Shore rigs for Common Skate fishing

You shouldn’t be surprised to hear that rigging up to fish for Flapper (Common) Skate requires beefed up rig components capable of putting up with the abuse that they will suffer at the hands of these fish – which can quite comfortably exceed 200lb.

Using the thicker mono, bigger baits and bigger hooks seems to knock everything off balance compared to a standard rig and when I first started out fishing for Skate I was having regular problems with the rig helicoptering during the cast, impacting distance and very often causing all manner of tangles. There’s nothing more disheartening than preparing an immaculate, donkey choker of a bait, leaving it out there for 2-3 hours or sometimes longer, only to reel in and find that the whole thing is twisted up and has been sat 5 foot off the sea bed in an un-fishable mess the entire time.

Modified up and over rig

On the face of it you might think there’s a lot of components in this rig – and you’re right. Tying a standard up and over for normal species is pretty easy, but subtlety is lost in skate rigs; the thickness of the mono and bulkiness of the components just screws with the aerodynamics. I’ve refined this rig over the last few years based on trial and error and found that the setup described below performs the best in terms of casting well and minimising rig twist.

Note – in the example below I’m using 200lb mono as it’s all I have left, but I recommend you use 150lb as it’s a significantly easier to knot. As long as it’s good quality, 150lb is more than capable of handling any Skate you’ll catch.

Components

Minimum 150lb mono of choice (I use Rovex 10x)

Genie big bait clip (the ones with the long clip)

2 8mm beads

3 power swivels (295lb)

Breakaway or Genie lead link – your choice

Gemini splashdown baitclip

Rotten bottom clip

10/0 – 12/0 Bronze Mustad Oshaughnessy hook with the barb ground off.

It is really important that hooks for skate fishing are barbless so as to cause minimal damage. I highly recommend using bronzed hooks as they rust away far quicker should you end up deep hooking. At the very least – avoid stainless steel.

First things first you’re going to bend the eye of the genie big bait clip around 45 degrees using a pair of pliers. Put it to one side.

Attach a power swivel to your chosen lead link, then attach this to your Gemini splashdown. You can attach your rotten bottom to the splashdown now if you want or later while you’re fishing. A rotten bottom is a must though – even on the cleanest ground if there’s a snag to find, a skate will find it.

Next – take a length of your chosen mono – 6ft minimum but longer if you want. Using a 2 turn grinner knot tie on a power swivel. Moisten the knot before tightening, and use a pair of pliers or a knot puller. This is by far the easiest knot to tie with the thick mono and is strong as hell.

Now for the weird bit – thread the Genie big bait clip onto the mono and up to the swivel you’ve just tied. With a bit of fiddling – clip it into the lower eye of the swivel alongside the knot. This again is a lot easier with 150lb mono rather than 200lb. If you’ve done it right it should look like this.

This is the relay clip for the up and over. The reason for doing this is to ensure that the weight of the skate is on the power swivel rather than directly on the clip itself, which would end up bending out under the pressure. I’ve tried many different types of clips for these skate up and overs – most of the time the rig comes unravelled, whereas this way works far more effectively for me.

Next thread on an 8mm bead, followed by your assembled Gemini splashdown, followed by another 8mm bead.

To the other end of the mono – tie on another power swivel, again using a 2 turn grinner knot. That’s your rig body done.

Now cut a shorter length of 150lb mono which will make your hook snood. The important bit here is to make sure that the length of the hook snood is LESS than half of the length of the rig body. If it’s more than half of the length, you risk it twisting up your mainline as the rig sinks to the sea bed, especially if using braid. The shorter snood eliminates this as in theory the snood is backing up against the longer rig body rather than your mainline. So since my rig body is 6ft, my snood should be no longer than 3 foot.

Tie the snood to the other end of the swivel on your rig body.

Finally – tie on your hook. I like to leave a little bit of a tag hanging off which helps to anchor the bait when elasticating it on.

Note. The hook will be too big to clip directly into the Gemini splashdown. To get around this, I have a spool of gardening wire, which I use to make a small loop which I attach to my hook once I’ve finished baiting up. This loop is then what clips into the splashdown. See image here.

Hopefully that was helpful. I do have another rig which I’ve been using for Skate recently called the dingle dangle rig (not quite the ‘dongle’ rig which everyone seems to be obsessed with at the minute). The dingle dangle rig has its origins overseas in the likes of South Africa for shore shark fishing. It’s a lot easier to tie and casts like an absolute missile with big baits.

Unfortunately I don’t have the components to hand to build it right now, but once I do I’ll put another post up.