Four years now with the Breakaway Mini Link, easily the most perfect lure clip I have ever used, still never had a failure

A lure clip might not exactly be the sexiest or most exciting bit of fishing tackle that we are going to talk about on this blog, but if you are an angler like me who always uses a lure clip tied to the end of his fluoro leader then it kinda helps if firstly your lure clip simply refuses to let you down, and secondly that you can change lures via feel alone, as in you don’t need to put your glasses on (getting older!) or switch a headlamp on in the middle of the night when you’re being all ninja…………..

And for four years now I have fished almost exclusively with the nice and cheap and always seems to be available Breakaway Mini Link lure clip, but rather than me talk you through how I came to using this lure clip, I will direct you to a blog post I wrote back in November 2015 - check here. There are of course a whole heap of different kinds of lure clips out there, and I have fished with a fair few over the years, but even when I go and get a bit of cabin fever and tell myself that a change of lure clip might be worth looking at (like here for example), I come back to this simple little Breakaway Mini Link because it’s so bloody good and easy to use. My test if you like is night fishing - can I remove a lure from my clip and then put a different one on by feel alone? Do you know 100% with those “snap” style lure clips that they are properly “snapped” back into place when you change a lure without looking? There isn’t a bass type of lure I have fished or played around with in the last four years that hasn’t fitted perfectly onto the Breakaway Mini Link, indeed a big part of me liking these lure clips so much is how well they work with the soft plastics I might fish with.

I am not going to name a friend of mine who I heard effing and blinding like you would not believe out on the rocks a couple of years ago, so I got on the radio to ask if he was okay. The language that came over the airwaves would have caused even the most experienced nun to blush! What could it possibly be? Had he lost a monster bass or perhaps slipped and broken his favourite lure rod? No such thing - it turned out that this friend of mine had taken it upon himself to give these Breakaway Mini Link lure clips a go, and unbeknown to me he had gone and tied it on upside down and could not get his lures on at all (glasses?)! I want you to know that I categorically did not wet myself laughing because I am more mature than that? Even now when this friend of mine goes to change a lure in front of me he tends to turn to me and say something along the lines of “I don’t know what you were on about Henry, these clips are so easy to use!”

Could the Breakaway Mini Link be improved upon? If you ask me it’s essentially the perfect lure clip for our bass fishing, but I do have a few ideas on how it might be made that little bit better again. Marginal changes I might add that may not actually make any difference at all, but four years with the same clip does tend to generate a few ideas. I have seen a few copies of it over the years and some have missed the point with how this Mini Link to me is the perfect mix of wire diameter to go through the eyes of the weedless hooks I might use and strength and shape/ease of us. When I was last in the US I bought some of the smallest Tactical Anglers Power Clips to try - I see a few people raving about them - but I quickly discarded them because with their shape they don’t work with a number of lures and especially weedless hooks I use.

The last time I was on the Cape Cod Canal and fishing with the incredibly kind and generous angler above who can put his surface lures out a frigging mile for striped bass, it was interesting that with all his power going into the cast AND hooking fish that are way bigger than any bass we are ever going to see, he was only using the next size up in the Breakaway clip range, what they call the Spinlink Clip (Breakaway rate it to 35lbs, but I guess this is somewhat cautious). I used to bait fish a lot with the largest Breakaway Clip in the collection, their Fastlink Clips, but with what this striped bass guy puts his gear through I’d be more than happy with the slightly smaller Spinlink Clip. A few years ago I put the lad I do this co-guiding with out in Kerry onto these Breakaway Mini Links, and I always reckon on guiding being a good test of gear. If John ever needs to put a lure clip on for an angler then he turns to the Breakaway Mini Link, and like me he has never had one fail on what is most likely hundreds of clients and thousands of rod-hours now. I hesitate in referring to an item of fishing tackle as perfect, but in my opinion the Breakaway Mini Link is the perfect lure clip for the sort of lure fishing so many of us do…………….

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.