By Jim Perrick
(Published Utah Fishing & Outdoors, Feb 1992)

This project gives you a simple worm threader and will also help you hook more fish when you are trollingor fishing worms, by enablingyou to position your hook farther down the worm.

This threader can be used on worms and small minnows and can be kept with you in your shirt pocket while fishing, so you will always have it handy whether you are fishing a river, in a boat or in a float tube. And it isn’t any more inconvenient than a pencil — beca‘use that’s what it is made from.

You can use any old (or buy a cheap) 0.7 mm or 0.9 mm mechanical lead pencil. Empty all the lead from the pencil.

Next, you’ll need #4 approximately 6-8 inches of .026 inch diameter stainless steel wire for the 0.7 mm pencil. For a somewhat stiffer threader you will need .035 in. diameter stainless steel wire for the 0.9 mm pencil.

Make an eye about 1/2 to 3/4 inches long on one end of the wire. (Fig. 1)

Squeeze the eye fairly tight with pliers, so the short end of the wire tbuches the long shank — leaving the eye slightly open to accept the line when rigging a worm or minnow. When the eye is formed to your approval, file the sides of the eye slightly to a point to allow easier penetration of the bait. (Be careful not to get the end too sharp as to be dangerous in your pocket.)

The purpose of this small diameter wire threader is for easy penetration and a slight but not sharp taper on the end of the eye helps even more. (Fig. 2)

Now cut the wire as long as possible for the pencil barrel, so the eye is touching the pencil end when fully retracted into the pencil. (Fig. 3)

To use: Extend the wire out of the pencil far enough to thread the bait. Push the wire through the bait, attach line in eye and pull the leader out of the bait until the hook shank is in the minnow or worm body. When threading a worm you can exit the worm anywhere you choose, even in the very end of the worm for those fish that just nip at it. (Fig. 4 & 5).

Rinse off wire, retract it into the pencil and return it to your pocket.