Tangling advice

Hi everyone

I'm new to sea fishing, and have made my own rigs as set out in fishing books and magazines. The problem I have is that when I use a swivel to attach a snood, the snood gets tangled when I retrieve the line. Is this happening during retrieval, and therefore my bait looks OK after casting, or is there some 'magic' way of keeping them untangled. I've considered using booms, but not many people seem to use them, so they must be alright doing it normally.

Thanks

Ian

Rattsy, two things to try :-

1) Make the snoods shorter.

2) Use a stiffer / higher breaking strain line for the snoods.

I often cut a short length of silicone sleeve, slide it over the snood and feed it onto a 'side' swivel. The 'side' swivel is held on the main line between two beads and stops. This helps the snood to stand off from the main line. - Hope you understand this.


Peter

Peter's sleeve idea works best for me. Also, if you use much heavier mono on main line the increased thickness helps prevent tangles of the snods.

I attach snods of 20lb flurocarbon onto 50lb length of mono. If using more than one snod make sure they don't overlap.

Sea Angler rigs book is a useful start.

Use low memory mono for the snoods i.e. amnesia:
http://veals.co.uk/acatalog/Veals_Catal ... ine_9.html

tangly tim will always be your friend what ever sort of fishing you do ...best thing to do if you are worried about rigs is buy and copy it !

Rattsy, to figure out when the tangling occurs (which is half the battle to figuring out exactly how best to avoid it happening in the first place), try casting the rig - fully baited - using an old flattened plain weight - one that can't roll on the seabed when retrieved as many wired gripleads are prone to doing.

Try to do it when/where there is no or very little surf. Retrieve fairly slowly as soon as the rig has settled on the sea bed - you don't want it kiteing up in the water.

If the rig comes back with the snood twisted, the problem probably started during the cast -try clipping the bait down before casting.

If the rig comes back ok, it may be that the griplead was tumbling as it was retrieved, winding the snood around the mainline. Even this should not be a problem if the eye of the swivel that attaches snood to mainline is large enough in relation to the size of mainline so that the mainline can rotate freely through it. Make sure the beads on either side of the swivel are not so close together that they trap the swivel to the mainline either when the snood is under pressure.

A note on swivels. Barrel swivels I find are better than the bead type - they seem to rotate better even when under pressure.

If after the above is still comes back twisted, it may be that the bait is kiteing around in the water as it is retrieved - try streamlining your bait a bit. Try fast and very slow retrieves. If the problem doesn't happen on the very slow retreive, the bait spinning on retreive was causing the problem - but at least you know it was fishing ok up to that.

As the lads mentioned, a stiffer snood may help, as might a couple of inches of rig tubing over the end of the swivel/start of the snood. You can cast booms, but don't count on getting your usual distance.

I prefer my snoods to be amnesia and as light and supple as possible and bear in mind that every component you add to you terminal tackle is weight which will reduce your casting range, even if only by a short distance.

I figure you're always better trying to understand the cause of a problem and sort it based on that, rather than flinging all possible solutions at it and hope it goes away.

Right, enough, I'm boring me again. Hope this helps...