A plastic tube, some elastic braid, and some heat shrink tubing. After a quick trip to the hardware store and a little time with a glue gun, I’ve now resolved a problem that has plagued me since I was ten years old. Thanks, Tim Flagler.
Tim’s growing collection of videos (284 and counting) at Tightline Productions is arguably the best and most comprehensive video resource on the web for tying flies. Thrown into the mix are helpful videos on knots and other such things as the DIY Spool Tenders.
There are other ways to hold your tippet to the spool. I’ve tried a lot of them. The elastic bands that manufacturers include on tippet spools have certainly gotten better over the years. A decade ago, they used to break before I reached the thirty-yard end of the material. These days they don’t break as often, but the tippet still slips out of the hole somehow and I have to re-thread it … all too often.
I’ll bet most anglers don’t have this problem — and most of the rest don’t care when they do. But I know there are a few other fishermen out there who are delighted with anything that keeps a system running smoothly. As I wrote in the Split Shot post earlier this week, “I tend to get hung up on the little, inefficient things that rob me of productive fishing time and cost me fish. So I fix them.” And if the little things don’t bother you, then “I envy your cavalier approach to life.”
I shared this link with my Troutbitten friends, and my buddy, Sloop, said, “This is truly a Dom activity.” Ha. Good point.
Couple tips:
— Don’t build them too tight. Just follow the directions in the video for determining the length of elastic. If you cut the elastic shorter, the tender won’t rotate easily.
— These work on most spool. But some old-school spools are too narrow for the tubing diameter used in the video. Improvise, adapt and overcome.
— I originally built these for my Maxima spools, which ship with only a wimpy rubber band. They worked so well that I built more to replace the tenders on my tippet spools.
— The tenders also work well for spools of tinsel, wire, etc.
I’ll conclude as Flagler does in the video: “Happy crafting.”
Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com
Now that’s a great idea. Thanks for posting it, Domenic.
Bruce
Right on.
I too have tried many things over the years; none of them completely satisfactory. I made some the way you and Tim suggested and they work great! Thanks to you both for sharing.
I had used a very similar approach for a while, and it worked ok most of the time, but for some of my spools that had taller “side walls”, the bead was a bit more difficult to grab/slide around.
My favorite spool tenders have always been the ones that come with tippet spools from places like Rio that instead of a super small eyelet through some elastic band and a loop that is easy to grab (especially useful for when you want to wind up any excess slack). I test drove some different approaches and eyelets to reproduce this same type of tender and found an approach that works super well and wanted to share with you and your readers in case anyone prefers that over a bead approach.
Made a short YouTube video demonstrating:
https://youtu.be/HdDvYWZWOd8
Not sure if you accept random guest blog posts, but if you do, I would be happy to do a more polished write-up and video similar to this article if you’d like. I love Troutbitten content and it would be pretty cool to have my own short post featured on the site 🙂
Thanks, Mat. Honestly, I don’t use these anymore. I simply use two hair bands on the spool, and have the line between them. Works perfectly, and it’s no prep time.
Cheers.