braid + heavy kelp beds

[doggy]

hey people i need some help here. i want to fish in heavy kelp beds. would i go for 25pound braid? i heard guys using 65pound spectra braid for cutting through kelp like butter they says? could i beachcast with 65pound braid? fladen chieftan multiplier surf reel, with abu espirit 8oz. also have 4oz bass rod with a selection of fixed spools. any advice or tips on line/rig setups for heavy kelp would be much appreciated.
lost a nice one today in heavy kelp/rock mark, on the epirit beach rod on a running pennel rig 5oz lead. 60pound main line with 15 pound snood. rod was nearly jerked out of my hand i waited for a good 4 to 5+ pulls on rod to make sure he was well on or so i thought? struck it, got snagged real good and by the time i got the trace free from snag the snood was gone from the top hook down, around half the snood was gone and with the two hooks. sick it was the only action i got in 4 hours, bang on high tide to if thats means anything, semi-noob here go easy on me

[Al and Jordan]

hi doggie. 80% of our fishing is done from rock marks into what can only be described as kelp forests. you can get berkley whiplash crystal micro fine braid with a breaking strength of 65lb. yet it only has the same diamater as 15lb mono . brilliant stuff if you intend to dunk your gear into the rough stuff.
althow you'll have to adapt your fishing style a bit as you will loose loads of leads and hooks over seriously rough ground. best to just keep things simple. i use a single 1 hook rig going from a 3 way swivel. a 2 foot snood of 30lb amnesia low memory mono and a 4oz lead tied to a 4 foot length of normal 30lb mono.
you have to be quick on your toes when you see a bite. don't allow it to develop as 9 times out of 10 the fish will have you in the rough stuff. strike as soon as you see him hit the bait and give a good 10 or so pump and winds to get the fish initally up outta the kelp then retrieve at a normal pace.
if the lead gets stuck, just pull for the break and you'll usually get your fish in handy enough and just tie on another lead.
you can buy hooks and 3 way swivels in bulk by the 100 and they work out really cheap at around £5 per 100.
i make all my own rough ground leads outta the little aluminum tea tree candle holders or a big dessert spoon i got out of a car boot sale for 20p. just pour your lead into them and twist a bit of copper wire into a loop and pop it into the lead in your mould with plyres
keeps costs down no end

[doggy]

ah thanks guys, top advice there. neat idea with the candle tins and spoon for leads, id say the spoon gets you real nice oval shaped ones for the rocky marks.

spectra vs berkley? hmmm i looked on fleebay they both come in around the same price, so you wreckin go with the berkley?

quote'' 2 foot snood of 30lb amnesia low memory mono and a 4oz lead tied to a 4 foot length of normal 30lb mono. little bit confused there 30lb amnesia snood to 30lb normal mono does that not equal the same brake test in both snood and main body of trace? or is it low memory weaker than normal mono? sorry noobie

[yngkmd]

your mainline is say 65lb braid, the gets tied to top eye of the 3 way swivel, the bottom eye has 30lb line attached to the weight and the middle eye is line attached to the hook

there is no real trace as such, if your weight gets snagged that part of the line will break off leaving the 3 way swivel and the hook length and vice versa if the weight hook gets snagged

its one of the best rigs to use for rough grounds, no use tying up fancy traces as chances are you'll just lose it and losing a hook here and weight there takes a lot less of a toll on the wallet and morale.

[doggy]

o yea im with you now, nice one have 3way swivals there n all, happy days thanks again chief, top advice

[flyno]

Hi Doggy, some excellent advice from the other 2 posters, but an other thing i would like to add is that casting with braid on a multiplier can be a nightmare sometimes {maybe it was just me }. I stopped using it on my multipliers and switched to a 25lb mono line and started using lead lifts and it hasnt been too bad. Going over kelp beds you are not going for massive distance anyway so a 25-20lb good quality mono line should be ok with the lead lifts. Trial and error with lots of cursing and ye will find something that works.

[Al and Jordan]

good point flyno. i forgot to say that our rough ground reels are fixed spool penn 760 slammers. they are like winches and pretty much bulletproof
braid ona multi can become an expensive venture

[doggy]

thanks lads top stuff there, so i think il just keep my 25lb mono on my multiplier and get the 65lb braid for my fixed spool, makes a lot of sense.
cheers again lads much appreciated, them fishy's better watch out!

[bazzer74]

Everything you've been advised so far is 100%. If you want something special for the multiplier, buy grauvell "teklon gold". 30lb breaking strain is much the same diameter as 15lb. 50lb=25 etc etc etc etc. Breaking strain is spot on but it wouldnt be as abrasive proof as line of "proper" diameter to breaking strain.

[weedave]

heres my two cents

what al' said about braid and end rigs is true - but he is using Penn slammer reels, which as he said are bombproof but if you don't have a reel with a very solid spindal for the spool then you'll bend it and the line lay will be off. therefore not the best on reels.

if its really heavy ground then 30lb mono is the winner for me - coupled with a Penn 535mag this set up will pull the kelp in too if needs be.

depending on distance then i may use a leader to whack it out but if its in the closer tough stuff then 30lb straight to the 3 way swivel will work great.

i honestly think its horse for courses when it come to rough ground set up - but mines working well for me and i tend to hold one rod when its a rough mark so i'll feel bits straight away and can lift into fish asap and begin the retrieve.

i'd tend to use a 30lb hook length but a 20lb week link to the lead - idea being the lead ejects first and if the hook snags i should be able to bend it out with enough force.

hope you get something worked out to suit you.

dave

[doggy]

thats a good point davey and a lot cheaper witch would suit me for now, i was out yesterday at a poxy local rock mark using the simple 3way swival rig even doh i dont have the proper line setup, the 3way rig helped a lot for working around the rocks not getting snagged as much even bagged a nice wrasse too. can one you guys tell me is there any regulation or rules for pollock's can i keep any i want? n what is the best way to kill the fish knife in head or bash it? i heard of guys using some sort of salt or some kind of powder in a bucket that kills the fish in the most humaine way? cheers again lads

[doggy]

thats a good point davey and a lot cheaper witch would suit me for now, i was out yesterday at a poxy local rock mark using the simple 3way swival rig even doh i dont have the proper line setup, the 3way rig helped a lot for working around the rocks not getting snagged as much even bagged a nice wrasse too. can one you guys tell me is there any regulation or rules for pollock's can i keep any i want? n what is the best way to kill the fish knife in head or bash it? i heard of guys using some sort of salt or some kind of powder in a bucket that kills the fish in the most humaine way? cheers again lads

[Al and Jordan]

good to hear the rig is keeping your losses down man
as for keeping fish, most do not at present have minimum retention sizes, only really bass and trout. a lot of it will be down to common sense and showing a bit of respect for the seas and areas your fishing in. far too many small juvenile fish are being taken with impunity, but a widely regarded across the boards size among anglers would usually be around the 30cm size for flats and a bit bigger for round fish depending on the species.
just do a bit of homework on the species that you intend to take and always remember to keep things sensible.
certin species that visit our shores like wrasse are very slow growing and find a territory at the start of the summer and stay there for the duration of the year. a ballan wrasse that weighs 2lb can be as old as 8 years and still not mature enough to breed yet. the taking of too many of these fish from a set area has left a lot of good wrasse marks destroyed this past few summers to a lot of peoples anger. i've seen the same thing happen to a few of our favourite conger marks. these guys find an area that holds a few eels then hammer them until they have killed them all . showing little or no respect for species like this really gets under other angler's skin and sadly it's only gonna be a matter of time before anglers come to blows over these incidents. i've seen verbal arguments break out and a lot of threats getting thrown around in the past. if you do intend to take a few fish for the table or bait just remember to take only what you need and put the small fish back.
i've lost count over the years how many times i've heard people complain that there are no decent fish left for us to target from the shore. yet the same people are filling plastic bags with small 20cm fish . obviously they are too thick or ignorant to realize that if they hammer an area filling bags with tiny fish that they are removing a whole generation which would have been a run of bigger fish a few years down the line.
i hope this helps man and happy hunting
just remember to limit you kill, instead of killing your limit. you'll find that a lot of other anglers will be a lot more helpfull when they know you respect the seas we fish in
Al.

[doggy]

cheers al for clearing that up, interesting stuff didnt realise a wrasse growed so slowly. dont get me wrong ive got the upmost respect for the nature, my sister is a vet id never harm any animal or living creature that was not going in my belly , why would you take a wrasse? i thought you could not eat them well thats what a chap told me he said that there is to many bones in them to fillet a wrase? im only after one fish for a spot of good eating, pollock i like a lot the reason i ask is last october i was at a spot and i guy there caught a 3lb pollock he asked me and the m8 if there was any regs for taken the fish i said not that i know of , so we smashed a big rock of it head a load of time about 10 times, mess it was, thing is about 20mins half hour later wen were at are rods the fish started flipping around like it was still alive, the chap tought it just spasims i wasnt so sure,what do you guys think? i hope it was dead cause if it wasnt it would of been crazy pain or watever it didnt look the best way to kill the fish, we gave it a few more belts with the rock he didnt move much after that but to think he was alive for half hour and wen we could of killed it properly in the first place.

the mac bashers at howth use tiny hooks and take the smallest little mac's and do it day in day out through the season, i use the much bigger hooks for a nicer sized mac so i can get nice dinner out of it and then a small hooks for a few small ones for baits is that o.k? suppose it makes not much odds when them guys are blasting the little sprats out of it. or should i just keep going with bigger hooks the only thing is you get far less macs on the big hooks?

[Al and Jordan]

usually one good thump to the head will do the trick. i keep a sharpening steel in my bag for keeping a good edge to the blade of my filleting knife. it doubles as a great priest for dispatching fish
as for the feathers. in the last 3 years i have had better success on the smaller feathers with the smaller hooks. a fella on a boat trip put me onto them a while back and i have'nt looked back since. we usually go out a few times in the year on the boat for a 3 hour mackerel trip to get a bit of bait in. we've been on the boat with 8 other anglers who were picking the mackerel up in one's while we were hitting full houses. the only different thing i could see that we were doing was using the smaller feathers. just be sure to check what sort of breaking strain the smaller one's are tied up with. if you intend on spinning from the shore, some of them are tied with really light line. so if you get pulled into the kelp it will be game over.
the best feather rig we ever got was a small set by shamrock tackle. they were tied with 40lb breaking strain line and the hooks were like little carp hooks. small, but made of a heavy gauge wire that would have no problem taking a 7lb pollack on. i must look them up on their site and get a bulk order of them in for the summer