Closed loop rigs were all the rage at one time, with every monthly and weekly giving details on how to tie them and listing their advantages in many different angling scenarios. This led to an explosion of people adopting them, myself included, but I must say it wasn't long before I dropped them like a hot brick!
Open-ended feeder (click for bigger picture)
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In my opinion they are dangerous in the extreme, constituting a real threat of tethering. Now I know that we are never going to achieve a totally safe, 100% risk free rig, but what we can do is minimize the threat we pose to the welfare of our quarry which, after all, is at the top of all our agenda as anglers and concerned environmental watchdogs. What I have done here is show a couple of the rigs I use and show how they can be just as efficient, if not more so, as the loop, without the threat of causing untold damage whether real or imagined to our fish stocks.
Snagged, open-ended feeder (click for bigger picture)
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Loop rigs are very well behaved rigs in certain conditions and for certain species of fish they are also very resistant to tangling. The bolt effect of the loop rig is also a big plus point, being very effective, but it is also (in my personal opinion) a potential tether. I myself am not going to enter the pro's and con's of the rig too deeply as I am not willing to give the anti's any more ammunition with which to attack us. All I will say is that when there are safer alternatives out there, which are in my opinion just as effective, why stick with the old, when you could fish with the new?
Added loops create boom effect (click for bigger picture)
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In my loop style rigs I recreate the bolt effect with the use of beads and sliding rubber stops, if the rig is cracked off or snagged up, the fish can easily pull through these and all the fish will be left with is the hooklength and a short length (with any luck) of main line which ought to come free very quickly. But like all things in fishing nothing is 100% safe because at the end of the day we must recognize ourselves for what we are and that is hunters. We are actively hunting and trying to capture a wild creature and whether or not we intend to eat it or just admire it (and bask in its reflected glory) is pretty much irrelevant. To capture it we need to hook it and pray that it doesn't snag, snap or throw the hook. If we wanted to create the ultimate safety rig we would simply have to omit the hook, as that is at the root of all our problems.
In-line feeder (click for bigger picture)
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Right, no more gassing about loop rigs for me; I hope you all think about your rigs and their safety aspects, experiment with them, fuse aspects from other braches of the sport into them and, who knows, you may even end up with something so good it renders everything else obsolete!
All the best and please do not be too critical of my artwork - I am a chef after all and not an artist :O)
SWORDSY
matt thomas
