My kayak fishing partner Frank is a retired shipyard welder who has made all kinds of stuff for us.  Here’s a short list of what he made for my fishing needs:

• pvc kayak washing rack
• aluminum fish finder transducer arm
• aluminum adapter plate to attach a Tite-Lok rod holder to a Scotty rod holder base on my new kayak
• kage that I’ve been holding off using until I fish the larger kayak
• clips made out of zip ties to secure the rods to the kayak

I call him Frank the Fabricator!   Frank saw a bottle cap scaler Kelly had fashioned, and added his twist to the design. I asked him to share the info since others may want to make an inexpensive scaler that works really well on fish with small scales.

Frank:

I started with an old scaler that was replaced by a better brass scaler which has more teeth. The old scaler has holes just at the right places to bolt down 4 caps on the opposite side of the teeth. I drilled a hole for the 5th cap. The aluminum flat bars were added to keep the caps on a flat surface. Stainless hardware was used.

I was blessed to catch 3 omilu so late in the season.  The edges of the bottle caps scraped the little scales thoroughly.  I then used the shears Thad ordered from Japan, to cut out the fins and used a knife to remove the scutes and tails. Cleaning and prepping fish is a far more simple task after a good fun fishing day in Hawaii Nei.