I agree there is no good reason not to remove lead. Even if it is less toxic it is still quite toxic. The problem is the birds are attracted to the faintly shiny nature and size of the sinkers. They ingest small rocks of the same size to aid digestion, so they are naturally inclined to gobble shiny or painted lead sinkers or jigs so as long as there are fisherman out there using and losing them.

I had also though lead was already banned in NH, so I realize it would certainly inconvenience folks like Alan at AJs who make tons of their own jigs. Lead is easy to work with. But there have got to be other much less toxic alloys that are workable at a sufficiently low enough temperature. I see that my lead less weights are mostly tin, tungsten or stainless. I would think stainless would be impracticle to work with in the small shop, but I wonder about tungsten and tin? Any metallurgists out there?

The main issue here is the size of the market! NH is a little dinky state with a little dinky number of fishers. I f you want change you need a bigger market! For all of those who love the loon and that magic sound (as do we all) and hate lead (and us) this question? beside all of your crying (some well deserved) how much money have you put up year after year after year to improve the resource! I'm not talking about letters to the editors or TV shots. Where is your yearly dollar contribution??