The DOHURCH Fish Lip Gripper is probably one of the cheaper fish lip grippers to find on Amazon. And the cost is under $10!
A lot of the fish lip grippers are squeeze handle or a double side push which require two fingers which you can easily find on sale but this is more of a pull ring lever above the handle and essentially is one-hand operation and easy to use. The fish lip gripper is made of an aluminum alloy body and the fish lip gripper is corrosion resistant.
The rotating handle on this fish lip gripper is 360 degrees, so no worries of non-rotation which helps prevents injuries.
And it does have a scale that extends and is retractable and it comes with a carabiner. And according to the description, it can hold up to 40 pounds.
OK, so I am going to give you my opinions on what you lose out when compared to a more higher priced fish lip gripper.
The Handle – Many fish lip grippers feature a foam, rubber or soft grip handle. While the DOHURCH says its ergonomic, it’s not the most comfortable grip. Granted, if you are wearing fishing gloves, you should be fine.
The Scale – While black scale handles feature a scale with big white numbers or tick marks, what you have is gray numbers and gray tick marks on stainless steel and it’s quite small to the point you can’t read it. Which is surprising, considering the photo on the Amazon product shows bigger black numbers on the steel scale. There is a knob on the bottom and while other fish lip grippers mention it for calibration,
The Carabiner – You get a coiled safety lanyard. I wish that the Carabiner metal lock handle at the end was thicker. Personally, I prefer the wrist strap versus the coiled safety lanyard. But it’s subjective.
There is no point of comparing this to a $20 or $30 fish lip gripper, but I will say that in this competitive market where there are many brands under $10, I can easily say that the fish lip gripper will work perfectly for the function of holding your fish and getting your photo or selfie.
It’s easy to use and it’s a one-hand operation that works extremely well. BUT all is not perfect.
Judging by all the perfect reviews, I wonder if I got a messed up version because I can tell you right now, you can’t hardly read the scale unless your eyes are very close to it. Nor is it anything close to what you see on the product image. The scale markings and numerics are not legible.
In fact, I couldn’t even get the scale to work accurately. I tested with a heavy small gun safe to lift it up and I am not seeing the scale even displaying. I then tried my heavy guitar amp and see if it would move but nope, scale was useless. Used the lever on the bottom to see if it would make a difference no it didn’t. But is their a silver lining to this scale that is not working for me (and possibly others), if you want to see the weight scale by pulling both ends, you’ll definitely give your forearm a work out.
Again, I could have gotten a lemon but I’m not bummed or anything because the primary reason why I wanted this is to use it as a fish lip gripper for traveling to areas especially if you may get some seawater on it. If I wanted to get a more (near) accurate reading of weight, I would use a digital scale as I wouldn’t trust a scale on a fish lip gripper.
But overall, the DOHURCH Fish Lip Gripper with scale is excellent as a fish lip gripper and affordable at under $10. But if you are wanting to use the scale portion, you may want to look elsewhere.
