Hey y’all,

 

In some situations I’ve thought it may be beneficial to lighten my leader line for shaky head fishing. I am wondering if you all think I can get away with 10lb braid to 8lb leader line and a ML spinning rod if I’m using a roboworm on an owner twistlock shaky head. How much force do you think it takes to get that hook through a roboworm and into a fishes mouth? About how tight would you set your drag? I would be skin hooking the roboworm. Would you instead use a Medium spinning rod for this? 
 

I will have to play around with this but I appreciate any suggestions. 

10lb braid is more than enough. Because it doesn’t stretch, a hook will penetrate easily. I used to use 8 lb braid exclusively but I went to 10, not because of breaking strength, but it was so thin, it slipped out of some hook eyes. 

What you have should work fine.

 

I mainly use 6 or 7 lbs strait fluro on my shakey head setup.  I use a light to med light rod.

Just make sure to ty good knots and watch for line damage with the lighter line.

You dont need much more than 2lbs of drag, 3 at the most.  I rarely use more than 4lbs of drag inshore fishing with heavy wire.  It doesnt take very much pressure to get a medium wire owner point through a fat or standard roboworm.  10lb PE and 8lb leader is fine for a ML.  With the nature of a shakey head, make a habit of checking the line and knot for incidental abrasion from the bottom. 

I use a ML for jig worms and shakey heads, but generally its a thinner type of finesse worm on a 1/16-3/32 shakey head with a med or lighter wire hook.  Bite Me Tackle makes a great a great finesse Shakey head hook, with a short shank Gami sproat hook.  Its one of the only shakey heads that fits a 4 or 4.5" worm perfectly.  For longer worms I like the Gami tricky head.  Both of those heads can be fished on a ML or M.  I do think a M XF is the way to go for a dedicated shakey head rod.  When you go to thicker baits and heavier heads and wire hooks then youre Mag M and lighter MH rods are the way to go.

GEEEZ ... the title said HORSEPOWER ... I thought I clicked on my Buick forum ...  

 

To answer .... NO, there's never enough horsepower and yes, ten pound braid with eight pound leader is enough to set the hook in your situation.

 

OK, back to fishing.

Learn to skin hook the worm. You want the hook completely through the worm so the point and barb is laying on the top of the work exposed. To skin hook for weedless simply pull the hook back about 1/8” pinch the worm in front of the hook point and slide the hook point into the pinched bump covering the point.

Tom

yeah i would skin hook the worm.Also not all medium light rods are the same , a light tip is ok but i would want a solid back bone below the first 8 inches or so. your  line and leader will be fine.I usually set my drag so that it slips just after i get down into that backbone. kind of hard to describe.

8 pound leader is plenty. I don't like braid under 15 lb. I think it becomes too thin and prone to knotting. I've used 10, but much prefer 15. 

 I use 12lb braid with a 6 or 8lb fluoro leader and skin hook the worm.  My skin hooking is lightly through the side of the worm with the point barely under the plastic.