Last year someone broke into my workshop and stole 6 rods and my big tacklebox. The police and I had our suspect, but no proof. Last night the see the guy, his brother, and his Dad headed down to the lake. They are carrying close to 15 fishing poles, tackle, chairs, etc in a red wagon. I give them about 30 minutes and I head down there as well. Sure enough, the one I suspect stole my stuff is fishing with my Abu Garcia on my Shakespear Ugly stick. Then he reaches into his black packpack and pulls out a plastic tackle tray. Opens it up, and there are all my lime green, white, and silver slabs. Since there were three of them and one of me, I bid them good luck, went home and called the police. The officer came (she was the same one that took the original theft report). Talked to her and she said without some sort of proof of ownership, it would boil down to my word against theirs over ownership.

So I'm off to buy a engraver this weekend. I have a decent R&R that I bought used last year. I going to engrave the last fours digits of my ssn in a hidden area and leave the pole leaning against my boat. Hopefully the punk can't resist the pole I absent mindly left out and steals it. Then the next time he goes fishing with his new toy, I'll have the proof he stole it.

Get'em!!... Hope they get busted. Good luck... stuff like that pisses me off.

FN, just some advice, if you're going engrave something, do your drivers license number, not SSN. Any officer can check the DL #, it's a lot more difficult to check a SSN. If you find the same situation as you described, a quick run of the # and it comes back to "Fishing Nut" and Joe Blow is holding the item, then somebody has some explaining to do. This is from 28 /12 years of law enforcement work.

If you see me driving through in your neighborhood and you need some help, just give me a wave. I'm not sure what I could do but I can try to hold the other 2 off for a little bit. I'm a little light in the shoes. My left side only weighs around 140lbs.

Reminds me of an incident years ago. Went to a company picnic near Lake Fork. The ranch was about 60 acres and had a house and pond nesteld behind a thick stand of trees. Everyone was asked to park in the cut hay field which was out of site from the house/pond area where the picnic was taking place. My friend took his boat and I took mine, planning on staying at Fork with our wives for an extra day after the picnic. When I got to Fork later that day, I noticed 1 of my small tackle boxes was missing. Luckily I had put all rods and most of tackle in the truck but got lazy and left one box under the dash of the boat (this was back in the late 80's so meth head crime wasn't an issue back then). I knew it had been stolen at the picnic but didn't know who. My wife passed around the info about the missing tackle box and said if someone had taken it, we would like to have it back, no questioned asked. She also put notes on bulletin boards etc at the office but nobody came forward. The next year the company president had another picnic at his ranch. We showed up again too. Wouldn't you know, some kid comes around the corner with a tackle box exactly like mine that was stolen. I told my wife that was the one but as you might expect there is always the chance that someone has the same one. I casually walked over to the kid (about 12-13 yr olds) and asked him if he had caught anything and he said no. He opened "his" box to change lures and there were all my lures, lol.. Funny thing was, I did have my name scratched into the lid of the box and I could see it clearly too. I again told my wife and but I decided not to make a scene at a company event. The next week she mentioned it to the kids Mom and she flat denied it. She said she would check the box when she got home and if it had my name she would bring it back. Never happened and she tried like heck to ignore my wife. Oh well, if it meant that much to them and the mom is no better, they can have it.

Years ago, the local police sponsored an engraving program that did exactly that, engraved DL. On rods and reels they did it on the reel seat, completely out of sight. Took pics also.

I was hoping this story ended with justice seeing done.

Dang man, sorry to hear about that ordeal!

I need to engrave my stuff I guess, or just talk my wife into letting me store it in the bedroom LOL.

............u should have shot all 3 of them......... .............down there fishing with YOUR stuff, laughing at ya as you walked up...... or atleast cracked them across the back of the head with a 2x4......

I have game cameras set up at my business. Get one.A picture is worth a thousand words. THEY WORK!!

good ideal where can u get a engraver at i have been looking

That's gotta burn, looking at some sleaze bag fishing with your gear. Maybe get some of that mace in the fog form and do a drive by on em.

Who has experience with engraving into a rod? How did you go about it? I'm want to do this as well, but am concerned with damaging the material.

Whats the right decision to make in this case I dont know... I just hope im old enough and settled down a little more before I ever get put in a situation such as that because I wouldnt have made the same decision.

One easy thing to do is just take pics of every thing you own with a digital camera. I have pics of almost every serial number in my house, boat, and storage shed. I even have them backed up on a hard drive that stays in my lock box at the bank. Even if an item does not have any numbers on it, you can still have a pic of the item to prove it is yours. Also take pics of you license plates on your vehicles, boats, campers, or anything thing else with your phone. Many times cars get stolen and the license plate or VIN is not known so it can not be put in the national data base. If it is not in the NCIC system and someone gets pulled over in your car, the officer will not know it is stolen and will let the person driving it go. If you have these pics on your phone you will have them on hand to make a report.

I have only had something stole once,and when they were caught,they were minors.This meant the kids parents said they would not do it again,and that was that.There was no punishment that might have kept them from doing it again.