We just purchased a pontoon boat, and although we’ve never been fishing enthusiasts, we also purchased fishing licenses. We have two beautiful, very large lakes (reservoirs) within 20 minutes to an hour away. Wanting to keep up on fishing regulations for each reservoir, as their regulations may differ slightly from state regulations, I decided that instead of having to look at a booklet all the time, or pull up the regs on our phone while we’re out on the lake, and because I have a GF and don’t want to buy an implement to measure the length when I can make one, I wanted something that would be vey easy to know what length a fish is (using the two fish we plan to try to catch the most), and have the regulations easily accessible, so I came up with this:
I showed it to the guy in the little store where we launch our boat and he loved it! He said it would be great for those who don’t fish all the time, are just visiting, etc. He asked if I wanted to sell some, so we came up with a deal. I’ll make a couple to sell to him, he’ll mark up the price slightly, and see how they sell. Because he works for a business that has a couple different launch areas, he said he’ll take a picture and send it to the other shops to see if they think they’d be able to sell any, and we’ll go from there.
I plan on making myself one for the other reservoir we want to go to as well. Because they’re acrylic, they’ll be easy to wash off any fishy smell. Now to catch some fish so I can actually use it!
What’s really nice about this is it can be adjusted for any lake/reservoir. I thought about submitting it to the catalog with just the basic shape/ruler/and fish sizes, but make the fish sizes adjustable. I just used the Premium fonts to type everything in, so those can be easily adjusted as well. What do you think?
Thanks! I will. But for some reason, even though I’ve done the text in the GFUI, it doesn’t allow me to customize the words. Is that because I exported it (to save the original in case I mess up)?
I think that’s just brilliant, and the fact that you are selling them too is just icing on the cake! They are very professional looking—definitely catalog worthy!
Okiedok, that’s what I’ll do. Thanks. I did talk to a guy who owns a bait/tackle shop yesterday, and he said he’d take a few, but said I’d have to make something on the end to put the fish’s head against because otherwise it’d just flop around and be too hard to measure, so he wasn’t sure how mine would work. I also decided to flip the fishes so their heads are at the 0 instead of the inches, hoping that maybe just doing that will help, as you could hold the fish’s head while you stretch out its tail. So I do need to make some changes before I submit anything. I’m trying to decide whether to just have a flat tab come up, or do something drastic like a living hinge, which would definitely be a lot more work. If I had a GF Pro, it wouldn’t be a problem, because I could get longer acrylic and just bend the end. So I don’t know.
Pretty sure a living hinge would break way too quickly - but a vertical that slid into a slot at the 0" end, even if it didn’t fully lock, would likely work.
I thought about that. Even thought of somehow using EVA foam that would be flexible so it wouldn’t get caught on something and break but still be able to hold the fish’s head in. Maybe like a little curved pocket about 2" wide that is just glued down to the board. Don’t know how well that would last though.
