mrcif

As a man that has overcast in to many a snag, the best thing I can recommend to do is to point the rod directly towards the snag, tighten up the clutch and walk backwards keeping the rod in line until the hooklink or line breaks (or you pull in the tree your attached to). It should go at one of the knots, worse case at the reel, but your rod should stay in one piece. Be careful of flying leads/feeders heading back your way though! Wrap a towel or rag around your wrist and grab the line just beyond the rod tip, that way you avoid breaking off at the reel, the worst place it can go. When you do it this way you tend to break the mainline at the hooklink/mainline join Even better! Can't believe I didn't think of doing that before. Thanks.

As a man that has overcast in to many a snag, the best thing I can recommend to do is to point the rod directly towards the snag, tighten up the clutch and walk backwards keeping the rod in line until the hooklink or line breaks (or you pull in the tree your attached to). It should go at one of the knots, worse case at the reel, but your rod should stay in one piece. Be careful of flying leads/feeders heading back your way though!

I was under the impression that the length of tubing (usually 1 & half times the length of your hooklink) was simply to stop tangling and also to help sink the line, though I'm a newbie as well so might be wrong.

I did ask a similar question recently about braid/mono and got a good response, but nobody answered this part; Most specialist hooklink materials I see are all of a fairly high breaking strain. Is it of upmost importance to have a hooklink that is of a lighter breaking strain than your mainline, or does it not matter as the knots are likely to give first?, I notice a lot of people seem to use the same strain of mono for both, and I was wondering if you could say, use a 10lb mono mainline, and 15lb braided hoolink material. Thanks.

Many thanks for the in-depth replies, much appreciated.

That's what I'm asking really, the 'do I need to use it?'. I think I know the answer already and will stick with the mono to mono for now. All these books, videos etc don't half complicate matters though. Cheers.

A couple of novice questions from a novice angler.... 1. Is braid only available in high breaking strains (10lb plus?), and if so, why? 2. Is mono stronger than braid?; i.e.if I tied a hooklink of 10lb braid to 8lb mono mainline, which would be first to give? Just wondering really, as most fishing tips tend to lean towards having a braided hooklength for presentaion, camouflage etc. But I only really like using nothing heavier than 8lb/10lb mono mainline. You also don't seem to be able to buy any ready tied hair rigs in braid below about 15lb breaking strain (if someone knows of somewhere, let me know) Or is it all rubbish and I should just stick to a hair rig of mono thats slightly less breaking strain to the mainline mono? Any advice would be appreciated. Cheers.