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| Welding extra eyes to the existing rings on your outriggers accommodates more halyards and allows them to operate smoothly without pinching. |
Another thing that always worked me up when I was a deckhand were outrigger halyards that didn't work properly. I would get incredibly frustrated whenever our halyards would get crossed in the eyes and start pinching. It made it hard to run up the halyard and was just an inconsistent and inefficient operation. Unfortunately, when I was freelancing, I often got on a boat for just a day or week's worth of fishing and didn't have time to fix the setup properly. When I got the chance to rig the outriggers myself, I continually adapted and looked for ways to make them more efficient and also to give us the ability to use more halyards without pinching the eyes on the outrigger poles. I wanted more control to get the most consistent tension for the bite as well.
We started by adopting a method I saw when working for Wink Doerzbacher. He had fastened glass eyes with waxed line to the metal eyes of the rigger. This did two things: It gave each halyard its own eye to run through, and it allowed the mono halyards to glide easily up or down over a larger, smooth surface that wouldn't chafe the mono over time. We never use anything but mono for halyard material because it glides effortlessly through the eyes, doesn't get as dirty, stiff and coarse as woven nylon cord, and is far easier to rig with crimps for a cleaner look.
Since I like to fish three halyards, plus our two teaser lines on each rigger, we needed more eyes. So Mitchell and I brainstormed and he came up with a great idea. We got longtime Merritt rigger Jim Schwartz to weld stainless-steel rings to the single ring that comes with the Rupp Rigger. The result, which looks like a four-finger pair of brass knuckles, easily accommodates the number of lines running up the rigger. He welded two rings to the next stop to make a triple as we spaced our halyards; however, we kept our glass eye at the top to provide a larger, smooth surface at this critical juncture. We also added rings via a clamp on a custom fabricated sleeve since the standard eyes didn't give us the desired spacing and spread for the halyards. And following a setup from Capt. Bobby Brown, we dropped our long-rigger halyard down a bit from the tip of the rigger to the heftier section of the pole so we could tow bigger baits from the long-rigger position without bending a rigger tip. If you're pulling from the tip and a big girl eats on an inside turn, you're in a prime spot to bend the rigger.
It's easy to sit back and use what you're given, but if we all did that, we'd still be driving Model As and winding our watches. You don't have to reinvent the wheel — just look for ways to do a better job in an easy, more efficient manner. A crusty old skipper once told me, "Don't work hard; work smart." And I'm all for that.
