TACTICS
By Jono Booysen
are. This meant that it was perfect to use for lures such as Clark spoons and drones. In the mid-1980s to ’90s wirelines became NYBODY who has fished in a tournavery popular among anglers in the St Lucia ment under IGFA regulations will and Mapelane area when targeting snoek be familiar with the rule “no in the backline. The sheer numbers of wireline is permitted”. Today, fish caught using this method was most people will just glance over it unreal, so much so that it became thinking “Why would anyone ever taboo and, according to Gar y use wireline?”. Heath, their use was met with the The practise of trolling with same disgust as someone caught wireline has been around for moving their golf ball on a many decades and, if used corgreen. rectly, can produce unpreceAs a result, most of the once dented results, especially when “go-to” wireline outfits were targeting Natal snoek. stowed in the roof and forgotThe idea of using wirelines ten. I know of only a small handcame about when anglers ful of anglers that still have these encountered trouble with fish in wireline rigs that they use. Every deep water and strong current. now and then, when the snoek are They wanted to get their lines acting, well, like snoek do, it’s time down deeper without using downto break out the old gear, wipe off the riggers or weights. The solution was dust and put them to work. to make the line itself heavier. The reels that one should use are not Wire line was heavier and thinner your typical state of the art setups that most than equivalent breaking strain nylon or serious anglers are currently using. Instead the mono lines and thus has less resistance in the A spool of wireline. old school Penn Senator and Penn 49, both with water. As a result, it sank faster. One of the added steel spools, are better suited for this application. benefits was that it was not prone to twisting like other lines
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10 • SKI-BOAT September/October 2020
