Fishing buddies get hooked on Tran’s no-tangle invention

IF you’ve spent – or intend to spend – the long weekend hauling up a feed of fresh fish, then Kiwi angler Tran Lawrence might just be about to become your hero.

The New Plymouth fisherman had become fed up with constant requests to thread hooks for mates’ lines so he decided to invent an easier, faster, and less painful way to attach a line to a barbed fish hook.

Looking to put an end to snagged lines, bloody fingers and frustrated boat-mates, the Vietnamese-born Lawrence has created a ‘‘knotless’’ hook he says is ‘‘bombproof’’ to all ages.

Over six months, while working shifts as a fireman at the New Plymouth Fire Station, Lawrence drilled, filed and bent aluminium into shapes of fish hooks.

Finally he found an ideal shape with a hole drilled in the middle of the shank and a gap in the eyelet to thread the line through.

The line is wound around the shank ‘‘five or six times’’ and over the tail, and pulled tight so it slips freely into the eyelet.

An Auckland company was hired to use a laser to make a number of titanium prototype hooks for testing.

Lawrence and his mates, Kerry Bulman, Murray Bryant and Danny Waide, then set off from the Taranaki coastline to catch a fish.

It was a resounding success, Lawrence said.

‘‘We’ve caught loads of fish with these hooks – snapper, kahawai and kingfish.’’

Hooks were tied onto lines faster and there were less arguments on board the boat.

‘‘When we used the oldstyle hook, we would have trouble threading the line through the eye,’’ Bryant said.

‘‘Tran would shake his head and grab the line and do it for us. It made him frustrated and cut down on valuable fishing time.’’

The new hooks are also environmentally sound and make it less harmful to the fish when taking the hook out of the fish’s mouth, he added.

As well, the line strain is centred on the loops around the shank, and not the eyelet.

‘‘A knot will weaken the line by up to 40 per cent, whereas this concept places no stress on the line and retained the strain by 100 per cent,’’ he said.

Lawrence has applied for a New Zealand patent on the design and hopes to get interest from overseas companies to manufacture and distribute the hooks on a wide scale.

We’ve caught loads of fish with these hooks – snapper, kahawai and kingfish.’ TRAN LAWRENCE