Viking Lars | Saturday, 13 January 2024
I use shooting heads a lot. For my salt water fishing, pike fishing, salmon fishing, sea trout fishing, even in the stocked reservoirs I use them. I the only place I never use them is dry fly and nymph fishing. They offer versality in terms of density on the line and not least length of the “operational” line.
I also use a variety of different shooting lines. Well, not a variety really - traditional coated ones and monofilament ones. I insists on a loop to loop connection, because if I don’t have that, the shooting heads makes much less sense. If I can’t swap one for another in a matter of minutes, I lose a bog disadvantage.
On the coated shooting lines with a Dacron core the spliced loop is superior to anything else - in all ways that matter. The core loses no strength and the loop is very low profile. The welded loops that most lines come with today are very good as well. They *can* come apart, but if you inspect them regularly, you’ll see the signs that it’s failing. You have the choice of welding a new loop your self (which is really quite easy) or splicing a loop if it’s on a Dacron core. Looped fronts are not the best in terms of presentations and turnover - I do think a needle knot is slightly better, but versaltiity in terms a quick change of the leader is worth the sacrifice.
The monofilament shooting lines are both easier and difficulter (see, fishing is importanter that education). You can simply tie a Perfection Loop and use that. I’ve done so for years and it works perfectly well. On the thicker ones, the knot is a little big and it can snag ever so slightly in the rings. Always a compromise. The knot can be smoothed out with a drop of UV resin, mitigating the snagging issue.
You can also simply tie on the shooting head with a Blood Knot. I’ve done that too and still do - mainly on the thinner shooting lines. It works very well, the knot is small enough to pass safely through the rings. Again on the thicker shooting lines, the knot does get a bit annoying.
I really have been obsessing slightly over this for years and years. One principle I’ve *always* adhered to is that the connection in itself must as strong as needed and rely only on the knot or splice. Never ever rely on any type of glue. I’ll happily use glue to smooth out connections.
I was going over the salmon tackle and as I always do, I pondered a little over this issue as I was checking the shooting lines on the big reels. I decided to try again. Some of the new UV resins are much stronger than the were just a few years ago and who knows…
I made a few spliced loops one monofilament braid and gave the splice a coat of UV resin. The resin penetrated the splice completely and as the slice itself is as strong as the braid, this was perfect. I then fed the monofilament up through the braid, all the way up to braid and held it there with a drop of UV resin. I continued a couple of inches down, making sure the braid was absolutely tight against the monofilament, applied resin, cleaned up the and smoothed it out.
A pull test was very promising. I couldn’t pull the loop of. Then I shocked it a few times and the braided loop slid off instantaneously. Back to the old principle - a connection must *never* rely on glue. If it can’t hold on it’s own, don’t use it.
Monofilament braids do work well on coated lines, because the coating is soft enough that the braid will bite into it and I’ve used that solution on many lines and never had it fail.
Back to the good old old Blood Knot and Perfection Loop it is!
Have a great weekend!
Lars
PoD: The loop that slid right off the heavy, monofilament shooting head I use on my 15' double hander.