Terminal Tackle
Terminal tackle in a fishing sense, is a category of items that include all the bit and pieces you may use to make up your fishing rigs or rig your baits, aside from hooks. A range of terminal tackle in your fishing kit is great to allow you to fish a wider array of habitat, and target more species. Rigs for fishing don’t have to be complicated or excessive, a simple ball sinker running to your hook can catch you a swathe of fish species around the country. However, as you advance as an angler, you will begin to fine tune, and fabricate rigs that work best for your favourite scenarios.
Sinkers, floats and swivels are the most common, and basic of terminal tackles, but each one of these categories can be broken down into many more subcategories in relation to size and shape, each with it’s perfect fishing style it suits. And like fishing hooks, there is no one item that will do everything.
Swivels are a very important piece of terminal tackle, as their size and strength can limit where they can and can’t be used. Swivels can come in the standard barrel style used in an inline rig to eliminate line twist, they can have a snap attached to one end, allowing for quick and easy lure or rig change, or they can be 3-way, allowing the angler to tie branched lines or droppers off and create rigs for different applications.
Beads, tubing and stoppers can help to modify rigs, by adding attraction through colour or luminescence, or they may allow a rig to be adjustable for depth or length without having to cut and retie, thus making them a handy item of terminal tackle to have in your arsenal.
Floats and sinkers are just as their names suggest, one is used to suspend or float your bait, the other to sink it to the bottom. As we have determined, these come in a dizzying array of sizes and shapes. Floats can can used as both a bite indicator and as a means of suspending your bait at a predetermined depth, the sensitivity of a quill float when fishing for mullet and garfish is very different from using a large foam bobby cork to suspend a live tailor under. Likewise with sinkers, each sinker shape is designed for its purpose. Snapper leads are intended to be attached at the base of a rig and cast or dropped vertically onto the seafloor. Ball Sinkers run on your line and are chosen to get a bait to the bottom, but allow the line to run through unimpeded if necessary. Split shots are designed to be squashed onto the fishing line so that you can add little-by-little to counter balance a float for best results.
Lure fishing requires terminal tackle as well, with the most common being split rings, which allow you to change hooks on a lure as required.
Crimping is an alternative to tying a knot, and is used when choosing heavier line classes, where knot tying might be difficult or bulky, this is mostly don’t in game fishing scenarios. By placing a metal swage or crimp on the line, and passing the line back through the crimp, you can then clamp down and close the crimp with a pair of crimping pliers, to give you a secure and strong attachment to your desired piece of terminal tackle, hook or lure.
With the endless variety in fishing rigs, it means there is no limit to what you can put together to catch a feed, or that fish of a lifetime. If that sounds too daunting for you, we have a comprehensive range of pre tied rigs and leaders to simplify your fishing time. Whatever the case may be, we will have the terminal tackle you need from the best brands at an unbeatable price to get you on the water and fishing better, for longer.
*I understand this one is a tad longer than what is ideal, but seeing as we are touching on the category, with a number of sub categories comprised in each, it is hard to condense it too much. But again, let me know if you want me to extrapolate on this more, to put under each sub category instead.