Hey fellas and Lady Alison,
Gosh we had a fun weekend in Hatteras, I'll post the pictures up soon. No tunas though...
Erik, Murat is right for low vis, and Allison and x-frog are right for using double wraps in clear water. It's obvious why but there are some other reasons to consider using one or two wraps of line.
My 60cm Excalibur has one wrap of line and I obviously only use that in low vis. Even with only one wrap it has 12ft of shooting line and with the 5 prong I use there that's more than the terminal range of the gun with a single pair of 18mm bands. Two wraps wouldn't make sense because in the vis I use that gun you usually can't see past 7-8ft...
My "better vis" inshore gun that I like to use when vis is 5-20ft inshore is a 75cm Excalibur and I put two wraps on it so it gives it 17ft of line and shaft length. The reason I put two wraps on it is that with the 20mm bands first off I get a solid 10ft or punching power range, and also because I never use a reel or float inshore even if we shoot stripers that get to 30lbs. The 17ft of line is plenty to work with and keep even the bigger fish on a long leash in shalow water less than 30ft
My 110cm T-20 has a reel on it and a 20mm band and I use only one wrap plus the length that goes back to the reel. Since this is my bottom fish gun that we shoot snappers and grouper with I don't like to give the fish the extra shooting line that they can use immediately after the shot to try to get in a hole. I like to try to keep these fish on a tight leash with some pressure right away and will usually palm the spool of the reel too to override the drag setting on the reel in order to try to block a fish from getting in the hole if the shot is solid.
My 130cm's all have two wraps. Once a wahoo I shot with my 115 with a reel(1st mistake) yanked the gun that had only one wrap clean out of my hands and I ended up doing the 100freestyle on the surface trying to catch up to the fleeing bottle rocket. I fnally managed to catch up to the gun and the fish had emptied the entire alum 50 spool and when I grabbed it, it ripped the fish off. I learned from that incident that had I had two wraps I would have had a fraction of a second more to react and realize I had actually hit the fish. In addition I would have had more effective range too with the double wrap.
The last advice for anyone that has a T-20 is that you can actually upgrade the stock line release to a SSteel line release that Omer made for us in the USA that is designed to hold two wraps better than the stock one. It has a bigger curve in the arm. These are stock on the Master America guns but it's an easy and worthwhile upgrade for anyone with a T-20 that likes to use two wraps. They cost around $10.
So as you can see it really just depends on what you're doing.
Ciao, Mark
