Partridge Discontinuing Hooks

I and the others on the "Flies and Lies" mailing list got this note the other day from Larry Shortt:

----- Original Message -----

Hi Folks,We received word from one of our suppliers that Partridge will be discontinuing the following hooks:

Bartleet Supremes- all sizes;

the CS-42 Bomber Hook;

the Carrie Stevens streamer hooks;

single salmon in sizes 2/0, 3/0 and 4/0.

If you like these hooks now is the time to stock up.

Larry Shortt

It was followed up later by this information:

From: Larry Shortt To: Flies & Lies List

Subject: Partridge Hooks Discontinued

Importance: High

Hi Folks,
I e-mailed Partridge yesterday enquiring about their hooks. Below is the reply I received.
Larry

----- Original Message -----

From: Jeff Pierce

To: Larry Shortt

Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 8:39 AM

Subject: FW: Partridge Hooks Discontinued

Good morning Mr. Shortt

Thanks for taking the time to email us with your question. I'm sorry to say that it is true that many Partridge hooks have been put on hold for the time being due to production transfer backlogs. Some of these items may come back as production gets caught up but Partridge management in Europe has not made any calls on that yet and this stop of many model numbers is global. That being said, there is still a decent inventory of some of these items in the Mustad warehouse in Auburn, NY as we took some action to bulk up where possible when we heard about these plans. You can read about the hooks that are dropped at this link where I posted the information. On FAOL, my posts show up under "Dr. Fish" and that should help to sort fact from fiction.

-Thanks again for contacting us and hopefully some of these hooks will be back as there are favorites of mine in that list as well.

Best Fishes,

Jeff Pierce a.k.a. - Dr. Fish

Sales Manager O. Mustad & Son (USA), Inc. / Partridge of Redditch
315-253-2793

SHARPEST Site on the Web - http://www.mustad.no/

These are Mr Pierce's comments on FAOL:

First Post:

I'm getting questions on just what was dropped so here it is . . .
The Capt. Hamilton series of fly hooks were discontinued a few years back. The new Flashpoint hooks were introduced and THE WET (TWH) and THE DRY (TDH) were meant to replace the Capt. Hamilton Dry and Wet hooks. All of the "Y" series hooks have been dropped as well over the past 4 years and those that sold OK were rolled over into the new Flashpoint range.
Reviewing the list of items classified as ON HOLD (meaning no production on these items while backlogged production on key items are caught up) , the are as follows:
BIN (Barbless Ideal Nymph)
CS6 (Adlington & Hutchinson Blind Eye Salmon
CS10/2 (Bartleet Supreme)
CS10/3 (Bartleet Traditional Blind Eye)
CS12 (A.E.M. 6X Long Shank Salmon Fly Treble)
CS15 (Carrie Stevens 10X Long Heavyweight Streamer)
CS17 (Ken Baker Extra Long Limerick Streamer)
CS42 (MW Bomber Salmon/Steelhead Dry Fly)
CS43 (Ad Swier Pike Fly)
CS52 - sizes 8 and 10 only (Sea Prince Saltwater Fly)
D3STF (Straight Eye Streamer)
E1A (Hooper L/S 4X Fine Dry Fly)
GHH (Gold Headed)
GRS12ST (Grey Shadow Emerger/Nymph)
HE2 (Extra Long Bartleet Blind Eye)
IN (Ideal Nymph)
K1A (Vince Marinaro Midge)
K3A (Swedish Dry Fly)
K5A (Extra Heavy Scud/Egg)
M - sizes 5/0, 4/0, 3/0, 2/0 only (Single Salmon)
MM3STBN (Nordic Single Tube Fly)
N - sizes 1/0 and 1 only (Single Low Water)
O1 - sizes 2 and 16 only (Single Wilson)
P261BLN (Aberdeen Perfect)
Q - sizes 2/0 and 1/0 only (Double Low Water)
R1A (Double Limerick)
V1B - sizes 12.5mm and 10mm only (Double Waddington Shanks)
X1BL (Outpoint Treble)
X3BL (Needle Eye Tube Fly Treble)
There is a chance that some of these items will be brought back after production is back to full speed but that remains to be seen.
Hope this sheds some light on things.

Jeff Pierce
Sales Manager
O. Mustad & Son / Partridge of Redditch

Second Post:

I have seen discussions on a few boards so here's what I have right now as far as info goes . . .

Hello everyone;

Sure is tough to keep up with what's going on on all the various boards on the web these days.
Just wanted to quickly post on this subject. There is no truth whatsoever to any rumor about Partridge being sold to anyone. It is still a brand that falls under the Mustad umbrella. I can assure you of that. As for the comment about Mustad putting little effort into the product line I can assure you that is not true either. Since there have been no massive SKU intensive hook roll outs for Partridge I can see where it may appear as though little is going on but such is not the case. In the last 3 years, Mustad has invested a very significant amount of money into the Partridge brand. Production in Redditch was tough. Quality issues were many and that had to be addressed. We have upgraded all tooling that is used to produce the Partridge hooks and this has helped tremendously to improve the quality. Production had moved to Singapore but recently we shut the Singapore operation down with the opening of the worlds largest fish hook factory on the planet, our new facility in Wuxi, China. When we opened it 2 or 3 years ago it was the largest and we are now doing a huge expansion to make room for more machines and manual production. This is the most state of the art hook factory in the world. Quality will not suffer, it will only get better and availability of Partridge products will also get much better. Partridge management in Europe made the call to stop production on many long standing staple hooks like the CS10/3, CS42, CS15 and others in order to focus efforts on the core items and get caught up on the backlog created with the production move. As production gets caught up, the plan is to add some of these popular items back in and as far as I'm concerned, this cannot happen fast enough as some of my favorites are cut for now. Many new hooks have been added like the 2 Klinkhamer hooks, Shrimp hooks and other Flashpoints to name a few.
The warehouse in Auburn, NY did stock up on some of the items that are being dropped for now so many of these items should be available during the dry spell. Your dealer can check status of items for you.

Hope this helps to answer some of the questions.
I'll follow up later with the current drop list.

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The message is - stock up now if you have any favourites on the list.