Tip - Hands Free Shore Fishing

If fishing from shore, and you have access to enough shoreline to move about freely to find fish, here are a couple tips that will save your back and give you more fishing time.  Most anglers will carry multiple rods to either offer different presentations when fishing for the same species, or to fish for two different species.  If you like to move around to find fish, constantly putting down your extra rod or tackle box gets old real fast, causing back aches in old fellows like me, and it wastes time.  After a while, you might be content to stay on one spot longer than you'd like simply because you don't feel like bending over to pick up your stuff and move.

So, since mobility is important to find and catch more fish, you have to be innovative to gear up to be mobile.  Here are a few tips to help.

1)     Wear a fishing vest to stow the tackle that you might need for the day.  Some of them have a large back pocket for extra gear or even a lunch.  I pack mine full of everything that I might need for a day.  The amount that you can carry is limited to the number of vest pockets that you have and the strength of your back.  You can carry a lot of stuff like me and be prepared for anything, or you can go as light as you wish.  That's a personal preference.

2)     Use a fanny pack or some system to pack water or more gear that won't fit in your vest.  I currently have one that has two water bottle holders and I'll stuff the main compartment with more tackle.  I carry my spinnerbaits in a soft tackle pack that I can clip to my belt or wear with a strap over my shoulder.

Notice the vest packed with tackle and the rod clipped to my vest behind me.  This enables me to fish hands free without having to bend over to put stuff down and pick it up all day long, maximizing my mobility.  I also have a water bottle and spinnerbait pouch clipped to my belt.  Here I am tossing spinnerbaits with my baitcasting rod, but have a plastic worm rigged on my extra rod clipped to my back for a back up presentation.  My brother Kyle, fishing behind me, found a way to attach and carry his extra rod on his fanny pack.

3)     Attach a clip large enough to fit around your rod blank below the bottom guide to the loop on the back of the neck of your vest.  That way, you can carry an extra rod for a separate presentation.  Make sure that they clip is easy enough to open and close to enable you to access the rod easily without removing your vest.
 A couple things to note when doing this, watch out for trees and don't forget that you have a rod clipped to your back.  All you have to do to get around a tree is to reach around and grab your rod blank, and pull it over your shoulder horizontally to get around tree branches.

Now, when shore fishing, you too can be mobile and catch more fish.  Try my tips above or come up with your own way to be mobile.

Save Money on Braided Line

Everyone knows that superlines like braid, fused lines like Fireline, or molecularly linked Nanofil, are much more expensive than monofilament and fluorocarbon lines.  But the advantages are that superlines last much longer, are much more durable in most situations, have much stronger breaking strength than other lines, are much more sensitive, have no memory, and have no stretch for rock solid hook sets.  If you are fishing for species that don't make long runs when hooked, here's a tip that will save you money and stretch out the cost of these no superlines.

Don't put it all on one reel spool!  Fill them all!

Suppose you just purchased a new spool of braided line.  When spooling up your new line, don't empty your old spool of monofilament or old fluorocarbon lines.  Rather, peel off about half 50 to 75 yards of line and leave the rest on as backing for your new braided line.  That way, depending on the diameter of the line and spool size that you're filling, you can fill several reel spools of line and stretch your fishing dollars.

You will lose some line inevitably from changing lures and other reasons, so when your spool gets a little low, peel off the braid and wrap it around an empty Coke bottle or something, and add some backing to replace the amount of braid that you lost, then reconnect your braid and spool it back on.  Voila, you now have a full spool again.

I like to add new line each season, but with braid, you should be able to get more life out of your line depending on how much you fish.  So, here's another tip within a tip.  Instead of trashing your old braid, tie off the end to a fence post (or something outside) and pull off the braid by walking.  When your braid is out of your spool and rod, clip it off from the backing.  Walk back to the fence post and reconnect the other end of your braid that was once your most used end to the backing.  Then, reel it back on.  The end that was once connected to your backing is now the end that you tie your lures on, and is just as good as newly spooled braid.  Since I've been doing this, I've been changing my superlines out every other year.

How does this save money?  If you assume that 150 yards gives you two spools using 75 yards, then switch the ends as described above, you actually get four spools of line out of your 150 yard purchase.

This is the first of a series of fishing tips posts.  I will be posting periodic fishing tips and will index them on a separate page.  If you check back and have missed my tips posts, rather than scrolling through old posts, check the fishing tips index page and click on the ones that interest you.