HERE'S A KRAZY WAY FOR FISHERMEN TO PUT MORE WIGGLES IN THEIR WORMS

Krazy Glue has always had a crazy image. One of its television ads shows a man wearing a hard hat dangling in midair from a girder, held there by the glue on the hat. The commercial promises so much that the stuff sounds like the glue industry's answer to the Vegomatic.

Actually, Krazy Glue belongs to a remarkably versatile family of adhesives—the cyanoacrylates. In surgery, for example, these glues have many uses; they're employed in cornea transplants and stitchless suturing, among other things.

Now a spinoff product—Krazy Glue for Fishermen, Hunters & Campers—may create a mini-revolution in fishing. It's a nontoxic, non-corrosive liquid that bonds bait to hook in 10 seconds. While this may offend fishing purists, it does have some advantages. Safety: you worry about hooking fish, not fingers. Economy: worms and other bait can cost more per pound than filet mignon, and they slide off a hook all too easily: a three-gram tube of Krazy Glue will secure more than 100 pieces of bait for less than $3. Performance: the glue works in salt or fresh water with almost any type of small bait. It's especially effective with live bait, because glueing allows the bait to give fish come-hither wiggles long after the bait would've been dead had it been skewered.

One can use Krazy Glue, as they say, in a million and one ways—with killies for weakfish or fluke: to mold gobs of salmon eggs into food balls for perch or trout: to thwart fish like porgies or flounder, which are notorious for sucking bait off a hook. One can apply the glue to ensure that larger, impaled bait, like green crabs, stay hooked: or, in "fly-fishing" to affix a leader to the bottom of a live bug, which can then be set down to swim on the water's surface.

Krazy Glue can also serve as a pocket-size outdoor repair kit. It's not effective on completely non-porous surfaces, but it can be used to repair small splits in fishing rods, wooden handles and gunstocks, rubber boots and rafts, and canvas and vinyl tents.

The Krazy Glue folks are having a few laughs marketing their new product. One vice-president says that the glue's raison d'‚Äö√†√∂‚Äö√ë¢tre is "to allow your bait to live long enough to fulfill its destiny," and for a time the company considered giving away BE KIND TO YOUR WORM buttons. But the glue is so ingeniously practical, you have to wonder: Maybe these people aren't so crazy after all.