Bimini or spider hitch in braid

[Didley]

I read an article in a NZ softplastic magazine, which claimed they'd had a knot tying clinic over there, some Aussie experts were showing them how good their bimini twists were and they tested them against the spider hitch. Supposedly the spider hitch was far stronger, differing to what we have always been told. This was with braid by the way

I've always used the S/H, until now, and I decided it was time I upgraded to the B/T. Now I've learned the B/T and I read this>:(. Ive never had any trouble with the S/H, and my first few B/T's broke fairly easily, but now seem to be holding.
Another point they made was a 10 turn B/t was stronger than a 40 turn B/T.

I'm thinking I might need to tie sa heep of knots in braid and test which is stronger, but don't quite know how i'm going to measure the breaking strength.

Any advice greatly appreciated!

Cheers Didley

[RAT-KING]

Hey Didley I dont know how his woul work in ur case but i used to test my traces using plates of gym weights, Im sure not everone has them lying around but if u do u may be able to rig some thing up!
Cheers Simon

[Flex]

Westernangler website has a very very comprehensive test done on the Bimini twist.They used a special machine to test load weight v speed of load etc. Proved that a Bimini used with a Mono trace is nearly 100% strength. If i can fid the article I will post the link on here.

[leelee]

As far as i was aware that spider hitch was the worst knot to use in braid ebcaue it reduces the breaking strain of the line by about 40-50%.

Do a search on Geoff Wilsons knots and you will see the results.

Cheers

Lee

[coraltrout68]

If you can do the bimini, I'd be using that for sure.

I have never had a bimini let me down.

[Horse]

I did some tests a couple of years ago and found that there was no improvement using a Bimini compared to braid straight to an improved Albright

[Tim_N]

Flex is right. Western Angler did a big test and found that a 72 turn bimini was superior to 10, 30 or 50 turn biminis. I use it now and it never let me down. Couple that with an improved albright as described on adventuebound.com.au and you have 1 bullet proof rig.
Tim

[Didley]

Thanks for the responses, I think the important thing is we're talking about in braid, not mono. I have done a bit of research as we all do, and figures always state Bimini at close to 100% and Spider hitch about 40-50%, but this article, I got the impression they are claiming that braid is different.

Flex, I'll try and get a look at Westernangler website.

LeeLee, I have the Geoff Wilsons knots book, and that's Y i learned the B/T

Maybe there just being kiwis ;D

[Cheech]

I am a bimini supporter as well. 50 turns. Something I found earlier on was that if I made the twists really tight they would break easier. I am not saying to make the twists loose, but to just not make them really tight. May have been a cause of your earlier failure?

[Marky Mark]

"Flex is right. Western Angler did a big test and found that a 72 turn bimini was superior to 10, 30 or 50 turn biminis. I use it now and it never let me down. Couple that with an improved albright as described on adventuebound.com.au and you have 1 bullet proof rig"

That's my preferred rig as well, especially for snapper sp ing where I'll use 8 and 15lb braid with 25lb fluro leaders, really need a double in the braid to stop it eating into the fluro leader. The most common mistake with tying a bimmini is to compress the twists downwards, i.e. from the single towards the double as this leaves the single strand above the knot slightly abraded from being through the twisting regime. Make sure you don't over compress the twists and that they are only moved up away from the double section when tightening the twists and you'll find it to be a really good knot.

[Franco]

Just being the devils advocate ....

Do you guys think that a 70 turn bimini might be good enough??

Ha ....
WTF did they choose 72?? why not maybe 73 turns???

[Colo77]

::) On ya Franco

[Tim_N]

Franco,
From what I can remember from the test done in the Western Angler magazine, 72 was the recommendation as it gave the results which rated as close as possible to 100% on a line breaking machine test bench.
Tim

[Franco]

Yeah Tim I remember actually having read that article a while back ...... to be honest it was very well investigated and tested with as much proper scientific technique as you could expect in such a study .... it was really good ..... but I still think its funny and can't help seeing the lighter side of the whole thing!

I myself don't really ever bother doing more than about 30-40 turns as really, when you think about it, most of the braids we're using break well over the stated breaking strain on the packet, and so your knot is never going to end up too weak for the fish you're targeting anyway.

I think a lot of times we're using braid of much higher breaking strain then we really need to (eg the classic old 6 kg barra outfit running 12-14lb mono caught heaps of fish .... whereas now you would rarely see anyone using less than 20lb braid for barra!). IMO the most important thing to stop busting off on a fish is trying to avoid SUDDEN high pressures on the line (such as when the fish changes direction) with smart rod-work and soft hands -- which compensates for the lack of stretch in the braid. (An exception to this would be trolling for big Jacks - then you need every bit of help you can get!)

For light lines I now always use no double with a 4-6 turn surgeons loop (which is supposed to be the strongest way to connect single braid to leader) and in heavier lines use 40 turn double bimini to improved albright, which combined with the braids we use (20-30lb), is more than strong enough to troll up the biggest of esturary jacks. I've lost fish to many different reasons, but I can honestly say since perfecting the knots above, I've never lost one to a knot failure.

[Didley]

http://www.ausfish.com.au/vforum/showthread.php?t=138344

[ethan1]

was a big fan of a double now use a mid night knot. No need for a double. Goes through guides really well. Cant slip like a albright. Always looking for a better line and leader knot and this one is sweet. 40pd braid 80pd leader doesnt cause any dramas through the guides.;)
Ethan

[Horse]

There seems to be a lot of variables in the testing and wildly differing results:-/
One of the factors not being considered in most tests is the shock loading that real life fishing knots are subject to. This point load was supposed to be the weak point of the Spiders Hitch in mono and could also be the case in braid. I have no idea how you could test these sorts of things without pretty radical equipment