Split rings made from braid - worth a look? Can’t beat testing stuff out by fishing with it, just like this morning

I do like a good split ring - when I need to replace them I use these ones here and here on my lures if that is any help - but a long time ago I heard something about making split rings out of braid, then promptly forgot all about it! It’s many thanks to a lad on the BassRepublic page on Facebook who put a video up the other day and got me thinking about braid split rings all over again…………..

Okay, so I wasn’t exactly looking for a way to replace my split rings on a bunch of different hard lures here at home, but for some reason I can’t really recall I changed back to barbless treble hooks on some of my Savage Gear Seekers, Surf Seekers, and Sandeel Pencils. Banging a lot of hard-fighting striped bass out in Canada on barbless single hooks - it’s the rules where we were fishing - got me thinking again about singles and how much more I prefer them on the Seekers and Sandeel Pencils especially. Trying to unhook a thrashing bass on a treble hook when you’re out in the surf is a pain, end of. I also think the way bass hit certain lures results in better hookup ratios with single hooks, and when I am hooked up to a bass I trust the hookhold with a single hook far more than a treble. Anybody lose many bass when lure fishing with soft plastics rigged with a decent-size weedless hook? If you keep a tight line that is.

Anyway, so I needed to change a bunch of Seekers and Sandeel Pencils back to single hooks, and up popped that Facebook post from BassRepublic in my feed. To go with that video I went looking around on YouTube where I found the video above, and as you can see it’s so easy to make split rings from braid. I have plenty of split rings here so I don’t exactly need to make them up from braid, but you know how I like to try stuff out and the reasons for using them make a good bit of sense. What have I got to lose? If you don’t try you will never know, that’s something I really abide by.

So I connected a few of the 3/0 Mustad Kaiju hooks to some Seekers with these braid split rings. If I can make them up then I would suggest you can as well, but the only way to see if this stuff like this works is to take it out fishing. Which I did first thing this morning. Found some lovely conditions but yet again the water was full of weed, indeed after my first cast I was already thinking about making a move to try and find clearer water, but a couple of casts later and I got a hard bang on the red/black 23g Seeker, rigged as per above with the 3/0 Mustad Kaiju single hook attached via a 60lb braid split ring. I reckon I pulled in a couple of tonnes of weed over the next couple of hours, but I did land a bass and had one more hard hit at range. I genuinely think that those three casts were the only ones where I obviously had no weed on my lure for at least a short while, and rather annoyingly I reckon there were a good few bass around this morning which because of the weed I couldn’t get at. Thanks to a few anglers who kindly engage with me on Facebook or when we are out fishing, I have got to thinking a lot more about the weight of a Seeker which I might or might not fish with over different types of ground - more to come on that.

As I said, I am perfectly happy using good quality split rings to attach hooks to my lures, but I also keep my eyes and ears open and I am very much open to doing things a bit differently if the reasons make good sense. One solitary bass does not a new method make, but I gave it a go and because braid split rings offer up a few different options, it’s got me thinking about how I might attach hooks in slightly different ways to a few different lures. Guess who set their alarm at 4.30am this morning but woke up at 3.30am instead because their brain was bouncing away with wanting to get out there and try this stuff out?! More time to pull more weed in!

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