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## CalgaryPT (May 15, 2021)

And no, to my knowledge Len Thompson never engineered failure into their products. In fact the split rings they use are SS. Many American fishing sites talk about the superiority of Canadian lures because they are still made of brass in some cases. I think LT is a case in point still.


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## CalgaryPT (May 15, 2021)

Then there is this:


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## YYCHM (May 15, 2021)

CalgaryPT said:


> Then there is this:








Some how I don't think these are salvageable LOL.


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## Crankit (May 15, 2021)

Somewhere that it could pickup moisture? I have some of my Grandfather's lures that are easily 50+ years old that a few had some surface rust on the hooks....and sadly I'm too busy working to get them wet very often


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## DPittman (May 15, 2021)

YYCHM said:


> View attachment 14787
> 
> Some how I don't think these are salvageable LOL.


Wow. The picture certainly tells the story.


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## YYCHM (May 15, 2021)

DPittman said:


> Wow. The picture certainly tells the story.



Ya, I'm mind boggled by this actualy.  In my youth, Dad's tackle box was nothing more than a 50Cal ammo box with a jumble of pike spoons in it.  It was kind of a pick one and shake the rest off arrangement.  When that tackle box wasn't in the boat it was in a shed at cottage year round.  That stuff survived his passing?


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## Dabbler (May 16, 2021)

It looks like galvanic corrosion helped in their demise.  Now you have  achance to buy some new purdy equipment


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