Lets twist again.

Exellent article Dave, it shows you can teach old dogs new tricks, I am in the bucket of water camp so I will have a few spoolings on the static technique now that it has been explained so clearly and concisely. One thing I might add to anyone using the bucket of water method, I always use hot water as hot as your hand can withstand and I find this helps with knocking out the memory from the spool. Its an old trick from the Army when we were using draw rope straight from the manufactures spools we would end up with big kinks in the rope after a few uses, so we bunged the rope into a barrel of hot water a rewound it to suit ourselves and had no problems ever since.

Years ago I used to fill my fixed spool reels using Dave's method. During the past few years I went back to holding the spool at right angles to the axis of the reel spool.

I have noticed more twist bulding up using this latter method so I will be going back to Dave's method.

However for filling centre-pins and multiplyers you have to use my second method. In other words, no twist on the line spool, no twist on the reel spool.

Good article Dave. Lot's of food for thought.

Always spool my line through grass to eliminate twist and it works for me

What a good piece, again! Glad that Dave Chilton uses the method I use and that Graham showed him the easy way to recognise whether the spool was right way up or not.

However, I have to disagree with Dave's conclusions about how twist is put into the line when using baitrunner or backwinding. I have not found this to be the case at all and in an attempt to prove it once wound the spool with yards of gift-wrap ribbon. Whether this act in the same way as line I am never quite sure, but the results were enough to convince me. The baitrunner style of paying out line left little or no twist in the line on the outward journey, winding back in was a different matter.

Years ago I worked for a tufted carpet manufacturer. Spools of yarn (upto 1500) were mounted upright on what they called a loom. Line was fed of the spool through 50 - 100 feet of fine steel tubing (bit like bundi tubing on the hydraulics system of a car) down to the needle where it was punched repeatedly through either a canvass or polypropylene backing, giving a pile.

This system had been used for almost 20 years since they first started making carpet, but one day they found it was not good enough. Some bright spark bought in some yarn that was already twisted to high heaven to produce what we all now know as a "twisted pile". The loom workers, many of which were anglers believe it or not and members of our works club, were complaining about loosing bonus because the yarn kept tangling and getting stuck in the tubing. This in turn cause the yarn to break leaving 2-12 inches of carpet with a bare track (later rectified).

I got involved only because I was working with Maintenance Department trying to cut down on routine maintenance jobs by recommending better working practices. It struck me that the way we had been doing it for 20 years was likened to a fixed spool casting line, there were coils and a little twist in normally untwisted line, but this hadn't been a problem. The yarn was only going one way to the needle and wasn't being retrieved as it was with a reel.

However, with a severe twist already in the line the idea occured to me that if the yarn was payed off the bobbin under tension with a guide (bail arm) to smooth it out, the yarn would be less likely to tangle up and get stuck. We had a further 3 anglers in Maintenance, all qualified engineers who made an assembly with a ballbearing under the bobbin and a fixed hook (the bail) to one side. It was perhaps 90% successful in removing yarn breakages and was soon applied to all twisted yarn machines.

2nd part

btw, the spools of yarn contain perhaps 2-5 miles of yarn, not just a couple of hundred yards.


I believe that it's not the baitrunner or the backwind that causes the twist, but the winding back on again. Interesting his bonefishing experience though. I gues that's similar to running loose line through the grass.

However, I am glad that Dave agrees that the swivel is virtually an inert piece of metal and I have learned something - that a hooklink tied to the mainline will stop any twist from the bait running up the line. Something I hadn't thought about even though now I can see it having chucked feeders out 70-80 yards.

I suppose disagreeing with Dave now eliminates me from the Kryston Christmas card list. Ah well.....

Allow the line to leave the reel by the baitrunner or turning spool nad it will not put any more twist into the line other than that which may be in the first place.

However wind that line back on the reel and you will put an extra twist in it by every turn.

And what will make this worse is that if you have a roller in the bale that won't roll. The result of a none rolling bale is that it puts ever tighter twists into the line, especially under load.

I have actually known anglers who have superglued the line roller to prevent it rolling. Silly people. They want to go backwards in time.

The fact that we now have line rollers that DO roll is one of the great advantages of the modern fixed spool reel. I remember the old Mitchell 300s where the line pick up had no roller. Spend a day spinning with these reels and at times the twists in the line were awful.

I'm perplexed. I fail to understand how a pick-up guide that rolls will cause less line-twist than one that doesn't.

The big breakthrough, in my opinion, came when Shimano, Daiwa et al introduced anti-twist line-rollers..... Marvellous innovation - leastways, such was the claim! A load of rubbish, of course - there's no such thing as an anti-twist line-roller. It would have been interesting had someone filed a complaint under the Trade Descriptions Act.

Anyway, an authoritative, comprehensive article, Dave. Personally, I employ the line-off-a-revolving-spool method of loading my reels. Line-twist problems are not, in general, caused by loading the line, but by excessive and unnecessary use of the free-spool facility and the slipping-clutch. When and if twist does occur - and if it reaches nuisance proportions - I simply chuck out a Gardner Spin-Doctor.

Of course it does not cause less line twist Jim. What it does avoid is by virtue of the fact that it rolls, less intensification of the line twist in the line that you have still to wind on the spool.

That's how it was explained to me.

There will be the same number of twists that's for sure, but there will be more of them towards the front of the line. A good swivel should help.

What is a Gardner Spin-Doctor?

Thanks Graham, I shall have to get a few.

One thing I have noticed and this has happened for years, even with the advent of the bale arm line roller that works.

When using float tackle at distance and expecially after playing a few decent fish, an intensification of the twisting in the line occurs about 20 or so yards from the front of the line resulting in twists so violent you get a loop which can cause grief. And the first 20 yards of the line seems to have no twists at all.

I think I know what causes this but let's have your views.

this might help ................it might not........I do loads and loads of cabling aerial ,audio etc and I have to take the cable off the reel by allowing the reel to turn ,if I lay the reel on the floor and pull cable of (static reel) it go so twisted I have to start again as I cant do anything with it !
So to me Dave Lanes way is right for coming off the spool...................going on the reel is another matter

wheres chubby ??

You got it there Cakey, but Dave Chlton's (and Graham's and mine) way means that the line is coming off with a slight twist, but untwists as it goes on the reel, or almost.

What you've just said though does prove another point, if you cast it's the same. A twist goes in the line, but this time when you wind back on, it don't all come out.

"You got it there Cakey, but Dave Chlton's (and Graham's and mine) way means that the line is coming off with a slight twist, but untwists as it goes on the reel, or almost."

Just thought of a similarity - the way we wind line on a spool is like a skipping rope. The left hand imparts a twist, but the right hand removes it. Or at least that's the way I see it.

I generally use the revolving spool method nice wifey) but I have on occasions used the bucket of water method as well and to be honest I havn't noticed a lot of difference, I firmly believe the line's memory has a lot to do with twist, the softer the line the better it spools and the less twist you get in my experience anyway.

I've said before somewhere on here that the quicker you wind in after casting the more twist you get and this is immediately obvious with a float and double maggot but it isn't restricted to just that situation. This is emphasized by the high rate of retrieval of most reels these days.

no checker then ?

Dave's article is first-class... and proves beyond doubt that opinions on what to DO about line twist vary. I use Dave's method, and it has served me well.
There are some scientific principles at work here, as **** Walker once pointed out. When six coils of lie peel off a fixed spool, they impart precisely three turns of twist in the line... half a turn per coil. Sounds a lot, but oddly it doesn't seem to cause us any real problems when we're fishing. However, as this physical attribute is not dependent on spool diameter, it does make it plain that wide spools put less twist in line per metre than narrow spools - twice the circumference, half the twist.
I use Dave's method of loading line because I have noticed a tendency for some line to 'crinkle' while stored, or even have that appearence just after loading them on. With the Chilton method, each loop of line peeling off the 'mother' spool imparts a twist which the rotating bale arm quickly reverses, so while the line's on the spool, it's not twisted. Less crinkling.
I am the first to admit that the bloke who spools with the rotating mother spool, while imarting twists into the line on the reel spool, gets rid of them all when he casts out again!
The Dave Lane method is, I think, the half-way house, the mother spool partly rotating, partly coiling its line, so half the twists go on the spool in the first place, and half are on it when it's cast out.

Oh, and Jim's dead right about rollers in the bale arm - only of any use if, instead of making the guide from high-grade stainless, it's made from chromed monkey metal. That's because it helps prevent a cheap roller guide developing grooves from the line.... until it seizes up.
No line roller made can defeat Mother Physics.

Are all lines loaded onto the manufacturers spools by rotating the spool, or are some loaded , like reel spools, by winding the line over the spool from a bale-arm - putting one turn of twist in per turn on the spool?