Coastlock snap opened...

[WahooKing]

The rating is that of the ball bearing and not the snap...Most failure I've seen are at the snap rather than the ball bearing.

I'm pulling lures and trolling sinkers at warp speed (16+_kts) with cable, wire, or braid...I've seen so many snaps fail it isn't funny...some open up...some are in a complete circle...some are cinched down like Squid Nations picture.

With all that being said...stick to a brand that works for you...Rite Angler and Quick Rig has solid wire forming on the snaps...Also, we give our snap swivels 1 season...then they get changed out...We spend to much money on other things to cut ourselves short on a couple of dollars worth of snap swivels each yr.

Anthony
Ace Fishing Lures
www.wahooking.com

[Patudo]

If the snap is too close to the fish's body it can sometimes open during the fight. I've seen it happen once, luckily without the loss of the fish and know at least three fish that have been lost because of snap failure. The snap is without doubt the weak spot in the leader system. For heavier tackle especially I bypass the snap altogether and crimp the leader directly to swivel or use a small shackle instead of the snap.

[BahamaLure]

in MHO if you are targeting large fish snaps have no place in the rig, ever. it does not take very long to crimp a connection if you are prepared beforehand. the single only way to be sure of your connection is this - period.



I guarantee I will not lose my fish-of-a-lifetime because I was too lazy to crimp it!

Hook 'em up!

Alan

[sancocho]

Originally Posted by BahamaLure

in MHO if you are targeting large fish snaps have no place in the rig,


Alan

maybe not with this snap,



suerte,

[Mokarran]

I have had a few open up that I know I closed and finally hypothesized they were opening up on the fish's body. With all the tension on a leader all it has to do is rub the right way on a sharks(in my case) hide and it opens. With two sides to a snap and two different directions it can rub you have a 25% chance of conditions being right if, the snap is against the fish.

Nice rigging BL.

[Mokarran]

Originally Posted by sancocho

maybe not with this snap,



suerte,

I don't trust just the barrel wrap where the "snap" is connected to the swivel. Also, is it just me or is that a crimp on the snap? In the top piece it looks like it has been flattened. If so, how is this any better than just crimping it directly?

[BahamaLure]

I agree, I dont get that idea either. I think I could do my crimp job faster than use it....

[Captain Fred Archer]

For day-in, day-out charter fishing we used tournament grade snap swivels by Sampo. We often fished six days a week and with the fishing often starting a quarter of a mile offshore and as good as it was in Cabo, my crew did a helluva lot of opening and closing of snaps as they changed lures, put fish in the chill tank, etc.

One thing that they learned was to ALWAYS check to make sure that the snaps were closed completely and correctly because there would be hell to pay if I saw one go out or come in wrong from my perch up in the tower. Open snaps getting put out are something that happens more than one might think and although we landed some fish on open ones, I am as sure as I can be that the few times that we had a snap open and lost a rig, it was because someone had put one out unsnapped. I have never heard someone other than my crew admit or think that they didn't close a clip...and my boys had no choice because I was almost always the one to spot it.

One of the things that I did to prove a point to my crews was to tie off to a piling in the marina and have them honk on a properly snapped rig, and then do the same thing with one that was unsnapped. And I had them look at the shape of the straightened, unsnapped one and told them that I had better never see that, or the cost of whatever lure we lost was coming out of their tip. That and "the tower eye upon them" worked like a charm.

I rigged my leaders exactly as BL shows whenever we were in a tournament for anything, big or small, and I rigged that way during blue and black marlin time. My day and night swordfish rigs were also done that way.

We do not rig swivels under the last teaser on our SuperBars. I don't know about any others, but ours absolutely do not need them. Instead, we run very strong custom snaps on ours. Of course, there is a snap swivel at the end of the wind-on leader, but as some here know, unless you have a bar that spins in the water, it too isn't really needed and we didn't run them in tournament situations either.

I agree with Ace on the components from both Rite Angler, who builds very strong, custom snaps for us, and Quick Rig, who also makes a very high quality product line.

[Captain Rich Adler]

Today I dropped a #24 planer in the water at 3 knots and a couple of minutes later we realized something was wrong. The braid hadn't broken, the planer didn't break, the 300lb brand new Sampo swivel pulled apart! I just mailed it to Sampo!

[OCtuna]

It looks like it had been opened with a curve like that