Strange physics behavior with attached objects

VR game using motion controller with a few minor tweaks - steam VR altho dont think it matters

frying pan blueprint, fish blueprint - goal is to put fish in pan

this works 90% - issue occurs when the fish is extended into the pan with the motion controller, and then the fish is released - this causes the pan to go crazy - bounce all over the place, float on the ceiling and generally become possessed

I’m using set simulate physics to false on the attach. it works great unless the motion controller gets into the collision box of the pan. it seems that set simulate physics applies to root and all attached, so if you pick up and drop the pan with the controller it resets the physics on all attached items. so i put a loop in the tick even of the pan to set simulate physics of all attached items to false. no luck. what does work is to also set collision enabled to false. then no matter what order i perform, the pan never freaks out. problem is, the fish cant then be picked up with the motion controller because there is no overlap event. i can change it to query only, but i dont think i should have to do this - set simulate physics to false should make no collisions - but it doesnt seem to work on attached actors.