Article published Tuesday, September 5, 2006
RESTRINGING NOW A SNAP

Fish that got away gave Toledo angler profitable idea

Toledo angler Roberto Colon got “spooled” by a runaway salmon five years ago, and the incident hatched an idea that has turned into a line accessory you can take along in your tackle box.

It’s called Restring Reel Fast and Colon, a pull-himself-up-by-his-bootstraps kind of guy, is starting to market it in area bait shops, hardware and other small stores, and Jann’s Netcraft. Marketing paperwork is pending with Wal-Mart.

The product, made of special injection-molded plastic and stainless steel parts, lives up to its name. It restrings line onto a fishing reel in a hurry. It also, with the help of a cordless drill and an accessory, strips line onto spare storage spools just as quickly.

“I was up north fishing for salmon with my daughter, Tiffany,” begins Colon, describing a regular family trip to the lower Pere Marquette River at Ludington, Mich., about five years ago.

“I had a big salmon on and it ran off all my line. It was 45 degrees out, my fingers were cold, and daughter was having to hold a spool [of new line] with a pencil.”

You get the idea.

Colon, 46, is a maintenance mechanic for Lucas Metropolitan Housing Authority, and that hints at an aptitude for working with tools and fixing things. He set about concocting different line-replacing prototypes in his East Toledo home.

Then 16 months ago he began intensive design work in cooperation with Larry Bolander II, owner of Advantage Mold on North Wheeling Street. Bolander does a lot of injection-mold work for auto, medical, military and consumer industries, and he and Colon met in a very straightforward way.

“He was the first name in the phone book,” summed Colon. “He’s got all the hard parts done,” Bolander adds about the design and production details.

“We came up with a machine prototype, and during the process he wanted to make it look like a fish.”

So there it was. Bolander said that if demand for Restring Reel Fast is there, he can easily step up production.

“I’m a fisherman, too, and I could understand a lot of what he was saying,” Bolander said of his design discussions with Colon, who has a patent pending on the product.

In addition to conserving good line for reuse, or changing the line-weight quickly for different fishing conditions, Restring also can be used to store old, spent fishing line for proper disposal.

Nothing irks him – or other ethical anglers – more than tangled piles of spent fishing line left littered about to entangle and endanger wildlife.

Colon said that Restring will not cause line-twist, disassembles to fit in a tackle box, and comes with stainless steel water-resistant springs. It has a retail price of $19.99. Local distribution began over the weekend.

For other details, call the Colons at 419-870-8276.

Steve Pollick is The Blade’s outdoor writer
ยป E-mail him at spollick@theblade.com