Plastic Lures Welding Together In My Tackle Box

Brian Dibble, Forestburg, New York: "I have a lot of plastic stuff in a plastic box and they seem to weld themselves to the box. What can I use to stop them from welding together in the box?"

It seems many different soft plastic lure manufacturers rely on different chemical compounds and compositions in making their baits and sometimes the lures react with one another, melting together making a horrible sticky mess. Other times they react to the plastic in the trays or tackle boxes in which you store them and do the same thing. By the way, you can damage the finish on furniture or other plastic items if you inadvertently lay down the wrong soft plastic lure.

So what are the solutions? First, if you use see-through plastic trays for storing your soft plastic lures, make sure they are "wormproof". This will be clearly displayed on the advertising or packing when you purchase the storage containers. Wormproof tackle boxes and trays mean the plastic in your lure won't react with the materials used to construct the tray or box. However, that doesn't mean that two different soft plastics lures won't create a chemical reaction between each other. So it's important never to store different brands of soft plastic fishing lures, or even different colored lures from the same manufacturer, together in the same compartment, bag, or container. It's a recipe for disaster.

For this reason, I like to keep my soft plastics in their original bags. If I know I'm going to using a bunch of them over a weekend or several days, however, I'll empty several small bags into a much larger Ziploc bag. But, I'll keep them separate and not mix and match different brands or different colors.

Determining The Sex Of A Summertime Walleye

Steve Shiroda, Flat Rock, Michigan: "We're having a debate in my fishing club: How can an angler determine the sex of a summertime walleye? Any info would be highly appreciated. Please keep up the good work."

It's almost impossible to determine with any accuracy the sex of a summertime walleye. About the only time one can decide whether a walleye is male or female is during the immediate Spawning Period. In late Postspawn and immediately prior to fish laying eggs, female walleyes appear to be much bigger, fatter, and fuller. Indeed, they often have huge distended bellies and look to be bloated. It's a sure sign the female is carrying hundreds of thousands of eggs. As well, if you push upward and inward very gently on the stomach of a ripe female walleye that's about to lay her eggs, you'll see several stream out. With a ripe male, on the other hand, you will observe the white milky "milt."

After spawning, however, from late spring through early winter, it's very difficult to tell a male from a female. I have no doubt that several members of your fishing club believe they can accurately determine the sex of the fish in the summer, but even the best walleye researchers and scientists that I know -- folks who handle and study thousands of fish over the course of a season -- say they can't do it with any degree of accuracy. So, other than during the Spawn Period, it's really a guess, and then you're going to be right only 50 percent of the time.

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