With all the rubbish weather we’ve had this winter carp fishing has had to take a back seat for me. It’s been a good opportunity to use that non-fishing time to maintain and look after your tackle and do all those jobs that might not otherwise get done. One of these is changing your mainline.

I have been using fluorocarbon for a few years now and this tends to be relatively expensive and also prone to line twist. To save a lot of money instead of simply throwing away the line that’s been sitting on the reels I just reverse them.

The simplest way I find to do this requires two bank sticks and an open space, like a playing field. Tie the end of the line to one stick, walk away paying out line and then at about ‘half way’ put another stick in the ground. Loop the line round the second stick and walk back to the original one. When you get to the end of the line, cut it off, retie the original line from the other end and reel in. This has the added advantage of removing some of the line twist on the way back in.

A couple more points that help;

1. Take a wet / damp tea towel and reel the line in at moderate tension through this. It helps clean the line and bed it in without loose coils.

2. I never put more than 150 yards of line when I spool up in the first place. Most modern reels have spools that are far too deep for most of the fishing I do. I fill these up with cheap 15lb mono to the required level as backing then tie my actual fishing line on to the end and spool up as usual. This way I can spool up 4 times with a 600 yard shop bought pot, which effectively gives me 8 refills once each one is reversed. Makes more expensive lines that much more affordable.

Tight lines, Elie G

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