If there is one thing cabin fever does besides costing me a fortune, it’s getting me thinking about my lure fishing to come this year and how I might go about changing a few things up to see if I can catch more or better fish - and plans are afoot to spend more time in our local estuaries, where a more measured, lighter and subtler approach I am convinced will help at times. Looking for bass mooching around in weed beds for example ain’t exactly going to go that well if I start chucking some great big noisy lure at them and also wade around without a care in the world.
So when I manage to get a new tip for that rather stunning light lure rod Favorite Skyline SKY-862M 8’6’’ 6-21g, it will sit rigged up in my rod rack here at home, together with a small spinning reel loaded up with say 0.10mm/14lb Sufix Performance Pro 8 braid, and a light, most likely 10lb or 12lb Sufix Invisiline fluorocarbon leader. This is some setup and it will be coming out to play when I fish my local estuaries especially - and I’ve begun thinking about lure clips………….
Which I grant you are not exactly the most exciting items of fishing tackle on earth, and to be honest I already use my perfect lure clip anyway, the very clever, easy to use and has never let me down in over two years of use Breakaway Mini Link. This lure clip works perfectly with all the bass lures I might use here in the UK and Ireland, but because winter ain’t frigging over yet my head gets to thinking about things, and I can’t get away from how a decent loop knot surely gives the most perfect presentation possible when you’re fishing a soft plastic such as the 4.5’’ and 6’’ long OSP DoLive Sticks which are fishing as much on the drop as they are on the retrieve. I grant you that the margins of presentation may well be slim to potentially non-existent, but there must be a reason why fly anglers use loop knots so much to secure their flies. And cabin fever rages as well.
The awesome Breakaway Mini Link lure clip
Anyway, as much as I love the Breakaway Mini Link lure clip, a loop knot does make a lot of sense for the lighter tackle approach especially. But I am going to want to change lures sometimes and I really don’t want to be having to endlessly cut and retie knots in my leader and then retie leaders because they have got too short due to me changing lures a bunch of times, not when I don’t think I need to. Does that make sense? So as much as the Breakaway Mini Link is my go-to lure clip, I went looking for a lure clip that worked that bit more like a loop knot might, but I wanted the lightest possible clip so there would be no impact on the movements of my lure - and yes, I might well be over-analysing this, but as I said, this is how cabin fever plays with my head, and regardless of that I do love messing around with stuff to see if I can improve things.
The Fiiish Perfect Link Fishing Snap, Medium size, this is a 25g Offshore Head on a 120mm Black Minnow
Now you can find any number of those snap like lure clips out there, indeed I know from experience that the Fiiish ones are really good (Fiiish Perfect Link Fishing Snaps). OK, so I struggle a bit to open them up, but I have used them plenty when we have been testing gear in the US especially, and they work well. The really small Medium (20lbs) Fiiish ones are good for our bass fishing if that helps, and they are nice and compact and are much easier to open if you’ve got decent thumb nails especially!
Owner Hyper Welded Quick Snap, size 1
Anyway, on my search for a lure clip that essentially works like a loop knot in your leader but gives me the ease of changing lures and not tying endless knots, I came across the Owner Hyper Welded Quick Snap online - and I was sure I had seen these clips before. They are a simple snap style of lure clip, but the wire is so damn thin and light compared to any other snap style clip I have come across, the quoted strength to size ratios are something else, and they are not cheap at all - and I went searching through my image library here because I know I’d seen these before (keywords are vital!). Good eh? I found the photo above which meant I had to have used them, so I went digging around in a box I have here and hey sodding presto I found a packet of them! I ran a search on my old emails and found that I had got them from Lurefishingforbass.co.uk which I see haven’t got them in stock at the moment, but hopefully they will get them back in at some point.
Now it’s some small and potentially insignificant margins as I said, but look at that photograph and you will get an idea how thin and light that Owner Hyper Welded Quick Snap is - bear in mind it’s the size 1 which has a quoted breaking strain of 33lbs! It’s very easy to open and close, it’s incredibly light and fine and like a loop knot, and they are not cheap, but if this little snap style clip weighs any more than a loop knot in your fluoro or affect my lures in any meaningful way then I would be very surprised. As much as the Breakaway Mini Link floats my boat, I do like the bigger loop style bit on this Owner Hyper Welded Quick Snap. One of these clips will be sitting on the end of my light fluoro leader on that light setup and I shall be giving them a proper go this season.
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