SWIVELS

I am making spinner rigs for walleye and use ball bearing swivels. I am familiar with SAMPO and SPRO but they are spendy. Does anyone have any experience with less costly Opti-Tackle or VMC swivels. Are these decent quality for 8 and 12 pound line.

I have used the vmc swivels and haven’t had any complaints.

Where do you use the swivel in your spinner rigs?

Personally I used them to tie to the beginning of all my spinner setups in order to make for quick changes. Never found a good loop knot I had confidence in.

I tie a simple overhand knot to make the loop and never had an issue. If you were worried about it, you could tie a figure eight knot. Wither you use a three way or a bottom bouncer to weight down the spinner rigs, they both have swivels. What ever works for YOU is your best option.

I have used a surgeons knot at the beginning of my spinner rigs and attach it to a good ball bearing snap swivel at the end of my main line. I guess I wouldn’t have to have a ball bearing swivel at the beginning of the spinner rig as long as I had a good ball bearing snap swivel at the end of my main line. Do you agree with that puddlepounder.

I am just looking at further broadening my horizons and asking questions. It is my opinion that the less terminal tackle involved the better. Unless you are using a different type of weight system, that doesn’t have a swivel, snap weights for instance, I am just wondering why you would add more terminal tackle to the setup? Or do you just don’t trust a knot/loop at the end of your spinner rigs?

I use a swivel when I tie up rigs with Mac blades. Mac blades always seem to twist the line otherwise. I have tried to drill out the hole on the blade a little bit too, but that made the line twist worse.

Spro is the best in my opinion, but yes, they are spendy. I don’t use the ball bearing ones, just their regular swivel. I run a barrel swivel on my main line attached to a duolock snap, then hook the snap to the barrel swivel that I tie on the harness. It does the best job that I’ve seen eliminating line twist. I usually use regular bullet weights when pulling harnesses and 1 thing I now do differently is attach the weight to the leader. This also reduces line twist.

I have never thought of using a bullet weight on a spinner rig, mostly because I use 2oz and up to 4oz weights when pulling spinners. I do use bullet sinkers alot dragging Lindy rigs, especially in the weeds. What weight bullet sinkers are you using and what speed are you pulling them at?

When I use bullet or Lindy type sinkers on spinner rigs add a small bead between the sinker and swivel/snap to protect the knot and use a good ball bearing type .I will add a good ball bearing snap to my bottom bouncers also.

Anywhere between .9-1.3 or so. I’m also catching fish in less than 5′ of water. I don’t know the size, but they’re about 3/16″ to 1/4″ Diameter. I also meant split shots, not bullet weights. I suppose those would work, but not the fastest to switch out sizes.

puddlepounder wrote:

What weight bullet sinkers are you using and what speed are you pulling them at?

1/4oz typically. Usually early spring pulling along the tops of emerging weeds in that 8-12′ range. Speed is dependent on size of blades and depth/weights used. I like to feel weeds ticking every 5seconds or so.

On the bite don’t drop the rodtip back, when they pop-up out the weeds they smack it good, and the weight can hang up in the weeds causing poor hooksets.

Ringworms work pretty good for this presentation BC they can be rigged weedless, and it’s more of a reaction strike so they don’t follow for any period of time sniffing it out.

What kind of clevis’s are you using? The ones I use won’t spin when I go slower than about .7 or .8 mph when I am dragging Lindy rigs, I tend to go .3 to about .6 mph so my blades won’t spin if I had a spinner rig on. I would like to be able to pull spinners slower than .8 mph

I just use the plastic quick change. What size blades do you use at that slow of speed? You may have to downsize. Check out the Dutch Fork plastic blades, they apparently spin at much slower speeds than regular blades.

I guess I’m a lil confused as well Tom, that’s awfully slow for spinners. Spinners cover ground for me and speeds are over 1 at the least, so if I were going slower I’d switch up presentations altogether.

I should mention that this presentation hasn’t been extremely effective on walleyes. It comes in really handy with the kids though for that midday lull trolling around BC it catches everything. Shorten the rig to one hook with a plastic trailer and keeps the action busy with bass, northerns, and big panfish. Certainly have caught our fair share of eyeballs, but I see it as more lets just catch some fish tactic.

I pull spinners at .8 to 1.5 mph. Going that fast, using anything less than 2oz of weight, will not get my spinner down to the depth without having a 1/4 mile of line out. I will have to go back and reread the post, maybe I miss read something. Using a snap swivel when using splitshot sinkers makes sense, to eliminate Line twist.