DIY fish counter (avoid the asterisk)

When I’m fishing, I often lose track of how many fish I’ve kept.  Here’s a simple fish counter I made from two reproduction Fender amplifier knobs ($2.25 apiece from Tube Depot.com, https://tubedepot.com/products/knob-reproduction-for-blackface-silverface-amps?gclid=CMuI4NrFvc4CFY81aQodBKMPOA ), a piece of scrap black plastic with a right angle bend, and some hardware store parts.  I included a rubber washer cut from an old bike inner tube behind each knob to provide friction.  I can keep track of double digit numbers of a single kind of fish, or single digit numbers of two different kinds of fish.





This fish counter will help you avoid the asterisk in your fishing reports, as in the following situations, when the daily limit is ten fish:

On Saturday I caught nine fish.*  On Sunday I caught 11 fish.**

*I lost track of how many fish I had kept, and thought I had ten fish in my cooler.  If I had known that I only had nine fish, I could easily have caught one more, so I would have had a full limit.
**I told the game warden that I had lost track of how many fish I had kept, and it was an honest mistake, but he just shrugged his shoulders and wrote out a ticket.

(Note: this example is only for sake of illustration. I have never kept more than the limit of fish, and have never been given a ticket by a game warden.)

I have found this device to be helpful.  But there are still opportunities for operator error.  Instead of thinking "Wait, is this my 7th fish or my eighth fish?" I found myself thinking "Wait, did I already count that fish?"  So I have been waiting to count a fish until I actually dump it in my cooler.

I thought those looked familiar. My college room mate had a Super Twin. I wish I had that problem, keeping track of lots of fish, that is.

Would certainly be useful for crabbing.  Nice .

I guarantee if I were catching so many fish that I had to keep track of them with some device, then I am sure I would forget to turn the knob on said device to update the most recent fish.  When I used to trout fish, I would know how many fish I had by how many stringer hooks I had left to fill.  Once full, time to go home.

Interesting device though.  If it works for you and gets the job done, it's gold.     

I guarantee if I were catching so many fish that I had to keep track of them with some device, then I am sure I would forget to turn the knob on said device to update the most recent fish.  When I used to trout fish, I would know how many fish I had by how many stringer hooks I had left to fill.  Once full, time to go home.

Interesting device though.  If it works for you and gets the job done, it's gold.     

The first picture shows the fifteenth lake whitefish I caught yesterday on Flathead Lake.  I didn't need to worry about exceeding the limit, which is 100.  In fact, my cooler, with lots of ice, was full of those 18-20 inch whitefish after only 15.  And I decided that I didn't want to clean more than 15 whitefish that night.  I'm currently smoking 11 of them.  But this afternoon I'm heading over to Helena to fish for kokanee, which have a limit of 10, so keeping track of the number of fish in my cooler will be more important.

Nice build Pete.... Not to under do ya... My grandpa used to tie one yarn for each fish he could keep on his fishing vest first thing in the morning after he kept one he simply took off one yarn and when his vest had no yarn on it he knew his fish box has full.