Bank fishing with a 12 ft spinning rod with a weightless Texas rigged plastic worm. My line starts to wrap really loose around my spool and even gets some birdsnests in it. Is this because of line twist? How can I avoid this? Should I be using a swivel?

What type of line do you have on your reel? A lot of florocarbon lines don't work well on spinning reels. I have mono as a main line on mine. I then use a barrel swivel and about a 2' to 3' leader of florocarbon line. You should also be closing the bail by hand instead of turning the handle to close it. A lot of people on here like braid better than anything on a spinning reel but I have never tried it. You may also have too much line on the spool. It is best not to fill them all the way up.

Hey logcatcher, I'm using 8 pound mono on this pole. I may strip a bit off to be on the safe side. A barrel swivel sounds like it could help. Will give it a go.

closing the bail by hand will help eliminate line twist

Here ya go!

 

 

Was "12 feet" a mistype?

2 hours ago, looking45 said:

closing the bail by hand will help eliminate line twist

And just exactly how does closing the bail by hand have any effect on line twist?  ALL spinning reels will twist line. It's just the way they are designed. Pulling the line off while casting and then winding it back on twists the line. Try duplicating the same action by pulling a garden hose or an extension cord off a spool and winding it back on like a spinning reels does and see how fast they get twisted up. Reeling against the drag doesn't happen very often compared to reeling the line in on every cast. Mono doesn't like being twisted and shows it much faster that braid. 

https://skyaboveus.com/fishing/How-to-Prevent-Line-Twist-on-a-Spinning-Reel

This, has worked very well for me to help with both casting and spinning reels to “tame” fluorocarbon. 

Oops. Yup 12ft was a big typo. 7ft.Is what I'm using